Reinventing Modern Computing?

PC Magazine is running an article on what they claim are the five ideas that will reinvent modern computing, but I always take their articles with a grain of salt. Their first one already has me suspicious: IMAX at home. It sounds cool and all, combining a bunch of $1000 computers to simulate IMAX, but who cares that isn't rich? What does this reinvent? I'll give them the quantum computer and the midair mouse though: those are both things that could be big. We wouldn't need pointers for presentations and such, just the same mouse you always use. The quantum computer could theoretically break RSA encryption, so that's a massively huge deal. I also like the idea of extreme peer-to-peer: like BitTorrent for servers or even home networks. Interesting, but complicated and hard to fit in one's head. Much easier to fit in your head is simulating the human brain, about which there's actually a course at UT, and it's a ridiculously large project. I personally don't know that I believe that a computer, even with thousands of processors, can simulate a human brain, but one of my most respected professors believes so, so I'm sure it is theoretically possible. Still, how close are we to attaining than? And when we do, what will we do with it? I don't know if these are the top ideas reinventing computing, but I'd say that four of them are valid.

Microsoft's DRM has been cracked in an interesting arms race between a hidden hacker and Microsoft. He keeps releasing new versions of FairUse4DRM, which strips DRM from .wma files, and he's done it once again to crack Microsoft's latest patch. What stuns me is that one of the richest companies in the world cannot attain the identity of one dude so they can sue him. Kudos to this guy for being great at hiding, and I hope he keeps it up. He's sending a great message: DRM will never be unbreakable.

There's no doubt that Firefox is a great browser, but could it be better by taking lessons from Safari? One blogger is pointing out several things it should take from Safari, and I think I agree with spawning windows from tabs, draggable images, highlighted text fields, and better bug reporting. I'm not convinced that page rendering is noticeably faster in Safari (please comment with benchmarks if you have them, I'm not saying it's not possible), and these are rather nit-picky things. Safari is still a second-class browser compared to Firefox. Plus, if you care so much, write an extension for it (for some of these things they already exist).

Now for the rest of the news: Apple stuff. If you're getting your first Mac then you'll probably find this site helpful, which is filled with articles to help ease the switch. What I love about this site is that it's not fanboy dribble. Just check out this article and see for yourself.

This is really a really interesting rumor: Jay-Z may be starting a label with Apple since he's reportedly been interesting in leaving Def Jam to start a "superlabel" with Beyonce. It sounds crazy, but it may be profitable for Apple, though I imagine they'd be control freaks so not sure if this will pan out. Still, could mean very interesting things for Apple to get involved with music production, though may spread them a little thin, in my opinion.

Now for some one-lines. iPhone users can also check out this site for more great iPhone apps in an iPhone friendly format, no less. If you're looking to hide your iPod or iPhone from crooks, you may want to protect it inside a brown Zune. That thing is so ugly no one would dare want to steal it. I love that they noticed the idiocy of the "squirt" term as well.

Harry Potter did predictably well in the box office with $140 million grossed since its release. It underperformed its predecessors over the weekend, but made more money in five days than they each did in a week, so that's pretty good money. I should probably go see it, huh? Transformers came in second with an impressive $36 million, and Ratatouille was close behind with exactly half that. Those movies both have some great legs on them, and are slaughtering Die Hard with its unnecessarily long title.

Yay for Dark Knight news! Despite previous intimations, it looks like Two Face will, in fact, be in The Dark Knight! I hope they don't try shoving too much in this film with so many villains. And alas, check it out, spy pics of The Joker!


I don't usually dig romance movies, but I think I'm interested in Feast of Love. I don't know why, but I really dig the trailer. It has Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear after all, so it has to be at least somewhat good.

We have an early review of Rush Hour 3, and it's just as I suspected: not as good as the first two. Disappointing, but that's what happens when a franchise becomes a cash cow, I suppose.

Last, but not least, we have rumors about the plot of Indiana Jones 4 about the Soviets wanting immortality. It's too involved for me to even summarize, so just go read it for yourself.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Situation :: Room


2. Theme song :: Human Giant


3. Kelly :: Clarkson


4. Club :: Music


5. Swerve :: Cologne


6. Couch :: Potato


7. Bigfoot :: Chupa Cabra


8. Arbitrary :: Random


9. Inventor :: Device


10. Blazer :: Blue

Musical Patents

News is kinda slow today, so I figured I'd just briefly talk about a couple of related patents, one from Microsoft and one from Apple. The Microsoft one is to pay their users for "squirting" music. Ok, first of all, that is the stupidest technical term I've heard. It's what Microsoft is calling sharing music with your friends via your Zune. Were they high off their minds? Anyway, basically you could buy the music your friend has without involving the Microsoft servers, and the "squirter" would sync later with the server to report the purchase and get credit for it. It's not a bad idea, per se, but flawed in execution. How can you tell pirated from legal? Maybe it's simple, but I don't know how PlaysForSure is implemented. More importantly though, where's the demand for this? Apple is filing a much better patent, in my opinion: they're doing something similar to Zune with regarding other wireless devices with the iPod, but you can also buy music from a server in the patent. That's a better idea, really. Why do I want to buy music from my friend when iTunes has most everything I'd want already and doesn't have to be physically in front of me?

Internet radio is saved, for now. SoundExchange will not be collecting on the new rate hikes yet and are instead going to continue negotiating with online radio. I don't know why they're so hellbent on this. Why not just budge? Everyone hates them for doing this to internet radio, which clearly has a big audience for it to elicit such a response.

If you ever need to store files online, here are some free alternatives. Very handy for getting large files to friends since most major online e-mail services have caps on attachments.

Now for some one-liners. Now you can get more smileys in Pidgin. Actually, they're the ones in Yahoo/MSN, but still cool. Also, there's a new version of uTorrent out that supports Vista and is full of other little usability fixes.

I'm too tired right now to talk more about this, but ever wonder what happens to programming languages that don't make the cut? Well, you can read all about it here. Though I disagree about Haskell, it still has great academic value.

None of the movie news is really interesting, so here's Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
What is your favorite fruit?
Probably bananas for their versatility. They're easy to carry, great with peanut butter, pivotal to the banana split, fun with nuts when baked in bread, and the list goes on.

Soup
Who is someone you consider as a great role model?
My father, definitely. He's the embodiment of what it means to be a man: puts family first, good work ethic, talented, confident, etc.

Salad
If you were to spend one night anywhere within an hour of your home, where would you choose?
Considering home as Austin, I plead the fifth =P Those who know me best should know, anyhow.

Main Course
Name something you do too often.
Blog? =P I guess drink tea. I drink like two cups a day.

Dessert
Fill in the blank: I really like ___________ because ____________.
my girlfriend / she's sweet, kind, encouraging, beautiful, and smart =D

Yep, I'm pretty lucky! Have a good weekend everyone!

