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

On Passing Judgement

Sorry to have missed so many, but this week has been a wild and crazy ride. On the bright side, I got my Sansa today! I'll give full impressions soon enough, just not today. Today I'm going to cover a topic I've wanted to discuss for a couple of weeks and now Paul Graham has given me reason to do so: judging people. I like his view of there being two types of judgement: judging for the sake of judgement (as in for a contest or for a court case) where impartiality is vital and expected, and judgement as means to some other end, as in judging who's best to date or who should get into a university. What's interesting is that we often expect the first time when we're really getting the second not realizing that the second type doesn't have a concept of being fair. Just because a girl is at a club and chooses to dance with one guy over another doesn't mean that the other guy should take it personally, because she's not investigating his abilities or character to judge him in particular, she just wants to see who she'd have the most fun dancing with.

I even have a personal case to relay, where obviously no names will be revealed (so don't try guessing). There's an individual in my department who I knew of but didn't really interact with much because, well, I usually interact with friends I already have in my CS classes (as we all do when we know people in certain classes). However, this person judged me as being arrogant, unbeknown to be until a few weeks ago where it started influencing people who I had never met before. Understandably, I was offended by this and yet, this person didn't really mean any harm (at least I don't think). They didn't care to get the full story on me because they had no interest in this, they were just trying to make a prima facie analysis of whether I was a worthwhile person to know, which clearly came out as negative. In fact, we do this all the time. When the bus is full and you need to decide who to sit next to, who do you pick? Often, guys sit near guys and girls sit near girls, and it's weird to be offended if someone decides to not sit next to you because they're not trying to knock you as a person, judging you just wasn't their end goal. However, there is hope yet: make more of an effort to sell yourself, as Paul puts it. There's something I hate doing, but I hope that spending more time with certain people will replace false impressions with the real thing. We've actually been having judgement problems in ACM as well where a gender/sexuality workshop at meeting failed horribly because the moderator was close-minded. I took one thing from it though: we sometimes make subconscious judgements of people based on gender not because we mean to judge them a certain way, but it's that second type of judgement and it's become ingrained in us. Anyone who's not a jerk tries to treat women equally, I just feel like sometimes women mistake that second type of judgement for the first type and get offended, especially in this department. Anyway, I'm not going to get offended by the second type of judgement anymore. It's important to not be so self-centered, and to think of the bigger picture (just like in software design; what do you know, a nerdy parallel?!).

Speaking of design, Joel Splosky has a quick read that I just thought was cute: a new elevator technology that's really fancy and efficient, but it wasn't designed quite well enough. Don't cheat like I did, actually try to figure out what the problem is before you highlight the answer.

Usually, I pass on social networking sites nowadays because it's just done to death. It's a nice little trend, but it's headed right for the toilet at this rate. Anyway, I yielded a bit to Wakoopa, which is a really neat site that uses your software usage to suggest other products you may like and list updates and even show reviews of your software. It only takes 5MB of RAM while running, so give it a shot. It also provides usage stats and, lo and behold, tags (bet you didn't see that coming).

Joost has gone "live", which means that they now have premium content supported by ads (haven't run into this yet) and have given all beta testers unlimited invites. So leave me a comment with your e-mail address and name if you want an invite! There is a ridiculous amount of channels now, but my computer is running low on RAM so I'd better not try looking through it for you (Firefox is eating memory like no other and I don't want to restart until after this is done).

Speaking of new software, Gaim is now Pidgin and Ars Technica has a full review of Pidgin 2.0. The review is very positive, which is a big compliment coming from Ars Technica. Plus, I'm using it right now and I feel cool just using it because of how nice the interface changes are and the welcome bug fixes. If you're on Linux or Windows and use IM, you're really missing out if you don't try out Pidgin.

Yahoo has finally decided closed down Yahoo Photos. I speculated on this very early on because it didn't make sense for them to have two competing services once they acquired Flickr, and their justifications for keeping Yahoo Photos were pretty stupid. I didn't think it'd take this long for them to realize what was necessary, but I'm pleased that they're actually being quite graceful about it.

