Facebook Cons

The Latest Facebook Scandal

What is it about Facebook that gives it such a celebrity status among tech journalists? It seems to get a lot of coverage despite at its core merely being a platform to communicate with friends and post embarrassing pictures of your friends. The problem with being in the spotlight is that you get at least as much negative press as positive press (unless you agree with the adage that any press is good press). Typically, Facebook is bitten by UI changes or some critical privacy discrepancy at least once every 6 months. This time, the big news is a bit off the beaten path.

Techcrunch was probably first to the scene here with an expose from an insider who used to be a part of spreading spam on Facebook. It turns out that there's a whole seedy underbelly to the world of Facebook Applications. Facebook users typically aren't fans of buying stuff on Facebook, but it turns out that they are gullible enough to do things like download toolbars or give up personal information when prodded with the right incentive, which leads to conning them into paying the shady company money. Computerworld has a blogwatch compiling quotes from other articles weighing in on the scams calling out Farmville and Mafia Wars and decrying the offenses of virtual currency and hidden ponzi schemes.

So what happened? I guess this was really inevitable. You have a network that's growing like crazy, has an open platform, and users seem to put a lot of misplaced trust in. Facebook is a believer in small government and so they have tried to be hands off, which is an even better situation for scammers looking to make a quick buck. Now they're locked in an arms race as advertisers are finding more creative ways to cheat the system. It's not a very hopeful situation right now, but it's possible that legitimate advertisers will become more prevalent on Facebook and edge out the shady ones. In my opinion, Facebook still needs to make a more active effort to police these shady application owners. I hesitate to recommend a vetting process because we don't want another iTunes App Store situation, which is irritating despite being successful, but Amazon and eBay and many other sites have whole teams that work to expose fraud, why can't Facebook? If they already do have such a team then they may need to make it bigger because this is going to hurt the long-term growth potential of Facebook (the little they have, in my opinion) if people trust Facebook less and less.

Google Feature Bonanza

Last week really demonstrated how big Google has become as they managed to release 3 new features/products.

The smallest additions were options to allow more text to show up in your search results and/or thumbnails from the pages in the results. Some people went so far as to create Firefox extension to simulate this functionality so there was clearly a demand for them, though I've never felt the need for either feature.

Arguably the biggest thing to come from Google was Google Dashboard, which brings together all the data attached to your Google account into an easy-to-use interface. It is kind of cool, but I don't think it's especially useful and is creepy in a way. While it does force you to login again before using it, like when you try searching your history, it tells you stuff like how many calls you've made in Google Voice and the last video you favorited in YouTube. It's more a frightening reminder of everything Google knows about you than a great utility. However, the fact that it does give you this view of what Google has on you may encourage you to clamp down on areas you're more sensitive about.

The last thing Google announced was Commerce Search, which is a cloud-hosted search appliance targeted at retail websites. While it's not a bad idea I definitely question their ability to turn it into a successful product given that people barely remember that Google Checkout exists nowadays.

Selling Software With One Hand, Laying Off With the Other

Microsoft has sold a few copies of Windows 7 since it's launch a couple of weeks ago to the tune of 234% more copies in its opening week than Vista's opening week, and 84% more revenue. Despite the strong sales of Snow Leopard it's clear that Windows 7 came out on top as it already has more market share than Snow Leopard or all distributions of Linux combined. Granted, that's only 2% of the market but the other 89% of the market is Vista and XP. Still, not too shabby for its first two weeks.

Unfortunately, it's not all good news in Redmond: Microsoft announced that they would conclude the layoffs they began at the beginning of the year with 800 more layoffs. I'm guessing that some of these laid off employees can transfer to other teams within the company, so it may not be as bad as it sounds, but I'm sure that more than a few will have to look for work elsewhere.

Maybe they can find work at a much-criticized Microsoft retail store. The first one has opened in Scottsdale, AZ, which somewhat makes sense since there's not much to do in Scottsdale but shop. It doesn't look much better or worse than it has in the leaked documents but who knows, it could be a runaway success.