Life at Amazon

If you've come here for corporate secrets, then too bad, I'm not cracking! You'll just have to wait and see what Amazon is working on when they release it. Instead, I'm going to give a look at the working environment because I've been asked about it and I know I would've liked more information when I was looking for internships. Working at Amazon is almost exactly as I had pictured a place I wanted to work at. The culture really is great and welcoming. Really, Amazon isn't paying me to say this, I'm just enthused about being here. The people in my organization are extremely smart, and the team I'm on seems to have a great management structure. I'm only 3 levels away from an SVP, who reports to Jeff B. Speaking of the management structure, it's actually fairly flat. When I see superiors in the hall, I may get a little nervous because I figure I should be, but the other employees have a great opinion of them and even joke about them in a good way. Even though I technically have two bosses, my manager and my TPPM, they're really more of guides to keep me on track than anything else. It doesn't feel like red tape or bureaucracy in the least. My TPPM is more technical, more hands-on, and more of who I keep posted directly about my progress and sometimes get advice from. My manager is like the team's spokesperson to the business units, has a good idea of what our customers want, sits in meetings so we don't have to, but it a computer scientist at heart, as well, and still very much has a technical understanding of what's going on. In fact, our VP used to work on an Ada compiler back in the day, but he's still a phenomenal leader.

The thing is, if there was no management, things would easily fall apart. Let's face it, SDEs are bad at estimating, often misguided in planning, and not likely to prioritize the business necessity of projects but rather are more likely to prioritize what they think is more fun or more cool in their mind. Even then though, management manages to be fairly unobtrusive, but very much in the loop. Our scrum meetings in the morning are for everyone to answer what they did yesterday, what they're doing today, and if they're blocked on something then what is it so the TPPM (the scrum master) can help with that, and that's really cool, I think. There's always a sense of how we're doing in the sprint and it gives everyone on the team accountability. Last summer, at TI, I really didn't have that. People weren't motivated to get things done. At Amazon, people are just extremely smart and very self-motivated. It's incredible. It's like the difference between high school and college: people genuinely want to be there. People don't think it's perfect, and they're not blissful, because work is work for a reason. They're satisfied overall though, and the work environment is really laid back. No one checks on you, if you take breaks no one cares, there's free tea/coffee/hot cocoa, you can bring your dog, you can wear practically whatever you want (within reason), you can bring your nerf gun, you can request another monitor, etc. Amazon will do whatever they have to if it makes you more productive, though they still have a policy of frugality. So the prices on the site you get are seriously as low as Amazon can make them. They do not have money fights or anything, they just pay top dollar for top talent, and it shows. If you're trying to compete with Amazon then you're going to need a miracle because the people here strive to be on top, are proud of it, and are ridiculously talented. Everyone fits together like a nice little puzzle, and everyone supports each other, and it's just a very friendly community.

As for the internship program: my project is great. I love that what I'm doing really has a business impact (adding geographical data to our logs and producing a visualization for the business units with this information), and that I picked the group I would work with. It gives you a lot more control, and makes you responsible for what you do in the summer. I'm treated like another member of the team, and though I'm sure I've annoyed my co-workers with a lot of confusion for the first several weeks, they've been pretty nice about it. Plus there's the company picnic and intra-company sports, which even Jeff B sometimes plays (I hit an SVP with a dodgeball ball two weeks ago). The only intern-only events are rafting, Mariners game, a dinner, and then there's a couple of UT intern events (lunch and dinner). Rafting on the Skykomish was a ton of fun (I'll share when I get high res pictures), and our raft actually hit a rock called Fly Paper sideways and flipped over. It was scary being under the raft for like 10 seconds but our guide flipped it back over and 5 of the 6 of us got right back on (the other guy was picked up by a support kayak). It was a very well planned trip, I just wish we'd have one or two more of those. Plus, my recruiter is really cool. So overall, I'd totally recommend Amazon as an employer. The downsides are few and kind dumb to even mention (little company discount, offices not consolidated on one campus, not enough intern unity), whereas the benefits are much better (subsidized housing for interns, two computers and two monitors for work, very competitive pay, great management, smart co-workers, etc.). I seriously have sometimes woken up on Sundays and been like, "oh man, I'm not going to work today!" The biggest drawback for me though is not being with my girlfriend, and so that's the only reason I'll be glad when this summer is over. The experience has been amazing though (working with different design patterns, MySQL, BDBs, more Linux, being in a scrum, hard lessons of design/planning, etc). I'm very grateful to be here.

Should I even bother with real news today? I guess I'll go over a couple of things. AT&T has taken the route of deep packet inspection and will be aiming to throw "pirates" off their network, but we're not sure what their stupid algorithms will considerate a pirate so it's really a horrible idea.

Do you remember what the web looked like in 1994? This video is an awesome look back at the good old days of picture-less Internet. We didn't even get the Internet at home until 1997, and the Internet didn't really become popular until 1996 (maybe late 1995), so you can imagine how far back that is.


Rumors are abound that we'll see a Beatles-inspired iPhone loaded with the Beatles library in time for its release on iTunes, a full month before competitors. It's a fun rumors, and that's why I'm blogging it, but quite unlikely, in my opinion. Why would Apple Corps even give Apple, Inc temporary exclusivity? I'm more interested in the faux SDK one developer is making for the iPhone by way of a little markup language. Thumbs up to him: it looks pretty dandy. His site is getting slammed so the demos may take a while to load, but they're impressive given the simplicity of his project (make your window small and pretend you're on an iPhone viewing them).

This is almost unbelievable: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix managed to rake in nearly $50 million, more than a fifth of which were late Tuesday showings (mainly midnight). That's actually a record for a Wednesday opening, so any bets for how much it'll rake in by Sunday? I imagine it'll be between $150 and $200 million.

The only upcoming fantasy movie I want to see is The Golden Compass, so I just thought I'd share the new posters.

Lastly, we have a few trailers. The first is for December Boys featuring Mr. Potter himself (Daniel Radcliffe), and I think it could actually turn out to be a good movie, but I'm worried about it getting caught up in being a feel good movie and getting corny. The other trailer now on Yahoo Movies is for Death Sentence, and it really doesn't look good. Does Kevin Bacon no longer care about his career? Lastly, there's the trailer for The Dark is Rising which is a really kiddie fantasy movie. It's based off of actual books, but why does it feel like a hack of Harry Potter to me? (UPDATE: Whoops, The Dark is Rising actually came out long before J.K. Rowling even started writing, so she actually stole from Susan Cooper. Thanks to Charles for the info!)