This post wouldn't be complete if I didn't briefly mention the Digg scandal about Digg taking down dugg stories referencing an HD-DVD processing key after receiving a cease-and-desist order. Using this key literally circumvents the DRM used on all HD-DVD discs released. Yes, they're just that stupid. I think the community backlash for doing this was a bit harsh given that releasing such a key can't possibly be legal and it violates Digg's TOS, but I respect them for decided that freedom of speech reigns over corporate control of the Internet. Personally, I agree with distributing the key as a sign of rebellion for how inane the HD-DVD schema is.


We have a poster for The Golden Compass, but I felt it was too ugly to post here (despite my love for the original book, mind you). So instead, I thought I'd show off one of a few new posters for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I like much better. There are also some new ones for The Simpsons if you're interested, but they're nothing special.

Now onto the trailers. Apple has an HD trailer for Rush Hour 3, and I felt very underwhelmed by it. My friend disagrees because he's afraid that fanboys are just going to hate on Brett Ratner, but my issue is with the trailer and not with him as a director as I enjoyed the first two Rush Hour movies very much. Moviefone has another trailer for Shrek the Third, and I think that I like this one even more than the last one! It's very funny and I think it'll end up making for a cute, family movie that adults will actually enjoy (like the first two). Yahoo has the teaser for Hot Rod, featuring SNL's Pete Sampers (of "Lazy Sunday" fame), and it's mildly amusing. I'm holding out on judgement (heh, funny to use that word now in this post) until I see at trailer.

Disney, in a strange display of openness, is showing off 9 minutes of Ratatouille on their website. I really like the animation style in this movie, and it's executed quite well. I didn't laugh out loud or anything, but it was still fun in its own respect, and I guess more of a visual feast.

According to Joe Carnahan, of Smokin' Aces infamy, he's seen the teaser trailer for Sin City 2 and it's supposed to be phenomenal. Now I'm really really excited to see some footage from this movie!

Lastly, given that people aren't saying the best things about Spider-man 3, you may want to try giving Lucky You a shot instead. It sounds like a worthwhile drama from some people I respect, but critics are butchering it.

Now, before I go eat myself, for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
Name something you would not want to own.
A motorcycle. I'd be so scared to ride the bloody thing!

Soup
Describe your hair (texture, color, length, etc.).
It's black, very thick right now (in a fro when I don't gel it, almost), and very curly. It really is way too thick (like 2-3 in. above my head), but I'm too lazy to get a haircut here in Austin.

Salad
Finish this sentence: I’ll never forget ___________.
the girl next door. Just kidding, there was no girl next door, but I assume that comes from a comedy I love, The Girl Next Door. Anyway, I'll never forget how my luck changed on March 1, 2007 with a job offer followed by a night of Sandy's and dancing.

Main Course
Which famous person would you like to be for one day? Why?
John Frusciante, so I can learn his mad guitar skills (or at least a day's worth).

Dessert
Write one sentence about yourself that includes one thing that is true and another thing that is not.
I enjoy smiling wide and polishing my gun collection.

Pigs Fly: Apple is Selling DRM-Free Music

Lost a friend tonight...kind of disappointing and disheartening in a lot of ways. I'm glad that I have something else in my life that's great that I haven't screwed up, and I hope that I don't screw up. Anyway, back to the topic at hand: no, amazingly enough it is not an April Fool's Joke. I definitely thought it was and almost didn't even read the article, but it's true. Yeah, this is kind of an intense move, but so far it's kind of a pilot program with EMI. You can either buy the DRM-laden tracks with lower quality at $1 a pop, or pay an extra 30 cents to remove the DRM and get higher quality. What I'm curious about is why Apple is doing this. Of course to nerds, this is awesome. We've all been clamoring for an end to DRM and all that good stuff. I guess Apple is banking on the current dominance of the iPod and their perceived superiority of iTunes. I wonder if other labels will follow suit, and if this will actually work. Yeah, there are a couple of other services that sell DRM-free music, but mostly for small-time artists and indie labels, and this could be a huge deal. I think they're just testing the waters for now, but I hope that the response is positive, lest we all be shown as being liars when we've cried out that DRM is the devil. Should be interesting, nonetheless.

