Google and Verizon Sold Out the Internet

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.

Comcast Suckerpunches the FCC

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.

Motorola Names its Comeback Kid: Droid

Droid Details Announced

I've mentioned Droid a couple of times recently and my last word on it was that it was probably going to be a line of Verizon phones instead of a single phone. Fortunately, it looks like that's not true and there is an actual Droid phone from Motorola that's due out later this week. Other than the gold colored square on the keyboard that I still haven't figured out, this is a pretty attractive phone and the first to market with Android 2.0. I personally don't think the aesthetics are as solid as the Pre, but it sounds like it feels solid and features a physical (landscape) and virtual keyboard. Plus, the screen looks like it's pretty awesome quality.



PC Magazine already has a review up and they sound somewhat impressed with it. They point out some pretty big failings in the physical keyboard, call quality, and slowdowns despite the powerful guts of the Droid, but it does sound like the multimedia software is strong as is the camcorder. Even though this may not be the most impressive phone on the block, I think it can do well if Verizon's marketing works and people do perceive it to be a good alternative to the iPhone, and I'm sure that it is a worthy alternative.

This is the first big release from Motorola in quite a while. I'm not counting the Cliq since it's not out yet and doesn't sound like it's as well-rounded of a smartphone as Droid. It's pretty clear that Motorola is changing their tune so that they can start making real money again and jumping in bed with Anrdoid. Their plans for 2010 are pretty firmly rooted in Android, and it's quickly starting to look like 2010 may be the year of Android for mobile phones, in general. The iPhone will still be popular, but I predict Android phones to pick up steam and could outsell iPhones as an aggregate. Given that Droid doesn't really undercut the iPhone on cost I don't think it's going to be a huge hit, but as the first worthy Android phone on Verizon I think it's the start of a crusade from Verizon to strike back at AT&T in the wake of AT&T chipping away at Verizon's subscriber base differential.

Google Navigation

One big feature of Android 2.0 that I neglected to mention above is the inclusion of free turn-by-turn directions. Given the ridiculous price of turn-by-turn on the iPhone, this is a pretty decent leg up that Android now has on the iPhone OS. I don't have a read on how much people care about turn-by-turn on their phone since I have a dedicated GPS, but I can see people using a feature like that to help justify buying a new phone. As demonstrated by the stock market, this is a pretty big blow to Garmin and Tom Tom as this application has a robotic voice, POIs, traffic and other common, rich navigation features, plus Street View (though the usefulness of that is debatable). If more Android 2.0 phones have car docks (like the Droid does), this could end up being a pretty popular feature, especially given that Android has voice recognition.

The only catch is that it sounds like this application requires data access, which is the only thing giving the GPS companies a fighting chance. When you're taking trips outside major cities and you have spotty 3G, you definitely don't want to get lost because you need Internet access. Of course, if you could pre-load the data you need for your journey and destination surroundings this wouldn't be so bad, but may be an expensive burden on the network.

The really good news about this though is that it's a pretty aggressive move that's going to really benefit consumers. This is going to drive down the prices of competing cell phone navigation products and probably of dedicated GPS devices, as well. Plus, you'll see more innovation across the board now that everyone knows Google is going to try to give them a run for their money.

Other Google Releases

There were a few other releases from Google last week.

You now get a link in image search results to find images similar to a given result, which is a pretty complicated feature when you consider the problem of establishing links between images.

Less surprising but still cool was the release of Google Music Search, which allows you to preview songs directly from your results and subsequently buy them.

The last thing Google talked about last week was that you can actually set up Google Voice on an existing number if you're ok with the fact that it's a lighter version of Google Voice with only a subset of the features. The main features it looks like you get are international calling and Google Voicemail (including transcription and usage of the online interface for managing it). I love the transcription and think it makes Google Voice valuable all on its own, so I tihnk it's cool that they're able to pull this off.

The Case Against Net Neutrality

I've spoken a lot in favor of net neutrality recently, with this picture being a pretty good depiction of what the world could be like without net neutrality, but there's definitely been a lot of concern with allowing the FCC step in. CNet posted an editorial that I don't agree with but I think poses some worthwhile alternate points. The jurisdiction argument is a tough one since the FCC is skating on thin ice in trying to legislate the Internet, but I definitely don't think such protection would be as paranoid as the CNet editorial seems to hint at.

Congress is starting to side with the dark side though an both houses are putting up bills to kill any possible net neutrality legislation, one of which was authored by John McCain (one of the reasons why I was really against him last year). Their motivations are definitely misled claiming that regulation kills innovation, in which case you could argue that monopolies should be allowed because they foster innovation being unregulated. Their bills sound a bit heavy-handed and I think you go to an extreme opposite the FCC in possible overstepping its bounds. I'm not sure how well either bill will do, but hopefully not very in a Democrat-run Congress.

Quickies

I'm literally at the point of dozing off here so time for the last bits I have here.

Joel Spolsky put up a really good essay about capstone projects that mostly hones in on how undergraduate CS programs are not focusing enough on skills needed in the industry with regard to time management and some of the biggest parts of the software development process (almost feels like an extension of my recent essay). It's misguided at times but still great overall.

Did you know there was a new Magic Mouse with multi-touch gesturing functionality? Cool. Not sure if I really need gesturing in my mouse, but still nifty.

This is a pretty awesome, comprehensive guide to using HTML 5.

The UN has approved a universal cell phone charger, which could be a great win for consumers tired of being over-charged for their charger should the lose/forget theirs on a trip away from home.

You can now buy stuff on Amazon and some other partners with just a single phrase to confirm who you are. It's a pretty cool concept and adds a layer of security on top of normal 1-click so go set up your phrase. If you don't pick a good phrase though then it's just adding a weakness to your security, so be careful.

Inglourious Basterds on Blu-ray is now $20, which is cheaper than its DVD equivalent. Times have really changed! This is almost certainly a pricing strategy to encourage Blu-ray sales in the holiday season, and I hope it works because I love my Blu-rays and wish more people had the players.