It's All About Android

Even though the iPhone still rules the smartphone roost (at least in America), Android 2.0 has turned more than a few heads. It turns out that it has more cool features than just Google Navigation, and Tech Radar has a pretty concise rundown of what's new. Some of the highlights are contact sync with external services, Microsoft Exchange support (took long enough), multiplayer gaming via Blueooth, and a much enhanced camera application. If you want a more in-depth look, Gizmodo has a pretty well-written review but be forewarned that they sneak in feedback of Droid in there since it's the only device you can get your grubby hands on running Android 2.0 so who knows if the sluggishness would be better on a better processor. What I'm disappointed in is that only certain devices can get this upgrade. I can understand if there are hardware limitations, but some of these features shouldn't be so tightly coupled with the hardware. It creates a world like Windows Mobile where you have different versions floating around where someones experience with an older version makes them think that the newest version is just as bad because they don't understand they're different. Or maybe Android users are savvy enough to understand this (no disrespect to Android users, but it's not likely that they all realize this).

Meanwhile, Verizon launched the HTC Droid Eris last Friday, which will actually run Android 1.5.



I think it's a pretty nice-looking phone, but it's really just a reworked version of the HTC Hero made compatible with the Verizon network. I understand that they want this phone out there to fill out their line some more for the holiday season, but, as I cited above, it's going to cause customer confusion having two different Android phones running two different versions of Android that are both brand new to the Verizon network. They ideally should've released Droid Eris earlier or delayed it until Android 2.0 was ready for it.

Quickies

Just a few brief stories left...

Apparently there's a new format already in the works to follow HD called UHD, or Universal HD. A resolution of 3840 x 2160 sounds downright crazy, but I'm sure in the year 2023 I'll be eating my words when we all have a UHD set.

For those of you living in the present, Sound and Vision Magazine has a pretty cool guide to LED.

Joel Spolsky put up a blog post I liked that starts out explaining warning signs that you should quit your job and ends selling a product I'd endorse if it does what he says called Stack Overflow Careers. It's basically a simplified LinkedIn for getting your resume out there. It's not a bad idea.

The forthcoming version of uTorrent stops competing with ISPs' packet shaping strategies and cooperates with ISPs to adjust download and upload speeds for clients according to network congestion. Apparently, this will affect upload speed more than download speeds and is supposed to end up resulting in faster downloads overall. Very cool stuff.

In the October browser market share statistics, Firefox has finally bested Internet Explorer 6, which has more market share than IE7 or IE7 so technically Firefox as a whole has more users than any single version of IE.

Have a great, illness-free week everyone! *cough* Time for some TheraFlu...

Net Neutrality Heats Up

Net Neutrality in the News

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

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

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

Search Deals

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

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

Blur, Droid and a Watch

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

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

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

Lastly, how stupid does this thing look?



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

Amazon Tidbits

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

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

The Short Stuff

Alright, time to wrap up with some quick stories.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great week!

The Zune is Sexy?

Since I'm so behind I decided to round up just the most important/interesting stories from the past 3 weeks that I wanted to talk to, so some of this news may be a bit old. Sorry about that - life has just been busy. Next week I'll probably do a PAX round-up, but the week after that I should be back to normal.

More Zune HD Details

The real news for the Zune HD is that it comes out on September 15 at competitive price points ($220 for 16 GB and $290 for 32 GB), and it's available for pre-order right now. What's more interesting is how much press the forthcoming mp3 player has generated. It has become, dare I say, sexy.



PC Mag, for one, had some glowing hands-on impressions. To re-cap some of the high points of the device: it has an OLED screen (if you've never seen OLED, you have to prepare yourself mentally for how gorgeous it is), it can output HD to an external screen (like a TV), it plays HD radio, it has a seemingly revamped Internet Explorer Mobile browser, and the user interface is a breath of fresh air from a company that is rarely known for good user interfaces. Aside from that, the videos I've seen all show it as being surprisingly snappy, and that could be due to the nVidia Tegra chip under the cover. Yeah, nVidia designed the processor for the Zune HD - weird, huh? This bad boy has 8 cores including dedicated cores for HD video processing, audio processing, and graphics processing. This means, for one thing, that loading a song won't slow down your experience with the UI, which is pretty awesome.