Now for the 3x Thursday meme:

1. Do you treat people you're extremely close to (S.O's, ex's, best friends, family, etc) the same as you would regular friends and people off the street? How so/how not?
Well of course. I think everyone does. I don't mean I treat strangers like crap, but there are certain things I wouldn't say to certain people because they could be easily misunderstood, like when some of my friends and I make jokes that are intentionally mean to point out how mean people who say things like that are. Anyway, it's a longer story for a short answer: yes =P

2. What is it about knowing someone fairly well, or very well even, that seems to give us a license to say and do whatever we want/think/feel sometimes? Do you think it's right? Why do you think we do things like that?
I don't think it's ever whatever you want, I just think you trust those people more. I think this is natural and totally understandable. We do it because we all have our zone of comfort.

3. Do you tolerate being treated a certain way by someone (good or bad)? How so/how not? Why/why not?
All I ask for is a little respect. I don't tolerate people treating me like crap, and I'm not at all afraid to show it. My brother and I are both a bit headstrong in that respect, I guess. We get it from our father =P I guess we're just overly confident at times.

Dumping on Apple

It's finally time to talk about some articles that aren't too flattering for our favorite company in Cupertino. That's right, some dirt on Apple. They gave Leopard beta builds to attendees of WWDC, and it sounds like it has some ostensible UI issues. Did some of the Vista developers defect to Apple or something? Because it sounds akin to what people hate about Vista: GUI upgrades that are really downgrades. They made the top menu bar transparent, which looks retarded when you maximize applications. More ridiculous is that little Spotlight bar. Wow. What happened to subtle elegance, Apple? I'm not even a Mac user and I liked Panther. You'll probably be more shocked by some of the iPhone fine print though. I scoffed at this article at first because it was listing known facts, and then I almost fell out of my chair when I read that there was a limit on the number of times you can use WiFi. What the Hell is that?! Oh, and you can't send attachments in e-mails? It looks there are also restrictions on calling non-AT&T subscribers, and you can't stream video content from the Internet. If you text message international users, you get charged extra, or if you send messages over 300 KB, which I assume means e-mail since you can't send picture mail is my understanding. If you own an iPhone, that little expose is a must-read. Very disappointing, Apple and AT&T.

There is a bright spot for Mr. Jobs though, Apple stock has hit a record high with a market value of $115 billion. A 55% increase in 6 months is really impressive, and I don't imagine that the Apple TV did much for their stock so it must've been speculation on the iPhone.

One of the really painful things about using Windows if you also use Linux is missing utilities like cut and grep and such. Well, now there's Windows Grep, but I can't install it on my company laptop. It looks awesome though, so let me know if you try it out and like it/hate it by commenting.

The RIAA, in true villain style, has decided that if Sirius and XM merge that they're going to have to pay higher royalties. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure they already pay high royalties than broadcast radio stations do, and now they have to pay more? Why? Do they get better music or something? The FCC is hearing out the RIAA, who also are pissed about those portable devices to record satellite radio. How does this differ from using a cassette player or several mp3 players (including mine) to record live radio?

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned this before, but the FCC has an online form to submit comments on several issues, including the XM-Sirius merger and a la carte cable channels.

How awesome is that T-Shirt? I would totally wear it, but then again, I'm pretty vocal about hating DRM, and I'm a total dork. That design is the winner of a contest TorrentFreak was running for the best anti-DRM T-Shirt, and even the runner-ups are pretty cool.

I'm not usually easily swayed by up and coming social networking sites, but I'm really impressed by what I've seen of Streamy. I've signed up for the private beta, so I'll talk about it more if I get an invite. Basically, it's a mix between Digg, Google Reader, Jaiku, and Meebo. That's kind of a loose way of saying it, but it's a smart news aggregator that aims to make sharing easy and prioritizes what you're likely to want to see. Trust me, it's cooler than it sounds.

Lastly, Time put up an article on the 5 worst websites, and I don't think those sites are really the five worst, but I felt that MySpace and Evite being on there is important because they're both popular sites that have serious issues. I also learned from it that eHarmony discriminates against gays, which means that I'm officially going to start railing on eHarmony if anyone ever talks to me about it.

The only movie news today are teases. One is for Indiana Jones 4, which is little more than a look at Indy's outfit and talking to Steven Spielberg. It's not a trailer, just, quite literally, a little tease. At least Ford can still has the look down. The teaser trailer for 10,000 BC gives us much more, but I have no desire to see it. It almost makes me think the creators were watching Apocalypto and decided to make a movie that went farther back, which doesn't sound exciting (though Apocalypto wasn't bad, just long).

Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. What makes you cheer up?
Thinking about my girl

2. Who makes you cheer up?
My girlfriend =)

3. What location makes you cheer up?
My bed

4. What food or beverage makes you cheer up?
Ice cream!

Computer Scientists DO Need Math

Among academics, it's fairly well known that UT is one of those schools that loves to push theory on its CS students. Several of the top 10 schools do the same (maybe all?). And now, there's this dude who wrote a book saying that math is unimportant to computer science, which I find outrageous. He claims that mathematicians and computer scientists pursue different goals, which originally seemed to intersect at the algorithm but that no random input programs (such as an operating system) really follow the concept of the algorithm. First of all, he's referring to non-determinism which, lo and behold, would be a mathematical idea ported to computer science. I don't see how anything a computer does isn't an algorithm because whether or not it halts has nothing to do with it following a predetermined series of steps, whether it has to respond to random inputs or whether it has to do things in parallel or what. That doesn't imply that when it starts and ends and the exact sequence of steps in its execution, but rather it provides a plan for handling a likely infinite number of possible execution paths. Oh, and you know that thing everything inside this box you're using speaks in? Binary? Yeah, that's a product of math. If you don't understand binary, I think it can make your job hard at times if you're coding. I had to deal with a binary tree at work based on bits (won't tell you why or how, sorry ;). Hell, I've used math a lot at work by the very idea of time and memory complexity. My colleagues sometimes even speak in logical terms to explain why they believe a certain design path is better. I'm in the industry at an enormous company and math surrounds me, so how the Hell can he say that it's unnecessary to computer science? The concepts that founded computers are not obsolete, they're just not quite so obvious anymore as we build higher level languages. Alright, I'm off my soapbox.

Ars Technica put up one of their ridiculously awesome reviews, but this one is for the iPhone. This is the longest review from them that I've seen, and it's ridiculously detailed. I don't imagine that you'll find a more comprehensive, unbiased iPhone review than this. I actually probably spent like 25 minutes just browsing it, and it really needs no other introduction.

It's rumor mill time! Yesterday, there were rumors that were squashed today about an iPhone Nano, and now we have analysts reporting an iPhone-like 5G iPod in January, in time for Macworld. This would make sense, but I kind of have a feeling that they'd rather get this puppy out before Christmas. That's just my feeling though, backed by nothing other than a gut feeling. Remember how they unveiled the Nano in late October at a special event in time for the holidays? I just think they'd want to do something like that.