Have a great week!

Net Neutrality Heats Up

Net Neutrality in the News

Net neutrality was in the news quite a bit last week. If you don't know what that is, you can use my short documentary from last year as a primer. It's been in the news off and on in the past 4 years or so but there were quite a few articles last week regarding some rules that the FCC is proposing to preserve net neutrality. Interestingly enough, the EFF is pretty pessimistic about these proposals as giving the FCC power that it doesn't actually have. The so-called Four Freedoms that the FCC is trying to support are venerable ideals: that consumers are entitled to access to legal Internet content, to run applications and services of their choice, to connect to the Internet on their choice of lawful devices that don't harm the network, and competition among content providers as well as service providers. They're simple but elegant principles to stand behind and I'm definitely glad that the FCC is at least not going the other direction and favoring Comcast et al. Even if they don't have the power to foster net neutrality I hope that in investigating their authority the issue gets enough visibility to become something that ISPs don't sweep under the rug before people wake up and figure out what a problem it is when content providers don't get a fair shake at distributing their content.

It's a common misconception that net neutrality means that consumers are entitled to pay a flat rate for unlimited Internet usage as well, but that's actually not the case. It's not as big of a deal to created tiered packages for Internet access as long as each tier has access to the exact same Internet as any other tier. This is what AT&T and Time Warner want to bring about - pay as you go Internet. Charging by the bit for your Internet consumption. This isn't so crazy considering that your water, electricity, and cell phone usage are metered, but in a country that has a long way to go in improving broadband penetration and where the Internet has become so vital to some people's lifestyles it can definitely be detrimental to everyone to have crappy tiers, and that's what I'm worried about. The world that Time Warner envisions where most people are using very little Internet and they want to charge more money to the Internet hogs isn't the future that's ahead of us anymore with things like Hulu and Netflix and YouTube growing in subscribers and content every day. If you have to pay by the bit you may be less likely to stream that movie on Netflix, and I think the Internet could see somewhat of a dip in profitability with less eyeballs. I can understand the ISPs' argument that Internet plans with unlimited access are unsustainable in the long-term, but they still need to work on upgrading their networks and coming up with affordable pricing plans, unlike the ones proposed in Texas not too long ago by Comcast that they had to pull out of because they were so unreasonable. 150 GB is definitely too small of a cap when you consider a family of four using the Internet, especially if one of the parents have a job that involves using a VPN and/or a VNC viewer when working from home.

It's good to see these issues getting slightly more exposure and I hope that we reach an agreement on a future for the Internet that makes sense for companies and for consumers.

Search Deals

There were a few high-profile search deals struck last week. The first one was Bing acquiring non-exclusive rights to search Facebook and Twitter for their real-time status updates. For a few hours, Bing had something that Google didn't. It wasn't even a day though before Google announced a similar deal with Twitter, but they had not struck one with Facebook. Given that Twitter has more public updates than Facebook, it was the bigger deal anyhow. As a cherry on top, Google whispered to the API that they plan on adding music pages to search this week with direct links to download songs and rich content for artists with images, lyrics, song previews, and other goodies. This is akin to the artist pages you find on Amazon when you search for big artists.

The real story on this is between the lines: we have actual competition in search again. Hooray! We have two giants pitted against each other to deliver better sites that ultimately benefit consumers. I'm fairly certain that Yahoo still has a bigger share of the market than Bing, but I don't think that their terrible advertising campaign is making many inroads compared to the good fortune that Bing has had in recent months with drumming up traffic (probably thanks in part to their controversial ad that involved vomiting).

Blur, Droid and a Watch

There were 3 mobile phone stories last week, but none of them were really that big.

Boy Genius posted pictures of Motorola Calgary, which is the codename for the Motorola Blur-branded handset that's coming to Verizon. It looks like a plasticky, low-end smartphone, which isn't a bad thing but that's just what the design tells me. If it's not intended to be that then they need a better design team at Motorola (that's not really news though).

You've probably seen the stupid Droid ads now, so does that mean Calgary is "Droid"? In a manner of speaking, I believe so. It turns out that Droid is not a single phone but a series of Android phones coming to Verizon. Lame. They're re-branding Android as "Droid"? That doesn't make any sense to me. Engadget believe that the Motorola Sholes and HTC Eris are the first of the line and the Sholes may, in fact, end up being called just "Droid". I imagine that we'll hear more from Verizon about this later in the week as the ads now indicate a release of something in November.

Lastly, how stupid does this thing look?



It's a Bluetooth-enabled watch for your Blackberry. They had a bad quarter but decided to sustain development of a dumb-looking watch so you can be even more connected to your Blackberry? How about making a phone that innovates instead of these handsets they put out that are just marginally better than the previous model? Besides me, who uses a wristwatch anymore anyway? I love wearing a watch because I never know what time it is and like quick access to it, especially during meetings where there's no wall clock, but I recognize that most people don't think they need one.

Amazon Tidbits

Amazon had a really great Q3 and posted a 29% increase in sales compared to Q3 2008. There was definitely a lot of hard work behind it and relentless customer obsession, I hope our good fortune and blessings continue.

There were a couple of other recent announcements that I thought were cool. Last week, Amazon announced a free PC application for Kindle owners to read their books on their PC for free and even includes touchscreen functionality for Windows 7 users with multitouch devices. The other thing was same-day delivery in seven major cities, which is just $6 for Prime users on any order. Also, Prime users formerly didn't get Saturday delivery without paying extra but can now get Saturday delivery on orders placed before cutoff on Thursday. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first year ever that Amazon is offering shipping options so that you can order a last-minute gift on Christmas morning and have it at your doorstep in time for dinner.

The Short Stuff

Alright, time to wrap up with some quick stories.

Windows 7 launched last Thursday and hardware manufacturers are hoping to benefit from the release with a sales boost this holiday season.

If you're not sold on Windows 7 yet, I've talked plenty about it already so I'll direct you to Ars Technica's rather thorough review.