Aside from this being a Microsoft product, the reason the Zune HD is turning heads is because it's the first mp3 player since the iPod Touch to really try to innovate the user experience. Apple has been resting on its laurels and while the Zune HD obviously won't dethrone them it is likely to chip away at market share if Microsoft markets it right. The integration with the Internet looks a lot tighter than with the now defunct Zune in even something as simple as browsing other music by an artist. Of course, it's September now, which means that it's time for an Apple special event related to music so Microsoft could be undercut by an Apple announcement (probably still no tablet though, so don't hold your breath), but at least they have a compelling product this year to brave the media onslaught.

Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard

There have been a lot of articles reviewing Snow Leopard and Windows 7 over the past few weeks, including a cool head-to-head at Tech Radar. Interestingly enough, they were balanced enough to say that neither is better than the other but that you should definitely upgrade to one of them. Snow Leopard is much more of an incremental upgrade than Windows 7 with a lot of things most people won't notice since Apple puts out updates to OS X so regularly, but the reception so far seems mostly positive. As for Windows 7, Gizmodo sums up a lot of the pluses and minuses you'll see around. They really sing the praises of the performance and UI improvements. When the worst parts of upgrading are the multitude of versions and a lack of innovation in the Control Panel, you know you have a winner.

If you're still not convinced about upgrading to Windows 7, here are 18 reasons to upgrade. I'm plugging another one of these article because it actually points out some stuff I didn't know about. For example, there's finally an ISO burner out of the box, and it actually has calibration tools to help you hook up your PC to that shiny new HD TV in your living room.

The Wake of the Google Voice Rejection

At the end of July, Apple rejected Google Voice from its app store and from the media coverage it was getting you'd think the world ended. I'm sure Google was even surprised by the outpouring of support for them against big bad Apple. In reality, this is business as usual for the iPhone App Store (to be fair, Google was in talks with Apple before submitting Google Voice and were expected to glide through the approval process). An underground app store has actually grown for the iPhone called Cydia for jailbroken iPhones. I'm surprised that Apple hasn't already shut down Cydia, to be honest. It's funny how the Pre community is full of home brew applications and this is totally encouraged, whereas Apple has gone on record as saying that jailbreaking your iPhone is insidious and compared it to terrorism in one instance (I don't have the citation on this handy, but it definitely happened).

Meanwhile, Microsoft is encouraging developers to charge more than a buck for their applications if they believe it's worth more. So whereas iPhone developers have taken to relying on volume of downloads, Microsoft is pushing its community to the model of driving revenue by using the price as a measure of quality. In all these situations, what's clear to me is that no one has it figured out. Isn't that crazy? Obviously, the iPhone app store is very successful financially, but to some expense of Apple's brand. Everyone has been following different strategies with regards to mobile applications, and yet in the past 7+ years of smartphones, no one has it down just right.

YouTube Extends Revenue Sharing

YouTube has tried many things over the past few years to try and bring in some dough, and they've now decided to extend revenue sharing to viral videos. I guess it was only a matter of time that they figured this out, and I think it's a promising idea. So if your video is deemed as going viral, they'll offer you the chance to serve ads with your video and get a cut of the profits. So if you're not already a YouTube Partner but your video goes big, you still have a chance to make money until you get set up with the program. I'm really interested to see if this has any impact on their bottom line.

Google Maps Adds Traffic to Roads

This is a cool idea that a company called Dash has been working on for a while but Google has added to Google Maps for major roads: figuring out traffic on roads via peer-to-peer communication. So when you turn on My Location in Google Maps on your mobile device, it will send back anonymous information on your speed back to Google, which is used to build congestion ratings on roads. It's probably going to be a while before enough people make the effort to provide their location information to make this usable, but it's a great experiment, at the very least.