Staying on that musical track (no pun intended), looks like we'll be seeing legal guitar tabs back on the web very soon in the wake of the big OLGA takedown. Musicnotes is trying to launch a service that would provide the tablature with advertising, and that revenue would then go to the copyright holders. I think it's kind of funny since people are coming up with these tabs based on their ears, so it really doesn't warrant royalties for the artists unless they can prove that the transcriptions are perfect, but that's just my opinion.

I missed a lot of April Fool's Pranks because of how packed my Sunday was, but you can see some of the top ones here. I personally always love the ThinkGeek goodies, and this year I like the WiiHelm best.

It has now been announced that the iPhone will be released on June 11. Not much else to say about that, but I felt that it's noteworthy because I'm sure we'll be seeing a deluge of even more editorials revolving around this date.

Circuit City is laying off 3,400 employees and outsourcing some of their IT employees. Plus, they're closing 60 stores. Anyone else think that they're digging a hole for bankruptcy?

One more one-liner: if you're interesting in buying an HD set then you should totally read this article and learn more about the different kinds. Definitely very basic information that's not commonly known at all, but it's very concise.

Blades of Glory took center stage this weekend in the box office with $33 million, which I thought was a bit low for the comedy suited for most ages, but is still a strong opener with Meet the Robinsons only $8 million behind and 300 holding less than half that at #3. Most notable though was TMNT's enormous dip to under $10 million. Ouch, so much for turtle power.

I missed a couple of trailers. Yahoo Movies has an entertaining trailer for Ocean's Thirteen (if they make another and call it "Ocean's Fourteen", I will boycott it), though I didn't really laugh during it. Still, I think it's a better plot than the second movie, and they don't seem to be trying to hard to bring back Julia Roberts this time. If you can stand the MTV site for four minutes, they have a decent trailer for Hostel 2. It doesn't make it look much different from the first, but I'm sure that it'll be very disturbing all the same.

It looks like Quentin Tarantino has been working on the script for Inglorious Bastards and is using the time off he's taking to promote Grind House to also finish up on writing Inglorious Bastards. I think it's supposed to be a cool, WWII ensemble movie, and I'm really interested to see what Tarantino does with it. Can't wait for a script review!

Lastly, Dreamworks is doing a Shrek the Halls Holiday special for this winter, presumably to help promote Shrek the Third. Oh, and there are already plans for a fourth film. Can we say "milking a new animated franchise way too much"? I think that we're going to see a drastic reduction in quality if they just keep pumping out these movies.

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. Where did you go on your last vacation?
Vacation? I don't have time for vacations! =P More seriously: Canada with my parents like two years ago. Unless you count my extended trip to Seattle in January to do interviews with Microsoft a vacation? It was fun, exciting, and slightly relaxing.
2. Would you go there again? Why or why not?
Canada: probably, but more for the skiing than the sightseeing. I'm sure I'll do a trip to Vancouver this summer. As for Seattle: I'll be there this summer, so yeah ;)
3. How many vacations do you take in one year?
1 at the most. I plan on taking more when I graduate, but it's just a lot of money to spend while I'm still in school.
4. Where would you REALLY like to go on your next vacation, if money was no issue, and how long would you stay?
Probably London. I hear good things and I haven't been to Europe practically at all. My cousin is stationed in Germany, I'd be interested to check that out as well. Another place I'd love to visit is Tokyo, but that'd be a much more challenging trip, I'd imagine.
5. Do you put a little money aside each week (or month) to save up for your vacation?
Nope. I'm Indian, I save enough as it is! No need to make a special travel fund.