Couple of one-liners now. If you actually own an iPhone, you'll love this list of applications that came out of iPhoneDevCamp. If you're moving anywhere anytime soon or if you're hardcore about shipping goods, did you know that USPS will give you free boxes? Crazy, huh?

Lastly, I thought it was interesting that Web 2.0 stuff is being viewed as a threat by tech company executives. It restricts their control, takes away some of their power, and thrusts them involuntarily into these new applications. These guys should've seen it coming though since no paradigm in computing lasts for more than a decade or two.

I know it's already Tuesday, but I have to talk about the box office because Transformers had the highest grossing opening six days of any non-sequel movie ever at a whopping $152.2 million. It's followed by Ratatouille at $29 million over the 3-day weekend. Oh, and if you're wondering why Sicko, despite all its press, is at 9th, it's probably because it's only is 700 theaters, a fifth of Transformers.

Fox is intending to pump out the Wolverine spinoff flick by next summer. Sound crazy? Yeah, it is, especially since Hugh Jackman also needs to film Australia before then. Good luck, Fox! Oh, and why not try finding a director first?

According to Richard Kelly, they're halfway through touching up the special effects on Southland Tales. They're planning to be done by the end of summer, and he sounds pretty proud of what they're doing so I hope it ends up better than some of the initial reactions were.

Now for some trailers. The teaser for the 60s adaptation Get Smart wasn't funny and didn't really leave me wanting more, so I hope the real trailer ends up being better. The trailer for Fred Claus honestly wasn't much better, despite having Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti. The most impressive trailer was probably for the fantasy film The Spiderwick Chronicles, but I'm not terribly excited about it quite yet because there have just been too many fantasy movies since Lord of the Rings.

Last, but not least, how cool would it be to Kill Dill?!



Now for the Ten on Tuesday meme (don't have time tonight to do pictures, sorry):

10 Favorite Things
10. Booze
9. Water (oceans, beaches, lakes, etc)
8. Blogging
7. Photography
6. Dancing
5. Guitar
4. Austin
3. My family
2. Technology
1. My girlfriend

Transformers

If you're a product of the 80s, or even of the early 90s, there's little doubt that you're familiar with that logo. That's right, if you hadn't guessed from my blatantly obvious title, it's from our favorite franchise about robots in disguise. So how does it measure up?

I saw it last night, fairly interested in it after good early buzz from early screenings, and it totally lived up to my expectations. Some of the guys I went with were reluctant and presumed it would suck, and they were vastly impressed by how fun it was. This is probably Michael Bay's second best film (sorry, it was lacking Sean Connery). That's not saying much, I guess, and it's not going to get any Academy Awards obviously, but it's still a great summer blockbuster.

The premise is that on the planet Cyberton there was a war between the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons that ravaged the planet over the unlimited power granted by the Allspark, a magical cube that the Decepticons wanted to use to enslave the humans, but Optimus Prime saw good in humans and brought his Autobots to Earth, where the cube ended up, to stop Megatron and the Decepticons. It actually ends up being not quite so hokey on the big screen, and it's forgivable because it's a plot based on a show that's based on a line of toys; I'd say they did pretty good given the material they had to work with. You have to suspend disbelief and understand that it's not going to make sense, and I saw things wrong left and right with it technologically (the six of us, all being computer scientists, took turns scoffing) but let it slide for the sake of the rest of the movie.

Why? Because the special effects were predictably phenomenal. I was very pleased by the CG style, and I thought it was a nice mix between crazy alien stuff in a present-day society. It sometimes didn't work quite that well, but it worked a lot of the time and the payoff was great. Not to mention that every fight scene was carefully detailed, though sometimes a bit fast, and not in short supply. Plus, I was actually surprised that Shia LaBeouf (who needs to change his hard-to-spell last name) really pulled off his starring role. He was much better than his annoying character on Even Stevens, and I believed that he was Sam Witwicky. Not sure if I bought Megan Fox being into him, but she played her role as eye candy for the teenage boys out there, so that worked out also. I did like her character, but she definitely could've been fleshed out a little more.

Anyway, my only other issue was that it was too long. It's 144 minutes long! That's not a big deal though, because it's worth sitting through for the jaw-dropping effects, well-executed action, and subtly funny jokes. I thought the jokes would all be lame since it was PG-13, but I liked more than I didn't. The dialogue obviously suffered at times, which was to be expected though less than I would've thought.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, go see this movie. I doubt that you'll regret it if you understand that you're going to go see a movie that knows how to show an advanced alien race of robots fighting. If you're looking for romance or comedy, then you're out of your mind, but the action is well worth it. I give it a B+ simply because I thoroughly enjoyed myself and felt like it was good use of $8.75.

Recapping Some Apple News

Because I've missed so many days, I'd rather just brute force the big Apple news items since that's like half of what I have today rather than big one topic to write a whole lot about. First and foremost, AT&T claims to have activated over 600,000 iPhones as of Monday night! I don't know about you guys, but I'd call than a fairly successful launch from strictly a sales standpoint. Others claim that over 1 million are sold by now, and apparently a European deal will be announced soon as well. Still, the European thing is just a rumor. The reaction to the iPhone's released has been mixed with naysayers still naysaying and fans playing up its good points. It's no secret that it's not perfect though, and Macenstein has compiled a great list of what Apple can, and should, add to the iPhone. I think that if all these things were in the 2G iPhone, it would be a killer app of its own, and it's not altogether unlikely for Apple to listen up here. Apparently, they actually are working on getting Flash on there, to be released in a free update. Meanwhile, in the world of iTunes, Apple has started to drop prices on some albums. I don't have iTunes on my work computer so I can't see which, but it seems like it's mostly indie label stuff. Still, a pretty cool move, Apple. Unfortunately for them, UMG did end up killing their long-term contract and instead will be selling Apple music 'at will' to, as I had predicted, gain more bargaining power for variable pricing and also to give exclusivity deals to other music providers (ha, who else has the kind of share for that to help? Maybe Amazon, though their service still isn't out yet).

While we're on the topic of music, check out this list of over 90 great music sites. Aside from tablature, it has everything an audiophile could need to get his or her groove on. I literally spent like an hour playing around at some of those sites. I had no idea there were karaoke sites out there and was especially impressed by that since you could just get a media center PC rather than a karaoke machine.

With iPhone abuzz the past few months it's hard to imagine that other cell phones have actually been released. More recently, T-Mobile has announced unlimited VoIP calls from special phones for only $10 more a month. It defaults to WiFi when available and only relies on T-Mobile's network when you're not near a hot spot. I picture this being huge for international travelers, but I think that this could totally be T-Mobile's savior. It's infamous for poor coverage, so having hot spots at over 8,500 Starbucks and Borders and such for T-Mobile users should help out their cause.