Target is Flying Solo

Target has been a partner of Amazon.com for about 8 years now and has finally cut the cord. They'll be running their own e-Commerce operation in 2011. Personally, I don't understand this decision. Running your own e-Commerce site is a huge undertaking, but we still don't know if they're going to to build their new platform on any Amazon services or not.

Microsoft Clings to IE6

Last, but not least, Microsoft has responded to the push from developers to kill IE6. They basically are following the philosophy that you can't force someone to upgrade old software and you have to instead accept it and support it. Microsoft plans to support IE6 for as long as they support XP, which I'm pretty sure will be for a very long time. The problem is that designing a site that works on IE6 as well as IE7 and IE8 and competitors (like Firefox and Safari) is often daunting. I follow the camp that we should get rid of IE6 and sites should explicitly have a message for IE6 users that they need to upgrade to view the site. I know that's not the best user experience, but that browser is also even less secure than IE8, so I don't believe in coddling users who are just afraid of change. Just because some kids don't like vegetables doesn't mean you give them chocolate for dinner.

I'll try to keep down my twittering this weekend at PAX since I got a little crazy with it last year, but I'll try to post a few pictures over the weekend on my Twitter feed, and of course I'll have round-up up by Tuesday. Have a great week, everyone!

Google's [N]OS

Google Chrome OS

Every other tech blogger is talking about Google Chrome OS, and since it was the biggest news of last week I'd be remiss to not talk about it myself. Wikipedia (the ultimate authority for information on anything, of course) defines an operating system (OS) as "an interface between hardware and user...responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer". To break it down even more: it abstracts away the details of the hardware its run on so that software manufacturers can easily develop the software you love/hate to use. Of course, you probably are already familiar with the biggest ones on the market right now: Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and, probably to a much lesser extent (save the geeks out there), Linux. Linux is the only one of the three that's open source, and as such it comes in many flavors, or distributions, so that it's customized for the end user in terms of what's supported right out of the box and what it's optimized for. Companies on Linux tend to use Red Had Enterprise Linux while a lot of individuals and universities tend to stick to Ubuntu, and there are many more in between. In fact, webOS (the OS for the Palm Pre) is running on Linux as is Google's
Android mobile platform (currently only available on the G1 in the U.S.). Typically, Linux companies make their money off of support.

Ok, that's enough of a crash course in operating systems, so what is this Google Chrome OS thing? In a very terse nutshell, it's Google's flavor of Linux designed for netbooks (i.e. cheap, small, highly portable laptops) fitted with the Google Chrome browser. This is why I call it a NOS (read: No S) and crassly called shenanigans after a couple of beers last week at trivia. I've been called out by multiple people on this: it is, by definition, an OS. However, this is only because it's built on Linux. They're not really developing a new OS, just re-packaging Linux for a more mainstream audience and calling it their own (granted, with the disclosure that Linux is running under the hood). A part of me thinks it's cool that rather than re-inventing the wheel they're building on a great product that more people should be doing, but another part of me feels ripped off that they're getting all this free press from combining two old technologies.

To be fair, it's not a bad idea: building an OS that is tightly integrating with the Internet we've come to know and love. It's really quite incredible how far along the world has come as far as embracing the Internet in just the last 10 years. There was no YouTube or social media or even the idea of blogging as it stands today - it was almost the wild west of the Internet age. Things have come to the point now where a lot of average consumers don't do a whole lot on their computer that's not in their web browser, aside from maybe word processing, spreadsheets, or slide presentations. Meanwhile, Microsoft came out with XP, which was a solid and time appropriate OS, followed by Vista, which wasn't a bad OS but was plagued with development hitches and being heavy overall. This was ironic because people often complain that their computer are too slow as it is even despite getting newer and newer machines. Apple made incremental improvements to OS X, which were great but they've really been playing it safe for a long time now with OS X. No one has taken up the banner of an extremely minimalist OS. The reason that I've come to appreciate Chrome OS in the past week is that at work I've become accustomed to realizing what we really need in the software we're currently developing rather than all our long-term goals. I never short-change opportunities to make our long-term outlook better, but it's really important to not compromise getting done what needs to get done this year.