Tech Speak is Cool

I have an exam on Thursday, but I promised a post today since I missed yesterday's (with good reason) and so you shall have it. Let's see if I can get this done in 30 minutes *checks watch*. Being such an overt tech geek myself, I love indulging in articles about why it's a good lifestyle, and so I just had to spent some time talking about this list of reasons why tech speak is the best language to learn. It's not really a language so much as a lexicon to be added to your standard bank of English knowledge. I agree with everything he said (except the hentai thing...ew). I've definitely become extremely efficient on a computer, it's given me more confidence in starting up conversations, programming has made me more organized (and helped me learn to see patterns), and helping people troubleshoot problems is probably the quickest way to their heart, to be honest. It ostensibly bothers me when people in CS are ashamed to admit it, as if it makes picking up chicks that much harder. Or when they think it's cool to not program in their free time, but instead to get plastered or something. I think what's cool is doing what you love doing and being passionate about it. If you love neurobiology then it's cool to collect random facts and help people understand themselves better. If you love microbiology then it's cool to be a local expert on diseases. There's nothing wrong with being geeky and there's nothing wrong with picking up tech speak, especially given how prominent computing has become in our lives. I mean look at how much crap I have to talk about here 6 days a week! It's better than watching the local news where you hear about people dying all the time; technology is much more exuberant.

I talk about the RIAA so much that I decided to give them their own tag here. Anyway, the Consumerist's readers voted them the worst company in America, which is quite an honor since it was a bracket of 32 companies that they were in competition with. It was a fairly close final round with Halliburton, but I'm glad they ended up winning since the RIAA victimizes many more Americans than Halliburton does.

Apple has invited select members of the press and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) to a special event in Las Vegas called "Lights Camera", which I think is kind of an odd title. It should probably be like "Lights! Camera! ...". I don't know. Anyway, I'm sure it'll be related to Final Cut Pro and/or Aperture since it's such a small event, so don't expect anything too extravagant from it. It'll probably be useful mainly to video/image editing professionals.

John Backus died today, which many of you may not care about but I'm sure that every Computer Scientist worth his pay knows who that is since they talk about him in practically every non-theoretical CS class. He invented Fortran back in the day, which is a huge deal because it was one of the first major, successful high-level programming languages. I guess it's just kind of surreal reading about someone dying who was such a big part of modern-day computing.

If you like buying gadgets, or you're like me and wish you could afford to buy more gadgets, then you'll want to read this article about how to time your technological purchases just right. Timing really is everything, so I especially support the "put off that craving" tip. The going to small business one is news to me though, I often find the best deals online or at Fry's.

There's a ridiculous amount of movie news for me to cover. Let me start out with the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I didn't even really care about this movie and even I enjoyed that trailer! Though I should probably see the second one first. Filmz.ru has a couple of posters, if you're interested.

Eli Roth put up a particularly creepy clip from Hostel 2. It won't give you nightmares or anything, but it is a little unsettling.

We have a couple of posters. The Shrek the Third poster is rather predictable: just the starring cast and the title. The one for 28 Weeks Later is much cooler, in my opinion:



I don't know how I feel about this Justice League movie being made. Supposedly, it will now have Superman, but I just think they're going to screw it up majorly. There are already movies being made for many of these characters, why not wait a while and do this movie right?

AICN nabbed a couple of reviews for Sunshine, and it does not sound all that thrilling. It seems to have great visuals but suffers in acting. I'm sure it'll be a decent movie, just not what we were expecting from Danny Boyle.

I'll go for the Tuesday Twosome this week:

1. What two things remind you of Spring?
Bunnies and flowers
2. What are two things you want to accomplish this Spring season?
Good grades and good times with a certain someone
3. What are your two favorite seasons of the year?
I guess fall and winter? Summer is just too hot over here, and usually spring is just a signal that summer isn't too far off.
4. Do you perform Spring cleaning in your home? Why or why not?
Not really, I prefer to just clean my place periodically.
5. What are the two best things about Spring?
How refreshing the change is from the cold and having a Spring Break.

Phones for a Few Bucks?