Meanwhile, Sprint is dealing with the iPhone release by forcibly ending contracts with users who call customer service too much. Is it just me, or does this sound stupid and ridiculously misguided? What an awesome PR stunt to deter potential customers. It's bad enough that their site is butt ugly, but now they're going around ending contracts if you have service issues. I use Sprint and I don't even like their service much to begin with.

The Consumerist has staged a stunt that will hopefully go down in Internet history as brilliant: they rigged a computer with porn and monitoring mechanisms and sent it to their local Geek Squad to install iTunes. Of course, the Best Buy boneheads took the bait and were caught stealing personal photographs as well as porn. It got insane viewership from Digg, and I hope caused a shake up within Best Buy. More importantly, I hope people will be more prudent with protecting their more sensitive files.

For those of you who fear that your computers aren't secure enough. Computer World has a great round up of some of the best free security programs the interweb has to offer. I would call it a must-read and may be a much needed eye-opener for some of you more passive users.

I only have one piece of movie news because the rest is just video content (mostly trailers): Christian Bale has revealed that The Dark Knight ends in a way that's very amiable towards a sequel. I guess it's no surprise that they would want to make more movies, but it does make one wonder what he knows that would infer something like that so clearly.

Yahoo Movies has a number of exclusive new clips from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (that title never gets any shorter), and they're taking a while to load for me but they're pretty neat, nonetheless. Harry is definitely coming off as much more mature in this one from what the clips are revealing.

Since my girlfriend is a Jane Austen fan, I thought I'd mention the trailer for The Jane Austen Book Club about women in a book club who loves the books and end up living them out. Unfortunately, my girlfriend is none too happy with me right now, so hopefully that trailer makes her more likely to forgive me?

Apple Trailers has another high-def trailer for The Bourne Ultimatum and it looks just as good as the other one did.

Yahoo has a couple of trailers. One is for Gone Baby Gone, which doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense. There's a kidnapping case and some corrupt cops and that's all I got from it. The trailer for El Cantante is more coherent, but doesn't make me want to see it all.

Lastly, there's a red-band trailer for Good Luck Chuck that doesn't seem to have any new content other than a couple of curse words, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it's Jessica Alba half-naked, so I'm sure that guys will line up in hordes to see this movie anyhow.

No meme tonight...I'm kind of hurting right now and would rather focus on that right now. Take care, everyone!

I know I ks now

I've been slacking off here! Well, yesterday was 4th of July, which started well and ended kind of rough (sorry, my parents took my camera for their cruise so no pics for a week), and today I deployed something at work. Unfortunately, it didn't work as well as I thought so in between coming home late from a long workout and dealing with that, not much time to relax and post. Tomorrow I'm gong white water rafting, so I won't have a post up til Saturday. Sorry!

iPhone Mania Continues

Even though I didn't post last night, it really doesn't matter. Every other article out there is for the iPhone anyhow! I don't have much time to post right now, so I'm going to run through them real quick here. Engadget has not only an extremely informative video walkthrough of the iPhone, but also a full-length review. The verdict? Surprisingly optimistic. They don't hold any punches, but it's definitely better than I would've expected from the boys at Engadget. Despite its many flaws, I believe it has more strong points than 99% of the smartphone market. I guess that's not saying much, but it goes against the people hating on the iPhone because it's the iPhone. Oh, and Apple was smart about supplying it: it didn't really sell out on Friday. It sold well, but stores were well-stocked. Of course, the servers were slammed with activation requests, but that was to be expected. Oh, and it looks like a 2 year contract isn't required. For those complaining about its little bugs (apparently, it crashes when listening to music and doing other stuff) will be happy to hear rumors that a host of updates, including iChat, are to be released before the advent of Leopard. I've heard that adding 3G is just a software update, too, so I don't know if 3G is a software thing in and of itself or if the iPhone just has the hardware lying dormant. We do know that it's running on an old-school ARM processor though. Probably a good call given how impressive reports have been on its battery life (including in that Engadget review), and that 8-stage pipeline sounds sexy.

Rumors broke today that UMG is not going to be renewing its digital music contract with iTunes, which would just mean that they'd probably pen a shorter-term contract. Still, that gives them more power to pressure Apple into variable pricing and such with the threat of not-renewing for good, and should prove quite interesting. I wonder if that caused the 0.78 point drop in Apple's stock today.

Lastly, the DVD CCA has decided to allow commercial digital movie distribution sites, like iTunes and CinemaNow, provide download-to-DVD functionality given that the user has a compatible burner and disc with CSS. So it's not perfect, but it's a huge step in the right direction.



I may have stopped watching The Simpsons years ago, when it started sucking, but how cool is that? A real life Squishee machine! There are Kwik-E-Marts in a few select cities as part of a big marketing stunt, and I think it's a great idea. I'm going to try to get a shot of the Seattle one for you guys on Sunday when I go to church.

Oh, and in the box office, Ratatouille took top honors at a respectable $47.2 million. It sounds like it was well-deserved, and I'm sure that it's considered a "disappointment", but I think it'll still garner a lot of money in the weeks to come. Even though Live Free or Die Hard took second at under $34 million, I'm sure it still will make a lot of money in the weeks to come (I'd guess $80 million in the next month). This weekend sees the release of Transformers though, so you can bet your money that I'm going to try clawing my way into that.

No time for meme, gotta get to bed early tonight. I'm hanging out with my parents tomorrow night (they're flying in), but I'll try to post if possible. If not, have a great 4th of July everyone!

The Point of Higher Education

Sorry about not posting last night, but it was a rough day and ended up preferring to hit the sack. Not much news yesterday anyway other than the iPhone release, so I figured that it could wait a day. Then today, Internet was out so it's fortunate that I even managed to get thru this post. Anyway, Jeff Atwood make a great point, as always, about the point of college. The stuff you learn in college often isn't directly applicable to your career. Isn't that screwed up? This does not apply to all majors, but quite a few of them, nonetheless. I started to suspect this when I discovered how much more employers value experience over academics. Basically, you're in school to learn how to learn. Often, you discover that you don't need a teacher to learn the material and start skipping said class, and that's a sign that you've gotten pretty good at learning on your own (assuming you do well on the tests, that is). In CS, I cannot emphasize enough how important that skill is. A zeal for learning is required. I meet guys at Amazon in their early 40s who started out in Ada and now they're working in Java, two completely different languages with vastly different concepts backing them. I think a CS degree still gives you a lot of valuable knowledge, but you don't remember all of it. The fact that you learned it means that you can learn it again at another time if you need it, and that you have a vague idea of it, and that's what's really important. Plus, some of this material is still evolving. Anyway, I just think this is valid in many majors, so I thought I'd steal Jeff's idea and talk about it a bit.

The iPhone came out yesterday, and the bigger cities had the more hardcore campers. If you want coverage of that, it's everywhere. I don't feel like propagating it. Instead, I'd rather plug Gizmodo's video of their first attempt at sending a text. It looks tricky, but not as bad as some people seem to think. My brother got one, and says it's cool, but it only seems to ring once and doesn't keep an alert about missed calls.