If you plan to upgrade to Windows 7 but are worried about re-installing your core base of applications, then you have to check out Ninite. It's a really cool program that allows you to create a single installer based around a list of applications you can choose from. It features a lot of apps that I love.

Gizmodo has a slew of images and a video of the Nook, which is the terrible name Barnes and Noble has decided on for their e-Reader, and you can find even more pictures at Engadget. The price point is $256, I wonder where they got that from.

Inglourious Basterds (see my review) was finally given an official DVD and Blu-ray release date last week of December 15, which is a few days after the UK release. It's available on Amazon for pre-order now! I already ordered my copy and can't wait for the extended scenes and the full version of Nation's Pride.

AMD announced the first triple-core processors defying the longstanding tradition in computing of sticking to powers of two.

Lastly, if you're looking for Google Chrome extensions to install then check this out.

Have a great week!

Immigrants in Technology

America is Losing the Edge

I decided after much contemplation that I wanted this to be the headline topic for this week's post because it's something that people don't like to talk about enough but it's a serious problem. There's not enough American-born students with degrees in technology and yet the American government still has very stringent policies on immigration. There are arguments to be made for and against allowing more foreigners in the country to fill these positions, but the point is that we have a fundamental problem. Over half of all startups in the Valley are founded or co-founded by immigrants, and yet more immigrants aren't able to get their idea off the ground in America even if they were educated here. We're living in a world economy in our own bubble. We can't shelter American workers from the rest of the world. By turning away these great ideas, we're doing one of two things: letting them grow in other countries instead or letting them die off instead of possibly benefiting humanity. In the former case, we're reducing our influence in the world and in the latter we're doing a disservice to everyone because there are countries where starting your own company simply isn't as feasible. We can't shelter ourselves from outside pressures in the hope that we're going to continue to come up with the best ideas. Technology is growing too fast for it to be contained in a single country, the question is how big a part we want in that future.

Bing's Share Grows

I'm officially impressed by Bing. They managed to grab 10% of the search market. When they got a couple percent, you could say that they bought it with their advertising. At this point though, they're actually getting enough mindshare to maintain a pretty big piece of the pie. I think we are seeing the aftereffects of the advertising campaign and it'll be interesting to see if they can maintain this. They've definitely been working hard to differentiate themselves from Google and that's going to be key to their long-term strategy. They recently launched visual search, which allows you to browse results with pictures rather than texts. Supposedly, people can process pictures faster than text, but it's just kind of a neat feature that gets them good press coverage. It's actually clever and I think an implicit strategy in Google's arsenal since they're constantly making updates to their products and launching new ideas, which gives them free press coverage and makes them more prominent in people's minds.

Fast Flip and Chrome 3.0

Speaking of which, Google has made a few noteworthy announcements recently. The first is Fast Flip, which allows you to read newspapers and magazines digitally as if you were flipping through them on paper. They're trying to get rid of the taboo associated with reading newspapers and magazines in an electronic form that traditionalists have acquired. It allows you to browse through the articles with more words than you can currently get on Google News, but they're hoping that people will be enticed to click through and read the whole article, which will contain some more advertising. It looks like in the browsing itself the advertising will be off in a bar on the right side so that it's not too obtrusive. I don't know if these publications will accept this or if it will work out as Google hopes, but I think it's a really good idea still.

Another bit of Google news this week is that they've released version 3 of Chrome, which is faster but, more importantly, supports HTML 5. If I'm not mistaken, Chrome is the first major browser to support HTML 5, which supports embedded video, audio, and canvas tags.

Chrome Frame

There was actually one more big announcement from Google last week: Chrome Frame. This is a plug-in for Internet Explorer that allows you to render pages with Chrome from withing Internet Explorer and gives you the bonus of being able to properly render HTML 5. Why would Chrome do this? It's not simply to make the lives of web developers easier since Internet Explorer is notorious for being terrible with web standards, but rather to help increase the audience for their products that utilize additions in HTMl 5. Given that some employers are skeptical to allow employees to install Chrome, Google is probably hoping that at least this frame will be allowed. It shouldn't be too surprising that Microsoft advises against people installing the plug-in citing that it poses a security risk. They haven't really given hard proof that this is true and have instead done a lot of hand waving and proclaiming generalities.

Zune HD Faces Off With New Nano

The Zune HD is finally here, and the reviews are pretty positive overall. I feel like Engadget had the most balanced review that I read really giving a good balance between high points and lowlights rather than focusing too much on one or the other. Microsoft has definitely put a lot of care in the interface and making this a solid competitor, and I think it has succeeded in shaking things up a bit. I don't know if it'll get the popularity they'd like in light of the recent iPod releases, but it sounds like it definitely should.

One of the open questions for the Zune HD is if the app store will work out anywhere near as well as the iTunes app store. It's unlikely to ever be quite as successful, and is off to a bit of a slow start as you're faced with ads when starting up the applications available right now. I think that's a really bad model. I think it's better to say you can pay a buck or two to remove ads from an application and just have ads if someone really doesn't want to pay for an application or just wants to try it out in its full glory without having to worry about an expiring evaluation period or something like that. By having pre-roll ads though, they're really disincentivizing folks from using them.

Meanwhile, the new Nano is out there and doesn't seem all that compelling to me. It's definitely a beautiful device, and Ars Technica gave it a positive review overall, but the only really big addition is a video camera that can't take still pictures. If you really want a camcorder though, you can just get a Flip MinoHD instead. Sure, it's a separate device, but it's better quality (and easily pocketable) and that seems to be the only reason someone would upgrade their Nano to this model.

Switching to Linux

I really enjoyed this article about a guy who had been working on his development of a project solely on Windows and decided to try switching to Linux instead. Surprisingly enough, even with the initial setup he had a much easier time overall in Linux. Things were much speedier and wrestling with dependencies seemed to go easier for him. I actually switched to Linux myself a while back and haven't looked back. The command line tools you get with Linux right out of the box are invaluable and doing scripting just feels so much easier because everything you need tends to come right in the box.