I believe that Chrome OS was born out of a fear that the trend of installing Android on netbooks would continue and give Google a black eye since Android is not intended for use in mobile devices bigger than the size of your average smartphone and is optimized for very different operations from a netbook. If Android gains steam in netbooks, they have to build Android as being good for phones and netbooks, or else speak out against their own platform for use in netbooks and make themselves look bad. So, in a way, creating Chrome OS makes a lot of sense for them. It's intended to have a thin UI and their full-featured Chrome browser, hopefully with improved security functionality (it's not terrible as is, but if it's going to be the main attraction then it could stand to be beefed up).

TechRadar has a good explanation of the announcement blog post and points out rightly that it is going to end up being placed as a competitor to Windows 7 even though it's not going to be scaled to meet the functions that Windows 7 is intended for since it's merely a front for a web browser. Apparently, it'll be available for developers later this year and shipped with netbooks in the latter half of next year. Rafe Needleman at CNet makes another great point about it: netbook users so far, on average, haven't been all that impressed with netbooks running Linux. This isn't a sleight at all to Linux on netbooks, that's just based on the sales figures of Linux netbooks versus XP ones. With Windows 7 RC1 weighing in as more performant than XP, it's going to be an uphill battle for Chrome OS once it comes out an Windows 7 is already established in the market.

If things weren't interesting enough already: the products under the Google Apps brand are now officially out of beta (including Gmail, Calendar, and Docs). So Chrome OS is trying to sell everyone on trusting web applications and is removing the beta tag from their other services to help promote that. It's smart, but I wouldn't short change Microsoft amidst all this. It's already well known that they're going to be beefing up Office in its forthcoming release to have collaborative features online that compete with Google Docs except for fully supporting all the Office formats in a richer way. There's also Gazelle, which aims to add significantly more security to the web browsing experience and could someday replace Internet Explorer.

All in all, I'd call Google Chrome OS a well-calculated experiment for Google. I respect their noble aims of speed, security, and simplicity, even if it isn't radically innovative. It is the next logical step in our acceptance of web applications since we now have smartphones with fully-realized web browsers, and so people with those phones are going to typically be more excited about web services than shrinkwrapped software. Whether or not they want this same experience from their netbook though or if they want what Windows 7 can provide remains to be seen.

Firefox Continues to Swallow Market Share

I'm really impressed by the beastly download numbers Firefox 3.5 has gotten weighing in at 5 million downloads in its first 24 hours (and is now at over 14 million downloads). This doesn't best the 8 million downloads for the release day of Firefox 3. I didn't know until reading that article that Firefox had been downloaded more than 500 million times last year, which is incredible. To top it off, Internet Explorer has lost 11.4% market share since March while Firefox 3.5 already claims 2.5%, which almost seems impossibly high to me except for the fact that it makes sense that 10%+ of Firefox users are huge fans anxious for upgrades. It may be a couple of months yet for the dust to settle on this upgrade an the IE upgrade to version 8 for us to see a more definitive trend though.

Meanwhile, we have improved performance and stability to look forward to in future releases of Firefox with the start of the Electrolysis project to investigate gains to be had from multiprocess browsing. In computer science, it feels like the solution to any performance problem is to throw more hardware at it or parallelize into multiple threads (5 cooks in a kitchen working on different parts of an entree will be much more efficient than one guy doing it all in serial). These improvements probably won't be ready until Firefox 4.0, at the earliest, but it will certainly bring it up to speed with one of the more innovative concepts that Google's Chrome browser brought to the table at its release.