Sorry, but that's not all the iPhone news. LifeHacker has the top iPhone 3rd party web applications. I must say, I'm impressed what people have done without even an SDK.

There are also rumors that Apple will announce a 3G iPhone in Europe to work with Vodafone and T-Mobile. I can see them working with other carriers, but I cannot see them making it 3G there and not here. It would definitely cause a massive uproar and backlash stateside, and they seem to always favor Americans with their technology than foreigners, so I don't see how the iPhone would be different. Obviously, Jobs denies this rumor in an interview with USA Today, but instead hints that they are working on getting the iPhone compatible with corporate e-mail systems. That is quite important (Amazon isn't letting us use it with our e-mail; not secure enough), and I can't imagine many big companies being compatible with it, so that'll cost them a lot of users since these are the high-end customers to target.

One-liner: ever wonder where else the famed Contra code works? 1UP did a great round-up of their discoveries. Definitely worth a read in case you have any of those games.

Christian Bale tells us that, for The Dark Knight, they're definitely trying to ground their depiction of the Joker in reality while recognizing that he is a cartoon character. I think the Joker is more complex than he gets credit for, so I look forward to Heath Ledger proving himself here.

We have our first father/son shot from Indiana Jones 4, but you can't see a whole lot in it. So instead, I opted to show you guys the poster from Rush Hour 3, which is very reminiscent of the second installment's poster. Oh well, it's Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan back together again, so it had better be fun. I don't care if it's far-fetched, it just better be entertaining.



My Internet is dying, so no meme tonight. I should be back tomorrow night though if I don't get too tied up at my cousin's place. Let's hope that my Internet is back in full force as well!

Interview with a Googler

Have any of my Seattle readers noticed this near Pike's Place Market?


I saw it on my way to work on Monday and have been wondering ever since where it came from. That little triangle has been empty since I got here, and seemingly overnight that sculpture appeared. I'm guessing that they want to plant a little garden there also because the dirt around it is really manure.

Google is like the wizard of Oz: every pretends to know how they operate but no one really knows because no one sees the wizard. However, a Microsoft employee got us as close as most of us are going to get: he interviewed a Microsoft employee who was a recent re-hire from Google. While things definitely sound nice there, he definitely acknowledged that it wasn't an ideal environment. Google kind of radically does away with private offices which follows the philosophy of openness and encouraged teamwork, but I definitely think there are certain people who need private offices and then there are also people who just work better with their own office. While I don't think a cube farm, I think that when you do have to do it you should do it like they do at Amazon: low walls, open spaces (not little faux-doorways). At a certain point though, you need higher walls and you need offices though to be more productive. The worst thing is that they do virtually no career planning. Wow. So you may just get a little more money, but never really a chance for managerial positions. Oh, and their managers seem to manage swarms of employees. That's stupid. I'm sorry, but that makes no sense. Again, I like Amazon's structure: 1PT or 2PT teams with managers and TPPMs, and this works really well. I feel well-supported, my manager is always involved with what we do through daily Scrum meetings, and since our team does sprints our projects are broken up into manageable pieces the end up getting planned out by month and divvied up quite well.

Ok, so I've turned this into a discussion about Amazon, but I just kind of wanted to compare what people perceive as a great place to work as opposed to a lower key workplace like Amazon that has some pretty interest techniques under the hood. It's just a perfect mixture of leaving you to do what you need to do to get your work done (including the ability to come in as late as 10AM) as well as guidance to stay on track and meet your requirements. I just love it. This interview makes it sound like Google has the relaxed atmosphere down, but not the focus, which would explain their plethora of products. Diversity is nice, but many of these products would benefit from better management of what customers would benefit from more and such. While this article is targeted at making Microsoft look better, I don't like the management structure of Microsoft. Too much middle-management. I only have three degrees of separation from SVP of E-Commerce Brian Valentine, who reports to Jeff B, which feels nice. It's comfortable but tight. Google isn't all bad though: free food, free snacks, health care on site, gym on site, barber on site, massages on site, free shirts, 20% projects (which you're fully responsible for, you don't get it if you don't use it), "Tech Spots" to service your hardware, laundry service, etc. Plus, you work with a lot of smart people and get a lot of freedom. Still, it sounds too much like a playground. I have fun at work without all those perks, and that's what I've come to realize is really important. Except for free food, those things really aren't a big deal as long as you love what you do, and I'm loving what I'm doing at Amazon and how I'm being led to do it.

On the bright side, Google Maps has unveiled a feature I've been clamoring for (unofficially) for a very long time: you can modify the routes it gives you. Your screen may glow when you use it for the same time by how awesome it is. I often wish I could modify just a couple of steps in my Google Map directions to see if it'll be shorter or faster, or when I give directions to people with Google Maps I'd like for them to take a shortcut or something but I couldn't until now. Kudos to you, Google!

The big boys of BitTorrent are encouraging supporters to start their own small sites so that it's harder for the MPAA and such to target torrents. The more decentralized it is, the worse their odds are, and the less successful they'll be. Unfortunately, I don't think people readily flock to do something like this, but I personally wish people would also. Not only for illegal content, but also for legal stuff. Why not a torrent site for stuff like video podcasts?

Supposedly, Steve Jobs is giving all his 17,000+ employees brand new iPhones. I know it sounds ludicrous, but he had a closed-doors event for employees only, which was leaked yesterday, and now this comes through as being the big news from the event. Jobs rarely holds such events, so it wouldn't be quite as crazy as it sounds, and he could afford to buy that many iPhones himself and still have a ridiculous amount of money. It would be a good reward for getting the iPhone out so fast and with minimal leakage, but it is unprecedented. I guess we'll know soon enough, he claimed they'll be given out at the end of July when public demand has been met a little. I have a feeling that'll get pushed back if this rumor is true.

The MPAA has come after Peekvid and YouTVPC which legitimize serving up television and other copyrighted video content by pointing to sites in other countries that host the media. The only reason the MPAA has some credence here is that these sites are running ads, which is a bad way to keep a site running in the grey area running. They should've just relied on donations. Now the MPAA may actually have a case, especially since they're actually profiting from copyrighted materials.

My Internet has decided to commit Seppuku, so I'm going to keep my movie news short. Yahoo has the trailer for The Hunting Party. Other than it having Richard Gere and Terrence Howard, I don't know anything about it.

I do know something about Knocked Up though, and Funny or Die has a deleted scene
from it that I wish I could see because that movie was awesome. I also can't see the Magnorium trailer, but it features Natalie Portman so I'm sure my male readership will appreciate it.

The Dark Knight has added to its roster a couple of new cast members for Lieutenant Gordon's family: his wife and son. I guess this is coming from Frank Miller's Year One, but it's been a really long time since I read that so I can't be sure.