CableCARDs Now Open

36% of all households in the US now have DVRs, which is a staggering percentage when you sit down and think about it. DVR adds a whole new dimension compared to VCRs, and it totally changes the dynamics of how people watch TV and advertising on TV. It's kind of ironic that most viewing still happens live with people turning to their recordings when nothing good is on TV, but that shows that people still aren't ready yet for a 100% on-demand model, which is what proponents of IP TV would be in support of.

You'll probably see DVRs become slightly more prominent now that CableCARDs (the card you use to decode the cable signal) can be acquired outside of an OEM, which makes it easier for people to build their own Home Theater PCs (HTPCs). This is an attractive option for people who have a spare PC lying around and I'm sure Windows 7 aims to make it even easier to have an HTPC. This is a pretty big victory for DIYers and overall just a great thing given how bloody the fight for DVRs and CableCARD acceptance has been over the years.

Quickies

Ok, it's getting late so it's time to race through the last stories.

There are some pretty solid rumors out there regarding a tablet from Mirosoft called Courier that has the interesting physical feature of a spine to split it in half making it feel more like a book. It looks neat, but details are still scarce.

The FCC chairman has taken a harder stance in favor of net neutrality and made it clear that inaction is not an option. That's more than refreshing to hear, and hopefully he stands by it.

After several years, the IEEE has finally approved the 802.11n wireless standard, which is is capable of much faster speeds than 802.11g (which is probably what's in your computer right now) and over longer distances. Say goodbye to routers with 802.11 draft N support and hello to full-on 802.11n support (hopefully).

Yahoo started a $100 million advertising campaign to try to salvage the Yahoo brand by bringing Yahoo back in the picture as people's choice for a web portal, but only time will tell how successful it will be. To be honest, I'm not optimistic from seeing some of the ads already:



This stick figure guide is probably the best explanation of AES I've seen and why you shouldn't use it. Ever. It's a really fun read.

Gnome 3 looks pretty.

Whether or not you've heard of the Windows 7 launch party promotion, you'll enjoy this parody of it. Trust me.

One more bit of humor: the evolution of a programmer. If you're a programmer then you're sure to love it.

Have a great week everyone (though I'm sure the change in weather will make that harder for those of you in Seattle)!

Are Netbooks Killing Notebooks?

Netbooks vs. Notebooks


Microsoft and Intel (and I'm sure others) contributed part of the blame for their weak Q4 results to increased netbook sales (see my last post), but is this really true? Computerworld is not convinced. I'm inclined to agree with them. I can't remember the last time I've seen a netbook, and I've spent the past year and half in several cities: Austin, Houston, Seattle (current), Paris, Rome, Brussels, Florence, and many others. No matter where I've gone though or how many buses I take, I haven't seen anyone using one of these things. Given how techie Austin and Seattle are, it's hard to believe that there's all of a sudden this huge shift towards netbooks. After all, how many people realize what a netbook is?

So what's to blame for weak OS and PC sales? For starters, we're kind of in a down economy. People are scaling back large purchases, including new computers. I don't think that means that they're going to go and buy a computer that worse than the one they currently have (a netbook) because it's more portable - the idea of owning a netbook seems to just be a cheap luxury item rather than a replacement or an upgrade. I can't imagine anyone thinking that having such a tiny keyboard and screen would be an upgrade, even if they don't notice the weaker specs. Let's be honest though, what's the point in upgrading unless your computer is totally falling apart? My home laptop has been flaky lately (Firefox not loading pages and forcing me to restart the browser or the computer), but I'm still not prepared to replace it. My reasoning is that Windows 7 is going to be out next year (most likely) so to get a new Vista machine wouldn't make sense, but I think for most people they just don't see a much better machine out there that's affordable that they really need. How much do people do nowadays on their computer that isn't browsing the web, word processing, e-mails, listening to music, or looking at photos? There haven't been any great advancements in hardware to make these things better. I think that chip makers should really be optimizing their architectures for these things because my laptop is supposed to be a home entertainment machine but I don't think it does multimedia especially well (aside from having a nice screen).

The other factor to consider is that people really aren't interested in buying desktops anymore. I can't think of any reason to buy a desktop unless it's strictly for office use or you're a hardcore gamer. Of course, when I say strictly for office use I think if you only have one computer for work it's going to be a laptop so you can take it on trips and work from home and stuff - I'm referring to your second work computer. I think that Apple had the right idea with their latest MacBooks: optimize for the notebook market. They put in batteries that aren't replaceable but give you twice the battery life: people are willing to upgrade their laptops because of something like that. They're not going to upgrade just because you make the case shinier or something. It's really all about innovation and knowing your market. You need to bring out the features that your audience has a use case for and then price it competitively. The problem is that not enough people in the market are doing that right now, and Microsoft is going to be in a rut with Windows until Windows 7 comes out.

In fact, the impending release of Windows 7 has probably dealt a bigger blow to notebook and PC sales than netbooks have. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), this may not influence enterprise users that much. On one hand, they haven't been marketing it very well at all for businesses and have instead been trying to generate excitement from general consumers. I don't think this is a terrible thing, and maybe they'll pull more features out of their hat later in the year. On the other hand though, Windows 7 will probably work on older hardware so businesses can afford to buy lower-end or older computers. So this goes back to the innovation part: computer manufacturers need to be cost-effective and need to really think about how to satisfy their customers. The only way to survive this economic downturn is to innovate, not to point fingers at external factors and hope that it inspires investor confidence. We'll see how well everyone does this in the next couple of quarters. Speaking of which...

Grim and Good Quarterly Results

Sprint Nextel had a terrible quarter and have decided to cut 8,000 jobs and possibly replace some of them through outsourcing. Plus, they've frozen 401(k) matching for the year as well as any salary increases. Their 2008 net loss was $1.1 billion and lost 1.3 million customers last quarter. While I feel bad for the people who lost their jobs, Sprint had this coming for a while. Aside from the fact that they have crappy phones so AT&T probably drained a lot of subscribers from them, their service is unimpressive as is their customer service (I currently am on Sprint). They haven't been trying at all as far as I can tell over the past year to make anything better for their customers, and I almost quit a while ago for AT&T. I decided to wait a bit longer to see who gets a phone I really want, and hopefully the Palm Pre will be that phone. Sprint really needs the Pre to not fail. Given that they're at the point of selling off Nextel, I don't know how many pieces they'll be in this time next year if the Pre fails. It's not going to single-handedly save them, but it'll at least stop the bleeding.