DPRK Gets Cyber Frisky

Yesterday was a pretty eventful week in security. The biggest thing that happened was the crazy Distributed Denial of Service (DOS) attack staged last week against dozens of government and commercial sites in the US and South Korea, which North Korea is alleged to be behind. The 50,000 infected computers in the botnet actually had a program capable of wiping the machines clean to the point of being completely inoperable, though this functionality was not triggered (possibly to be triggered at a later date). That's pretty scary. To make matters worse, we can't actually prove that it was North Korea, so far. Given their lack of tech savvy, it's much more likely to have come from China given their recent track record. Maybe they were trying to incriminate North Korea, but what did they have to gain from these attacks? Was it a cover to steal information?



If that didn't scare you, Goldman Sachs was revealed to have been compromised last weekend by a Russian immigrant who stole top secret trading codes. Compromising a financial company like Sachs could unfairly game the stock and bonds market for ill gained profits. Amdist all the issues the financial markets have faced in the past couple of years, its no big surprise that this story didn't get too big last week. It shows that maybe these companies aren't as secure as we trust them to be and I hope that it'll encourage them to audit their current security measures (including Goldman Sachs).

In somewhat less scary news, Twitter has started suspending the accounts of users with the Koobface virus, which spreads itself through malicious tweets for a bogus URL that ultimately installs malware on the victim machine programmed to receive remote instructions. I'm definitely impressed with Twitter's aggressive measures to try to minimize the effects of this virus. I hope that they continue this trend, but I'd really like to seem them have their own URL shortening service built-in to the platform to filter out malicious links like these.

Now that you're good and scared, Techradar has an awesome roundup of tools that will fit on a flash drive to keep you safe while you're on-the-go. Go download them now!

The 7 Types of Best Buy Employees

This is the kind of Internet story that's always fun to read. Early last week, Gizmodo posted an article with a graphic that outlines the 7 types of Best Buy employees you'll find in any Best Buy store no matter where you are. It was pretty brutal but definitely funny as you've almost certainly met one of these people if you've ever been in a Best Buy, though narrowing all Best Buy workers to 7 types is definitely a tad harsh.

This article made its way in a lot of people's inboxes and RSS readers, and Best Buy could've easily ignored it as simply one blog's jab at their image. Instead, their CMO responded with the 1 type of Gizmodo blogger. I have to admit, it's pretty funny. Gizmodo accepted it in good humor in an attempt to spit in the face of the intent of the post, and they felt successful even though the feeling I'm getting from comments I'm reading is that Gizmodo got owned.

Why am I talking about this? Besides being a fun story, it's a great example of the right way to deal with a situation like this. Best Buy didn't make a big deal out of it, but a simple blog post dealt with it for just the audience that heard about it in the first place rather than the whole country via a mass media outlet. Plus, it wasn't a stodgy professional response, it showed that they actually had a soul. I was impressed. I'm still not going to shop at Best Buy because I absolutely adore Prime and hate the customer service I get at Best Buy (it's also not at a convenient location for me), but at least I have some more respect for them now.

Everything Else

I'm way over the time I allotted for this post (which happens every week so I don't know why I'm consistently surprised), but I do have some more articles to at least point you to for your own reading pleasure.

ASCAP is now going after people who embed YouTube videos of content protected by ASCAP in a slimy way to try to tell everyone how greedy they are about what they own. If they really want to mark their territory they should just walk into people homes and piss on their music collections.

The Boston Globe ran an article I enjoyed reading about why voicemail is dying. They're completely right, in my opinion: I hate getting voicemails because I don't have time to listen while at the office or it's not easy while to while walking home from the gym, but a text is much easier for me to process while I have headphones on.

Microsoft's XML rendering engine takes on deciding how it thinks the XML specification should work instead of how it does in rendering your XML. Aside from being totally contrary to the whole point of a standard, now that it's been done they can never undo this wrong. Ugh.

Twitter has been experimenting with ads on select profiles. I don't think this is the cash cow they need, but at least they've finally started trying things out.

Maximum PC has a wonderful Windows 7 upgrade guide including a bit of information I actually didn't know when asked the other week: each edition will include the 32-bit and 64-bit installations for both types of processors. For those who don't know what that means: you can use more than 4 GB of RAM with Windows 7 without getting a separate disk.