And now for the 3x Thursday meme:

1. Are you one of those people who is constantly busy with projects, social outings, etc or do you just like to lay low and stay home? Why/why not?
I am, but that's why I do like to lay low on many weekend evenings. I spend so much of my week busy that I like to relax on a Friday night with my girl and/or with a few close friends.

2. Weather you're busy all the time or like to just chill, have you always been that way? How so/how not?
I definitely used to seek out adventure more in the form of frat parties and other assorted seedy college entertainment, but after a couple of years of that you get tired of it and prefer the company of those closest to you instead.

3. Is there something you'd like to change about how you spend your time? If so, what is it? If not, why not? How are things manageable for you?
I'd like to spend more time playing guitar, but I blog too damn much =P

The FTC is Lame

I think that today was like my fastest day of work. It really flew by, and I ended up staying until 6PM without getting the feeling that I was working late. I needed a power nap around 4:30, but that was about it. I have a design review meeting tomorrow and need to get some more work done tonight for it so I'm wanting to blaze through this post. I know that the title is a little childish, but I just couldn't come up with anything better. The Federal Trade Commission is saying that this whole net neutrality thing is exaggerated and legislation isn't really necessary to preserve it. This is just a report, so it has no legal binding to it, but I'm sure Congress will put a lot of stock into it since they are the freaking FTC, after all. I don't know if they've been bribed or anything by the telcos, I think that they probably see it as a far-fetched threat rather than the pressing issue that most geeks see it as. Personally, I think that the Internet does need serious protection from the government, even though I'm usually not big on government intervention, because it's a freedom that we're trying to protect; the freedom to view the Internet without censorship or discrimination of content providers. The FTC didn't totally roll over though, they do state provisions to revise this report should the situation become more dire, but by then I fear it may be too late.

Apple put up another great iPhone video, and this one outlines the usability of the on-screen keyboard. The word completion is nice, but what's much nicer is the correction of mistypings on-the-fly and more likely letters becoming larger on the keyboard dynamically. Once again, very cool stuff from this device, but let's not forget its downfalls. Consider those before you stand in line on Friday at an official AT&T retailer.

Supposedly, iTunes 7.3, the version required by the iPhone but not out yet, will allow you to create ringtones from your iTunes purchases. The price of this conversion will be $1 apiece, but no word on whether your ripped songs will be compatible with this service or not (I doubt it).

Kevin Rose has been working on another web 2.0 startup called Pownce, and it's just kind of a sharing network. I requested to be in the beta, but it really doesn't look all that exciting. It almost looks like it wants to be a more elegant, better-backed Facebook. We'll see what comes of it; it was just a pet project, after all.

I just installed this Firefox extension called PicLens that displays the pictures on sites like Flickr and Google Images and such in a slideshow-like fullscreen format for easy viewing and navigation. I highly recommend it because it's one of the most visually appealing and usable Firefox extensions I've ever used.

Now for a couple of one-liners. If you're a cheap bastard like me and shop online for your travel needs then check out this short article pointing out the best steps to take to find cheap flights. The other thing is Time's list of 25 sites we can't live without, and my bread and butter, Amazon, tops the list. Just had to plug that.

We have a trailer for David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, and I like it, but it seems a little dry. I'm a sucker for mob movies, but I don't know how compelling the plot will end up being.

AICN has plot details from the Harold and Kumar sequel, and they're spoilerific and still not funny. I'm sure it'll look better than it sounds though, so I'll hold off on passing judgement for now.

My Crazy Weekend in Vancouver

Definitely feeling a lot better now than yesterday. I think I'm ready for things to start going my way again. And now, without further ado, a quick recap of my trip to Vancouver.


We didn't get in until like 11ish on Friday night, so we headed straight for the nightlife. We got to The Buffalo Club around 12:30, and cover was $9 CND! Oh well, it was cool to be carded and actually let in (drinking age is 19 over there). I was DD though, because I knew my girlfriend would prefer that, and I didn't feel like getting wasted anyway (plus, drinks weren't cheap).


We got some pizza afterwards since everyone but me and the other DD was at least buzzed, and the only girl Nirav successfully talked to was engaged and drunk. Cool shirt there though.


There's some of the change I got back from the club: a loonie and two quarters.


A shot from inside the hostel. Yep, that's where we slept! It was not very exciting, but it was cheap and did the job.


I had breakfast at the hostel, and got a 5 dollar bill back in change. Why are they playing hockey on their money though?!


We went to Sophie's for lunch, and I just loved that they had a fully stocked bar behind the counter. Oh, and the food there was spectacular!


We went to Granville Island after lunch, and walked around there. Check out the view of the bay.


We also saw some big geese and ducks at a pond there. Got a close-up of the goose.


We went to Stanley Park afterwards, and that's what you see when you look up.


The trees were so tall!


Beaver Lake was where we turned around in our little trek, and it was quite a sight. There were even heron there! I didn't have enough battery life at the time to snag a good picture of one though.


Look at the baby squirrel! =)


This is the first beer I bought legally! It's a Sleeman's Honey Brown, and it was delicious. Our dinner was at Indian Bistro. The special was awesome: butter chicken, salad, basmati rice, naan, and a glass of beer for $12.



Here's the view all around us on the way back home on Sunday. Isn't it awesome? All in all, it was a fun trip, though it sucked not being able to call my girl.

Wall Street Journal's own Walt Mossberg has infamously had the iPhone for a while but hasn't really spoken about it. Well, he finally broke the silence and really seems to like it. He's fairy well-resptected, so this is probably not a bad review to read. It may be a little sugar coated, but he doesn't shy away from pointing out its weak points. Sounds like it's still a great phone, even though it's far from perfect.

Before you run out and buy your iPhone though, you should probably check out the ridiculous contract pricing. I suppose it isn't too extreme, but it's still not the best deal for the consumer.

IsoHunt and TorrentSpy, in order to stay open to US visitors, have to use a filter called FileRights that automatically filters out trackers for copyrighted material due to their legal tiff with the MPAA. I'm sure there's a way to spoof your location to avoid this stupid tracker, but there's other ways to get torrents that the MPAA won't catch, so I don't even know why they bother trying; it's just going to get bigger and bigger the more they try to squash it.

Lastly, Google is acquiring a really cool site called GrandCentral that's still in beta but purports to be one centralized phone number for all your phones and adds functionality to what you can do with a cell phone currently. Not sure exactly how it works, but I'll probably try using it after Google refines it a bit because it sounds a little buggy as is.

There's only one movie item that I want to cover: the likelihood of Kill Bill volumes 3 and 4. I really don't think it's going to happen, but it's nice to dream.