The other company that announced a bad quarter last week was AOL. They saw a decline in revenues that has led them to lay off 700 employees. AOL has been going downhill for a long time now though and could stand to be acquired by someone who can cut it up and make its pieces work well separately. It really is sad to look at the list of companies laying off employees, and I really hope and pray that this year will see some sort of rebound. I know things won't be vastly different this time next year, but I'm hoping we can see the start of an upturn before the end of the year. More realistically though, it could take 2 years.

It's not bad news all around though: Netflix posted a ridiculous 45% growth in profits with a 27% growth in their subscriber base to over 9 million people. They say that people don't tend to cut out entertainment from their budget though when times are tough because it's an escape from reality, and I guess paying $9 a month for Netflix is just a lot cheaper now than renting from Blockbuster is. Even I'm extremely tempted to sign up with them and I'm never lacking in content on my DVR (Motorola or TiVo HD).

Another company to post gains was Amazon.com with an 18% growth in revenues and 24% increase in gross profits worldwide, partially thanks to lowered tax rates, and a customer base of over 88 million people. However, gross profit margins didn't get much better. You can read all the gritty details, including the Q&A session with Jeff B and friends, here. It's quite an epic read. I think people are just gratefully and happy that our hard work through Q4 really paid off, and it's a testament to the strength of our customers. Amazon truly does focus on the customer, and I think that's an enormous part of why we're able to survive this downtown. We'll keep working hard on making our products better and better and hopefully our customers will continue to support us. I can assure you that Amazon is not going to be squandering these profits - they're going to be invested wisely.

DTV Transition Still On

This is a short story, but I thought it was kind of funny. Remember a while ago when I said that Obama wanted to push back on the Digital TV transition because the coupon program was underfunded and he didn't think people were ready for it (and it would look bad for people who were uninformed if their TVs stopped working soon after he took office)? Well, the Senate had no problem agreeing with him. A lot of techies weren't happy with this though citing that it'll only create more confusion to change the date and if people aren't prepared now then a few more months won't help. After all, people will just go to their local electronics store I'm sure and figure it out, or read a newspaper or something. In a rather shocking move, the House agreed that changing the date would be futile. The margin it lost by isn't that big, but only 6.5 million being unprepared isn't that big of a deal. That means that it's likely that they'll talk to a neighbor on the morning of February 18 or a co-worker and figure it out. I don't expect riots in the street or anything. Coincidentally, I'm getting my TiVo's CableCARD installed on February 18, so I'm sure it'll be super easy to get in touch with Broadstripe to find out when the cable guy will be coming.

This Week in Google

There was a decent amount of Google news last week, so let's start with the bad: YouTube users are pretty unhappy about the audio being muted on their videos. YouTube has been flooded with protest videos and profanity against Warner Music and YouTube. Some people are even hoping that Warner Music folds. It's gotten so ridiculous that even some of Warner's own artists (like Metallica) have had to move their content off of YouTube onto their own websites. There is such a thing as fair use for this copyrighted music, and this purge is completely ridiculous. Hopefully they'll come to their senses, but I don't see how discouraging people from listening to the music you're trying to promote is going to help you survive the current economic climate.

Google is responding to the economy by increasing the number and frequency of some of their advertising. Some of their products have little or no advertising as it is, so I think it totally makes sense to experiment more with those properties. I guess that we'll see what happens at the end of the quarter in their earnings call.

Now onto the really good Google news: they're trying to help in the fight for net neutrality by backing M-labs in providing free tools to see how net neutral your ISP really is by checking how your connection responds to BitTorrent traffic. Aggregating this data could prove to be very useful in giving consumers more information in choosing their ISP and discriminating against those who unfairly block or restrict certain traffic on their networks.

Lastly, Google has released offline Gmail access as a Google Labs extra. I haven't tried it out yet personally, but I know that this is going to definitely push Outlook huggers to the edge when they realize how much lighter and accessible Gmail is. It basically syncs with Gmail regularly and stores items locally when offline to be sent when your Internet connection is restored.

Free Your Phone

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is tired of locked cell phones and the way that gross telecommunications monopolies dangle them as carrots in front of their customers. They've started a campaign to add a clause to the DMCA to make unlocking your cell phone a legal act. It's actually pretty disgusting that it's considered copyright infringement to be able to use that $300 phone you bought however you want. It sounds like Apple's locked-down app store is also in their crosshairs. I'll definitely keep you posted as more develops on this battle, which I'm very excited about.

One more quick piece of cell phone news: Congress is trying to ban the sale of cell phones with cameras that do not make a sound when you take a picture. It wouldn't take effect until a year after it's passed, but it doesn't sound like it's even near being up for a vote. I think it's a pretty good idea. Granted, you can buy an ultracompact camera that can be muted, but that's harder to aim under women's skirts and people who own those don't have them nearly as readily available as their cell phone. Only two small things that should be considered: people should be able to at least choose the sound (they've already thought about this) and the camera should not be such that it can take pictures accidentally in your pocket even when it's on vibrate (my old phone always took pictures in my pocket).

Last Notes

Ok, time for the one-liners!

Network World has a great list of online privacy tips that are just as applicable for adults as they are for teens/tweens. It's amazing how much information people who should know better volunteer online without giving it a second thought.

Kind of related to that: you should always log off of your web accounts when you're using a computer that someone else has the potential to use. College Humor has a fun series of pictures about what stands to happen to you if you don't.

Seattle is now the most wired city in America, according to Forbes! Eat it, Atlanta! Also, Austin has finally made the list at the #30 spot. That's great news for two of my favorite cities in the world!