Reuters is reporting the head honcho of Google as claiming that cell phones should become free in the near future, when that's not exactly what he said. Still, at least they were on the right track in reporting it. He believes that phones should become heavily subsidized by way of on-phone adverts (texts and photos), which I have a couple of thoughts on. First of all, how can you make it feasible to transmit pictures to a phone? This satellite Internet crap is slow enough as it is. Second of all, if you're giving away phones that cost hundreds of bucks for even a few bucks, don't you have to show someone a good bit of advertising? Some sites online are bad enough, and I think there's a certain point at which people tire of advertising. With your phone, you want to be able to easily make phone calls, and I think people are willing to pay a premium for reliability and convenience associated with that. That's why the pay model (minus subscription-induced subsidies) works so well. No one would pay to use Google because that'd be annoying and pricey (I'd imagine), and obviously not everyone wants to pay for television (hence antenna-accessible networks) so advertising works there, but I've never heard of someone not getting a phone because it was a bit pricey because they consider it to last them a good while and be extremely useful. The three things you always leave the door with are wallet, keys, and phone, and if the first two don't have ads strapped to them then why should the third? Maybe Schmidt is right, maybe it is the future, but I just don't buy it quite yet.

Think Secret has discovered that the newly released Core 2 Duo laptops from Apple pack a secret feature: 802.11n draft 1.0 compatibility. No word on driver availability for this functionality in the near future, but the factor of 10 speed increase on this new standard would indeed be a delightful surprise to customers if it ends up being unlocked with the proper drivers and support, which isn't guaranteed by a longshot since it's just for a draft of the upcoming standard. I ran into this list of courses that nerds would have fun with, and I thought I'd plug it simply because I've taken a few of these (or heard good things) and they really are great choices for the nerd in you. Google Earth added a neat new feature: historical maps. They're not all that detailed, but fun stuff for World History enthusiasts, I'm sure. Photo editing enthusiasts will really love Pixer, which allows you to edit your pictures via the nifty Web 2.0 application. It's obviously not as feature-rich as something like Photoshop or even Paint .NET, but it's great for the quick things. Lastly, MTV has redone their site and I just wanted to point it out for the sake of what not to do when re-designing a site: moving backwards. I wonder if the designers were thinking that it would be a great idea to make the whole site Flash so that it'd be laggy as Hell, force you to watch videos from startup (and always have it off to the side, mind you, to kick your RAM in the butt), and then pop up an ad whenever you click a link.

In case you didn't catch The Simpsons trailer yesterday, don't worry because you didn't miss much. You can see it over here, but it gives us pretty much nothing. What's much more interesting is this extremely early review of Shrek the Third. The fact that it's good in such an early stage is definitely a good sign, though I'm skeptical as to whether they'll add in enough to make it as good as the first two as the reviewer suggests it's lacking since it's already storyboarded out. An early review of A Night at the Museum wasn't nearly as good though and claims that the movie was pretty disappointing and very much lacking in big laughs.

I thought I'd end here with a rather funny Post Secret postcard that most guys wouldn't own up to, but they know they're guilty of:



Now for some Monday Madness:

1. From ch'i:
If you could only read one blog every day- which one blog would be on your daily list?
Unfortunately, many of my faves have been on a sort of hiatus, so I'll go with Delicious Days (link on right sidebar).

2. From kat:
What do you do to de-stress from a hectic day?
Dance and/or sleep =P

3. From paxil princess:
What is your favorite piece of clothing to wear in the winter?
This nice brown, stretch merino sweater my sis-in-law-to-be got me from Banana Republic a couple of years ago.

4. From sherle:
Do you prefer discussing problems with a sibling, a parent, a significant other, a psychologist, or a total stranger?
None of the above: a close friend.

5. From trista:
How long have you been blogging?
I believe I started in December 2004.

6. From lisa e:
Which side of the bed?
Left side =P Thought I have a twin bed here in Austin.

7. From elton:
How often do you pig out when you eat?
Yay, they used one of my questions! Maybe once a week or so. It depends on the week, but it's usually on the weekend if I do.

8. From karen:
Do you watch the space shuttle launches?
Nope. Astronomy just isn't my bag.

9. From dawn:
What's your favorite leisure-time activity?
Other than sleeping? Probably dancing, I suppose, because it's so social.

10. From sherle:
When is the last time you said, 'I love you' and to whom?
What about hugs? Who is the last person you hugged?
Not sure. I probably said it to my friend Jennyfer in the past few days though. Maybe I said it to my mom yesterday? Last person I hugged was my friend Raquel at TLD practice last night.