Why Plaxo is Still in Beta

I'm going to put my pictures up in a post after this one, so I'll try to keep this post short to compensate. What is Plaxo? It's really cool, actually. I think it handles one of the biggest problems facing average people in technology today: integrating all your contact information and addresses and calendars together. There's a Yahoo Calendar, an Outlook calendar, a Google Calendar, etc, but you want them all to show the same stuff! Well, Plaxo will do just that for you. It cleverly will synch together all these things, plus AIM, Microsoft Live, your Mac, your phone, and more. Even better: if you manage to get all your friends on this, you'll never have outdated information for them and they'll never have outdated information for you because Plaxo will always show them your most up to date stuff and even notify them. Plus, it'll keep track of birthdays, tasks you have to do, and tell friends about changes to your Flickr account and blog. Unlike Facebook, it doesn't tell people about what you do automatically, you have to share it and you choose who it shares with. Pretty neat, huh? However, it's not without several drawbacks. It's still in beta though, mind you. None of my Google contacts were imported, and the Outlook plug-in doesn't seem to be working for me. It could just be because this is a work computer where I'm not admin, but isn't that going to be a common issue for this service since most people aren't admin on their work computer? It's a nice UI, but not everything is immediately clear. I didn't realize when setting up some synchs that creating a folder for it meant that it wouldn't synch with stuff from other services, which is not what I wanted and now it's not clear at all how to change that. Then there's the occasional graphical bug. Still, this is a great service on the right track that's only bound by the fact that you have to get everyone you know on it for it to be really helpful. Oh, and why doesn't it synch with Facebook? Doesn't that seem like a glaring deficiency? I love the idea, it just needs some refinement.

So we have our first iPhone nut jobs: they camped out this morning. That's right, a 100 hour camp out. I don't care what the device is, if you're waiting outside a store for 100 hours straight then you are a total moron. The rest of you may be interested to know how the iPhone upped its battery life numbers. I won't read the article to you, but it's a good read if you were curious like I was. Even a year of computer architecture didn't explain that kind of stuff.

Speaking of Apple, here's a cool photographic timeline of the company's history. It's just fun to flip through, to be honest.

Ever wanted to be invisible? Well, check this out:


The development of a web application is often long and sordid, and Vitamin has a cool feature about one site with an interesting lifecycle. A rather common story in this field, but still fun to look at.

Lastly, ever wanted to see a jpeg as a webpage? Yeah, I haven't either, but this is still a damn cool utility that will do that for you. Quite clever, though it seems useless.

I just wanted to bring up one piece of movie news: the trailer for Hitman. Why did they play Ave Maria in the background? I get that they wanted some kind of peaceful song, but you're talking about a holy figure while killing people in the foreground. I'm usually not one of those Christians, but this is one of my favorite hymns and they're blaspheming a classic.

iPhone PR Machine at Work

The trip to Vancouver was fun, but it sucked not being able to talk to my girlfriend the whole time at exactly the wrong time! Oh well, I'll put up pictures tomorrow, but I should probably get to some news today. Unfortunately, almost all of it is Apple news. I'll start with the iPhone, since Apple is hard at work at hyping it up. They put up a 20 minute video tour of the iPhone, and that was definitely a great idea. If you don't have 20 minutes to spare, then you can get a recap of some of the cooler stuff over here including being able to view excel documents, the interaction with stock quotes, and some of the more prominent settings (like the variety of ringtones). It's funny how I listen to pundits trash the iPhone every day, but I still actually want this thing. Apple is freaking brilliant. They know just how to make you want this thing: simplicity. They cut out a glitzy image or celebrities and show you exactly what it is. Recognize the dude in that tour video? No? Exactly! The focus is all on the iPhone, and they show you exactly how much its features make sense. The most impressive stuff I saw that I didn't really see before was visual voicemail, handling images, and navigating Google Maps. People can say all they want about how it's lacking this or that and it's overpriced, but you can't say that it's not a pretty, intuitive-looking device. The biggest question is how good the multi-touch feels. If that feels right, then Apple is golden, and any naysayers aren't naysaying because they're inherently biased. It's not a matter of whether it's overpriced or whether you personally would get one, but rather a question of how good a piece of technology is it? It's obviously far from perfect, but you have to compare it to the cell phone market and realize how shitty most phones are already, and take it from there. No matter what the pundits say, Apple PR is still hard at work, and doing quite well.

Another reason why I don't think it'll be the failure that the experts want it to be is because it has been beta tested for a while now. Not to say that beta testing is perfect (it never is), or that the iPhone won't still have many issues, but at least they're not likely to be glaring bugs. It may be their first entry in the cell phone market, but they're trying to play it smart. Remember, everyone thought the iPod was going to be a huge flop when it came out (search newspaper and website archives in 2001 for this). Oh, and it will be sold online also, so people won't even have to wait in lines outside. I'm sure the site will collapse in on itself on June 29, but it can be purchased online, at least.

Bad news for my bread and butter: Amazon was overtaken in music retail by iTunes, which is now #3 in the world while Amazon is #4. It seems like at each freaking special event Steve Jobs announces leapfrogging another competitor on this chart, so I guess it was bound to happen. I wonder if Amazon's selling digital music downloads will help it get its place back?

Slate has a great opinion piece about how Facebook could surpass the other social networking sites by simpling incorporating features that everyone wants rather than the bloat of Facebook applications. An IM client and an RSS reader and e-mail checking all these things would help keep people on the site and probably attract more people than their platform thing. Not that it was a bad idea, just bad timing, in my opinion.

Since I blogged an article last week about why starting a start-up sucks. I thought I'd follow it up with how to do it right. There's definitely some sound advice there. It's not as easy as it sounds, but those are some of the basic principles I've heard from entrepreneurs over and over again.

Evan Almighty topped the box office with little over $30 million, and Rise of the Silver Surfer saw a steep, 65% drop to #3. Quite impressively though, Knocked Up has surpassed $100 million, which more than triples their production costs. That's what happens when you try to make a truly enjoyable film.


That is one of several new pictures that IGN snagged from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I like the blue hue it has to it and just that it almost looks like it could exist as a poster.

Speaking of posters, we have the final one sheet for Transformers, but I don't think I like it as much as some of the other posters that came out for it.

It looks like a Shrek spinoff movie is in the works revolving around Puss in Boots starting from his childhood as a kitten and how he group it. Supposedly, it's intended to be a good mix between emotion and humor that people are likely to enjoy. I'm skeptical until I see at least a trailer though.

Lastly, Yahoo Movies has the trailer for The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, and it looks like an alright kiddie movie. It's about the lochness monster, but it doesn't seem to appeal to a very wide audience.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Compulsion :: Obsessive


2. Spiritual :: Church


3. Spray :: Bug


4. Compatibility :: Test


5. Pursuit :: "Happyness"


6. Fake :: People


7. Mobile :: Phone


8. Ceremony :: Graduation


9. Ribbons :: Bow


10. Mozart :: Music