So much for theories that Apple doesn't want Flash on the iPhone: they're working with Adobe to get Flash working on the iPhone. So I guess iPhone users will have to continue to be patient and keep hope alive.

Lastly, I got my computer working as a home media server for my PS3 after 6 months and I'm really stoked! I thought I'd share this forum post that may help other PS3 owners who have had the issues I've had. I actually had just turned off my firewall because my TiVo was having issues playing music from my computer (though transferring videos from my TiVo works wonderfully), and all of a sudden Windows Media Player asked if I wanted to let "Unknown Device" see my media library as soon as I turned on my PS3! Unlike TVersity and PlayOn, it wasn't laggy for me at all. I just figured out that in Zone Alarm if you go to "Alerts and Logs" you can see the IP addresses that are being blocked and add them to your trusted zone if you want to. My PS3 was one of those IPs. Just a fun tip for any other Zone Alarm users having home media server issues.

Have a fantastic week, everyone! I'm on call for work so I'm counting on a rollercoaster of a week ;)

Jobs Takes a Sabbatical

Steve Jobs Out Until Summer

It's kind of hard to believe this headline, and it's really the biggest thing that happened last week. As much as I don't like playing into the cult of Apple, the implications are too enormous for me to not take a bit to talk about it.

The day before Macworld, Steve Jobs publicly stated that he had lost some weight (a fact that reporters were pointing to as a possible reason for why he wasn't giving the keynote) because of some therapy for a hormone imbalance and was clear that he didn't want to say any more on the matter. Early last week, he dropped the bomb that he was going to have to take 6 months off because his health situation is worse than they had previously thought. Other than cancer (a relapse?), I can't think of what would cause him to have to take 6 months off. While I don't respect him as much as I do Bill Gates because his personality bothers me, there's no doubt that he has already made history as a pioneer in technology and I definitely hope that he does recover (for his own health, I mean). He will remain CEO, but COO Tim Cook will take over day-to-day operations.

The Woz (Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple) has stated that what's going to be released over at least the next 6 months will have been under Jobs's supervision as Apple's pipeline is typically 1-2 years out (the size of the production pipeline for a technology company is not nearly as standard as it is in other industries, despite what the Woz says, but I would believe that Apple's is that long). You have to take what he says with a grain of salt because he's totally downplaying the presence that Jobs has in the company. In addition to being the company's visionary he's definitely one to micro-manage, although the extent of this in recent years isn't clear. Not too long ago though, he literally picked the manufacturers of their shirts and the magazines that carried their advertisements.

Some analysts have gone so far as to say that Jobs won't return, but I find this unlikely. I'm not saying that it's not a possibility, but he won't step down unless he absolutely has to. Obviously, his health is first so he won't endanger the company by being an unreliable CEO due to medical treatments and such, but if he gets better at all by June you can bet he will want to come back full-time. He's a passionate guy who I don't think is ready to retire yet. Some are saying that he could come back better than ever. In any case, I think that if he doesn't come back that Apple won't be the same company. It'll still be a great company, but it's future won't be signed, sealed, and delivered. If Jobs is truly a great manager, he's already groomed his successors to run the company competently, and I think he's learned a lot about that since he was overthrown way back when. The only thing you can't learn is the vision he's always had for the company, and I feel like it's been the secret sauce in the company. There are others who think that he's laid all his golden eggs already, but I don't know about that. I think that Apple will do well long after he leaves, but I would worry about their expanding into new territory or getting much bigger, in general. You have to give credit to the great minds they have working there though - their talent means that Apple won't be doomed without Jobs.

I have one last story to bring up on this topic: Dan Lyons (also known as "Fake Steve Jobs" for the blog he started) told off Jim Goldman live on CNBC for withholding that he knew a week before it was announced that Jobs was not in good health and yet he told his viewers that everything was just fine and went so far as to criticize sites like Gizmodo for reporting otherwise. I think Lyons was being kind of a jerk on the show, but it was right to call out Goldman: I don't think that's right. If you can't report on a story then you shouldn't lie and say that the exact opposite is true to cover your ass. I would call that unethical journalism.

Slightly More on Windows 7

If you haven't downloaded the Windows 7 beta yet and have a computer to spare for it, then you have a week yet to download it. Their servers cracked under the pressure of downloaders initially, so they've opened it up to an unlimited number of downloads for a limited time.

Ars Technica has been playing around with the beta and I like their rundown of the features because it's concise and informative. Some of the features are no surprises, like the large icons on the taskbar and the jump lists on these programs so that you can quickly access common features. They sound pretty impressed with how these things are implemented, but a new thing that I think is cool is that they've finally taken a stab at revamping the notification area next to the clock so that it's not a mass of irritating icons. Also cool, but something we knew about already, is how well it lets you focus on using two windows at a time. Anyway, you can read the article for more details, but it sounds like the biggest problem is that IE8 is unstable, which isn't that much of a problem if you just don't use IE (you shouldn't be, anyway). The fact that they even improved annoyances with User Account Control (UAC) tells me that they really did look at what users hate, which is something that I (and any Amazonian, actually) value highly: being customer-centric. Oh, by the way, it performs well, too. Some say even well enough to run on your old hardware you thought was junk in this Vista era.

I'm going to sneak in one last thing in this section: leaked screenshots from the next version of Office (I can't figure out why they're calling it Office 14 though - that math doesn't add up for me).



They're not terribly revolutionary, but I do like the improved feedback UI. I wonder if it'll run on Vista and/or XP? It'll likely be released alongside Windows 7, which means probably not before Q4 2009, at the earliest.