Rather than dropping the price of the PS3, it looks like Sony will be selling a bundle through Best Buy with arguably the two hottest games (Killzone 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4) for the standard $400 for 80 GB. Subtracting the price of the two games, this is about on par with was the PS2 cost at launch ($300), but they should really still drop the base price.

(Warning: shameless self-promotion) Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle 2 last week by about 15% to $300, which makes the gap between it and the DX more pronounced and makes it a much better deal. From playing with it hands-on, I have to say that it's a pretty slick, fun device. While I'm doing shameless promotion: Amazon Wireless also launched last week selling phones for Verizon and AT&T with the goal of bringing the tried and true Amazon customer experience to an audience that typically has a rough time buying phones.

Speaking of phones: Verizon and Sprint have committed to restricting all future phones they take on to having WiFi support. This is a great step forward to reducing consumer confusion in buying phones from them.

The Blackberry Tour launched today.


VideoLAN finally reading version 1.0! This is the best video player out there for watching any kind of content on any operating system.

The people working on the HTML 5 spec couldn't agree on a video codec, so the standard has dropped creating an open source video codec. This is unfortunate news, but at least the standard supports embedding video.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Taking Care of Your Computer

Keep Your PC Lean and Clean

A survey done of some of the guys who do tech support in Staples stores have turned up some interesting tips regarding routine maintenance that a lot of people seem to skip out on. The number one takeaway from that particular article is to keep your computer physically clean. Keeping your keyboard clean doesn't really correlate to computer performance, although it may help you type better if you use a small vacuum or pressured air, but more important are your internals. Desktop PCs can get lots of dust very fast, even faster than laptops, I'd say. With laptops, it's pretty easy to get a can or compressed air and just blow the dust out of the vents, but taking off your desktop PC to clean it out is definitely worth the trouble on even as infrequently as a bimonthly basis. Laptop users though have no excuse to not do it at least monthly - you will definitely seek a marked performance improvement.

The other tips are pretty standard stuff: keep your anti-virus software up-to-date and scan regularly (at least bi-weekly, I'd say), keep your OS up-to-date, defrag regularly (at least bi-monthly), clean out useless junk from your hard drive (at least bi-monthly), and backup the irreplaceable stuff (at least monthly), like music and photos and videos you've taken. Preventative maintenance really is key with extended the life of your computer just as living a healthy, balanced lifestyle is key to prolonging our own life. Certain mechanical failures can't be avoided, but you can definitely delay their arrival. My computer in college was over 4 years old by the time I graduated and still going strong (I only didn't keep it because I wanted a laptop for ease of portability).

Part of the problem is that people generally don't go through training before they start using a computer and develop bad habits, and so Makeuseof has 3 very basic tips that are pretty critical to the long-term success of a computer user. I can't stress enough how important it is to be able to type without closing watching your fingers in this day and age, and it's going to make your computer usage much more efficient. Nowadays, it's easier than ever with all the free software available online to help you learn and e-mail and IM to help you practice. The second tip is a biggie: be selective with your software. You're probably picky with the stuff you buy for your home, so why not be picky with what you install on your computer? You don't want something that's going to hog resources, and you certainly don't want to keep stuff around that you never use. You should audit your computer usage every few months and decide if there's crap on there you never use and stuff you wish you had. I'd roll into that tip that you need to arm yourself with good anti-virus and anti-spyware software to keep your computer clean. The last tip isn't as useless as it may sound: stay organized. Being organized in your home helps you find stuff faster to get done what you need to get done in your life and in your chores, and the same goes with your computer. I've become pretty proficient in getting a lot done on my computer in a short amount only because I've spent years refining how I organize things. It really does go a long way.