Belkin-gate

When will companies who make inferior products learn that being unethical doesn't pay? A blogger discovered that a Belkin Business Development Representative had been taking advantage of Mechanical Turk (an Amazon Web Service where you can pay trivial amounts of money to have people solve simple problems that are just too difficult for computers to handle but easy for people) to generate falsely positive feedback for their products, like their second-rate routers (which you shouldn't buy regardless of this scandal - they suck, Linksys routers are almost always better). The president of Belkin responded by condemning these acts and claiming that this representative was not actually acting on behalf of the company. They took down the postings (HITs) and fake reviews and he was even nice enough to say that the sites in question (Amazon and Buy.com, among them) were not responsible so they shouldn't be held responsible for them. I'm kind of surprised that there was no talk of reprimand for the cheating jerk that did all this or an investigation as to whether his superiors did, in fact, tell him to do this.

I ordinarily wouldn't talk about a story like this, but there are a few reasons why I wanted to. The main one is that I find it amazing that a blogger discovered this. Not an investigative journalist, but just some dude. And it spread fast enough to warrant people to actually take action and scar Belkin's image. That just speaks to the fact that we really are seeing a revolution in the media in that things are shifting more and more online. There are people with day jobs that are better journalists that some working at major newspapers, and I haven't see the newspapers take any aggressive actions to compete much better in this regard. Also funny, I think, is how ingrained the Amazon brand is in people's minds that they're outraged that someone would tamper with Amazon's customer reviews. They're really trusting Amazon to be responsible and the people who write these reviews and it demonstrates that retail has changed drastically. The bar has been raising by not only Amazon but several different retailers and it has really enriched the customer experience online and offline to the extent that people really care about what their peers have to say about a product as opposed to just some guy in a store. Anyway, I'm glad that this story has a mostly happy ending.

Google Cuts Back

I think that before the economy really went south a few months ago (marked by banks defaulting), the technology industry decided that they were going to weather this recession with just some minor bumps and bruises. I'd probably have even said to someone that we're not in trouble until Google starts laying off people. Guess what Google has started doing? They've cut about 100 people from HR. They've also cut contractors and temporary workers before this, but this is their first round of layoffs for full-time employees. Of course, I don't want to exaggerate the situation: this was probably just an indication that they're being responsible and not hiring as much as they have been in the past several years. This probably is not a sign of more layoffs for them, but it does show that they're being smart.

In the same day, they also decided to shut down several services including the Firefox extension Google Notebook for web clippings, Jaiku for social networking, and video uploads to Google Video, which I don't think anyone cares about anyway. Like I said before a while ago: the best way to get through tough economic times is to innovate. Part of innovating is taking a step back and focusing. For a very long time now, Google has been releasing more and more random products resulting in a dizzying array of hits and misses, but they did manage to stay ahead of the curve in a few instances. Initially, I was shocked that they felt that these products were really affecting their bottom line, but now I realize that this is simply a re-organization. They're re-doubling their efforts in the products they believe they'll be most successful in, and this is very smart. Neither of these things is about the money, it's about using their talent effectively.

I'm going to sneak in one more thing real quick into this section: Yahoo is still not really improving. They decided to hire 60-year-old Carol Bartz as their new CEO (to replace Jerry Yang) and investors were not happy dropping the stock to $11 a share.

Facebook Sacrifices Burger King Ad Revenues

This story just boggles my mind so much that I have to talk about it a bit. Burger King started an ad campaign on Facebook the week before last that I didn't talk about last week because I didn't think it was all that important, but it was very creative. If you deleted 10 of your friends you'd get a coupon for a free Whopper and they'd do the honor of telling your friends that you sacrificed these people for a burger. So the strangest thing happened: people thought this was hilarious and it seemed to almost endear people to the Whopper brand.

Facebook decided that advertising your sacrifices violated their privacy policy and they couldn't allow it. Is that not the picture of irony? The company that has exposed more and more information about their users to other users and to advertisers since its climb to fame first began over 4 years ago has decided that a creative advertising campaign has gone too far in publicizing information that's clearly a part of the tradeoff for a free burger. I didn't see a public outcry over this, especially since it was voluntary and there was no secret that people would know about these friend removals. I just can't believe how stupid they are. I'm sorry, but that's what they are. They've now sent the message that despite all the cool things you can do with their platform that they're the gatekeeper for any ideas that come close to pushing any of their policies with regard to advertising. Ordinarily, I would respect this resolve but I felt like this was the wrong situation to demonstrate it in since it wasn't a flagrant offense. Now they've endangered their business model: congratulations, Mr. Zuckerberg.

More on the Palm Pre

I didn't really have a whole lot of details on the Palm Pre last time, which was definitely the talk of CES and of my heart (I really want a phone I can love), but Engadget has been kind enough to condense most of the knowledge that's publicly available on the device now. Unlike the G1: the keyboard's keys are not flat (the keyboard is the only thing Palm ever consistently gets right in its phones) and there is a standard headphone jack. The charger for it is inductive, so no need to plug it in (there was quite a bit of this inductive charging shown off at CES, and it's just a platform for you to place a device on that charges it efficiently), which I think is a great feature for a phone (I knock mine off the nightstand quite often when it's plugged in because of on call issues). Unfortunately, there's no expandable storage, but you do get a removable battery, WiFi, and EV/DO Rev. A or 3G (depending on your carrier)!

They didn't talk a lot about the software, but they did mention that the contact syncing would work seamlessly across several sources (e.g. Gmail, Facebook, and Outlook) and there would be several touch gestures involved in navigating around. Oh, and applications for the phone will be developed in CSS, XML, and Javascript on top of system calls to Web OS specific features. I wish we had a price and a release date other than the first 6 months of 2009, but hopefully we'll get more details in the coming weeks.

Final Tidbits

It has taken me two nights already to put together this post because I've been distracted with reading new news and watching the inauguration coverage (very exciting stuff), but it was so hard to reduce the stories for this post into the bare minimum. I've been trying to keep my story count low, but some weeks it just seems impossible. Anyway, here's a quick rundown of the other stories I tagged.

While iTunes is now DRM-free you should note that you still pay a price in your privacy. Aside from being .aac and not .mp3, your e-mail address is encoded with every song. I assure you that Amazon MP3 doesn't do this.

The NSA has released their list of the top 25 most dangerous programming mistakes in 2008, which includes improper input validation (a concept I hammer on all the time), race conditions (multi-threading is hard), downloading code without integrity checks, hard-coded passwords, and many more. It's pretty much a must-read for any software engineers out there.

Obama's president-elect site (which I think is still going to be used going forward) has a list of issues that you can vote on based on the ones you care the most about, and net neutrality is one of them. Please be sure to vote this up, and if you don't know why then you must be new to my blog :) You can start by watching this short documentary presenting both sides of the issue. I feel that it's still one of the most important issues facing the future of this country and has farther implications for the whole world.

Brussels (aka Bruxelles) will be banning the sale of plasma TVs in the country due to how terrible they are about power consumption. This makes me glad that I bought an LCD - my power bill really is extremely low.

Apple has started allowing 3rd party web browsers into the iPhone app store! Will we see Firefox on the iPhone soon?

YouTube has started muting videos that violate copyright only in their background audio, which is kind of a strange approach.

I got my TiVo HD last week and I wish I could tell you guys all about how awesome it is, but that wouldn't quite be right until I get TV on it. Broadstripe blows and won't install the Cable CARD for it until February 18, so until then I can only use TiVoCast and other applications on there, which are very cool. The features in the manual and the few I can use right now on these videos are pretty ridiculously awesome. Anyway, the point is that they've released a beta version of their search that is optimized for HD TVs, auto-completes like the Firefox awesome bar, and simply offers smarter results. I may try it out myself...once Broadstripe gets its act together.

Ok, time for bed (and possibly more playing around with my wonderful new TiVo). Enjoy all the TV premieres (Lost, Burn Notice, United States of Tara, Family Guy, etc.)!

Texas is #1

I really didn't have a better title for this post. Heck, even if I did, it probably wouldn't have mattered.

Texas Beat OU



I don't usually talk football, but this game warrants a very brief aside. #5 Texas beat #1 OU on Saturday, 45-35. It was the best football game I've seen since Texas beat USC in the Rose Bowl. There's no doubt that I hate OU, but they played an excellent game. I have to give props to them for preparing as well as they did. they were coming at us with the best shots to our offense, but we had some tricks up our sleeves and got the job done. Texas has always been an underdog. No matter how good we are, no sports commentators want to believe. It's really nice for UT to get national recognition as the #1 team in the country. I just hope that it doesn't go to the team's heads because we have a grueling season ahead of us, and Mizzou is coming out of a heartbreaking loss so they won't want to lose 2 weeks in a row. You know it was a crazy weekend though when 3 of the top 5 teams lose.

The Dark Knight Pre-order Rush

I can't believe that I'm actually dedicating a whole section to this, but I did so much digging around about it that I feel like I'm cheating myself to not deliver my findings. I got an e-mail yesterday morning from Amazon that The Dark Knight was available for pre-order The Dark Knight and on Blu-ray right now, and it'll be released on December 9. It's already #1 on Amazon in Movies and TV Shows, which is no small feat for a movie months before it comes out. The DVD is only a couple of bucks cheaper than the Blu-ray edition so it's a pretty easy choice for Blu-ray player owners. I think that both editions have a similar arsenal of features including a couple of History Channel features, a digital copy of the movie for your computer and/or portable media device(s), and episodes of a Gotham City news program. Some of the features are actually in HD for the Blu-ray disc, so that's pretty neat. I'm hoping for special Blu-ray extras, supposedly it's a BD Live disc. What does that mean? Well I looked into it and apparently it means that it can download special content from the Internet and possibly interact with other people watching the movies, what they're going to specifically do for this movie is unclear. Also interesting is that the aspect ratio is going to be a shifted IMAX ratio for the Blu-ray release, which apparently used to make things look more epic. Hopefully we'll see the difference for the better in November! Until then, we have to just enjoy the cover art. I'm super excited for this release and already have my pre-order in!




Obama and McCain on Net Neutrality

Popular Mechanics has a great thorough look at net neutrality and how the two presidential candidates feel about it. It's more of just a great low-level explanation of what the issue is all about since neither candidate is willing to talk about the issue much at length right now, but I implore you to take this issue under consideration when you vote.

On Open-sourcing Skype

Linux Journal thinks that Skype should be open sourced, and I read their article and thought about it some but I just can't get behind that. Besides that, there's no way that they'd do it. Skype's codebase has been heavily obfuscated as it is and it is as such as a security. To be clear: this is the worst method of security for software. There have been research papers written in which they try to figure out what's going on beneath the covers, but only so much has been known. We know that it always encrypts data, but it also doesn't control user registration, trusts anyone else who speaks its protocol, has a weak privacy policy, and we have no idea what vulnerabilities really exist because of the code obfuscation. Of course, once someone figure it out then it could be very dangerous. Heck, they could even be listening in on your calls.

Anyway, with these kinds of practices in place, I think it's pretty clear that they wouldn't entertain the idea of open sourcing what they have. Here's what I'd prefer: an open source alternative built from the ground up with the right principles in mind and without any details hidden behind stone walls. What I'd prefer from Skype is a premium VoIP service with better customer service, superior call quality, and clearer security ideas in place. What I'd want from the community is a simple, totally free, service that draws on wisdom from the crowd and grows to be without restrictions despite foreign governments and without the threat of someone watching over what you do - it has to be transparent.

We'll see what happens, I imagine that this is a decently big priority for the open source development community.

Quick Notes

Apple is having a press event on Tuesday to talk about a refresh on their line of laptops. I don't foresee anything spectacular, just them keeping up with the current market.

MakeUseOf has a post of 5 Gmail Labs things that you probably haven't heard of but are super nifty, like signature tweaks or a way to keep you from sending drunk e-mails. No solution to getting locked out of your e-mail due to security measures.

If I had more time, I would've talked about this list of common online blunders that make your online interactions insecure. Clicking on pop-up ads that are misleading is more common than you think.

I don't think that I'll be able to post next Sunday, but I'll try to post later in the week, like maybe Wednesday or Thursday. I have a long week of work ahead of me, but I'm looking forward to the weekend. I hope you all have a great week!