Firefox 3.5

Firefox is back with a bang in version 3.5. I've talked about it off and on for a few months and now it is finally in public release. I have it installed at work but not at home because not all my extensions are compatible with it yet, but it seems to be a very welcome upgrade. Ars Technica gives a pretty good, concise rundown of the new features, which includes privacy mode, UI improvements, performance tweaks, support for HTML 5 video embedding, and support for some neat API additions for developers (including a geolocation library). The best UI improvement, in my opinion, is improved crash recovery and session restoration: you can select what you care to restore now. If you had 40 tabs open before a crash but only need 20 tabs now, why waste time opening all those tabs? The biggest deal in this release are probably the improvements in the TraceMonkey Javascript rendering engine, which were definitely long overdue. It's incredible how common AJAX is nowadays, so improving that performance is going to really improve your browsing experience. The only feature in this release, it seems like, that wasn't catching up with other browsers was the added support for HTML 5 embedded video, which is still years out probably from being viable as an online format while everyone gets browsers that support it, but it's gotta start somewhere.

All-in-all, it's clearly not a major release, but definitely a welcome one. If you can't live without all your add-ons, you should wait a couple of weeks to upgrade. Otherwise, definitely jump on it.

Bing Adds Twitter Search, Loses Loyalty

The press has taken a surprising interest in Bing, but it's still struggling to gain market share against Google and is probably only doing as well as it is right now because of all the press coverage it has been getting. While its search results may not always best Google, its real biggest issue is getting the loyalty people seem to have to the Google brand. If the first thing you type is the Google URL when you need to search (in the case of the Pre, it's staring right at you when you enter in a search term from the home screen), it's hard to rewire yourself to think of Bing instead. I've actually been trying to use Bing more because I like that it gives you rollover previews of pages, but even my muscle memory is wired to use Google. In a focus group created by the Catalyst Group, people liked the results and visual layout offered by Bing, but weren't interested in switching because the results didn't seem to be any better than Google's and they were already using a lot of other Google services. Bing is definitely trying to build up other services to bring people in (like Travel and Maps), but it could really use a killer app to bring people into the Bing brand. Short of that, they're not going to be able to put a significant dent in Google's market share.

It is nice though that they now include some Twitter results. Right now they only include a few esteemed twitterers, but they intend to include all of Twitter. This may seem silly, but the power of searching social networking sites is that you get a pulse on what people are generally thinking at any given moment. What people are thinking may be stupid, but it is what it is and sometimes it happens to include actually interesting information.

Windows 7 Versions

Maximum PC has a nice article that accurately explains what's included in the various editions of Windows 7 to help you decide on which you need. I think the bright side is that Home Premium, which most new computers will include, genuinely includes all the stuff that the average person will care about. Professional feels more like it's for small businesses or users who are really afraid to cut the cord with XP, but I don't know why anyone would really need Ultimate, unless you often work in various languages. It included BitLocker encryption, but you can download TrueCrypt for free.

Augmented Reality

I think that the idea of augmented reality is really cool: it's basically a virtual layer over the world you see to provide additional information. This is nothing new for most gamers: if you've ever played a game that involved flying or a mech then you're familiar with a heads-up display that helps you identify enemies and friendlies and all that jazz. In the real world, it could help you orient yourself in a new place, and there's actually already an Android application that's soon to be released that gives a pretty good demonstration of its power. The applications aren't hard to see in video games with Project Natal and the Wii and just the fact that 3-d controllers seem to be all the rage now - with augmented reality the possibilities in that space are really endless.

Anyway, there's not a whole lot to say about it right now, but it's something to keep on your radar because I'm sure we'll see it again in the near future on other mobile platforms (i.e. please port Layar to webOS!).

The Short Stuff

As you can probably tell, this was a pretty uneventful news week, and so the remaining stories are pretty short to talk about.

Joost has given up on consumer-video and is now focusing on just partnering with cable and satellite providers to help them deliver online video services. I think this was definitely a smart move for them.

Steve Jobs is CEO of Apple again!

The founders of Engadget have started Gdgt, which is a pretty risky project from them that seeks to catalog all the gadgets out there and bring a slight social networking spin to the mix in creating an interactive gadget community. It's an interesting concept, and they explain it best.

Lifehacker has a fun article explaining how easy it is to crack WEP security on a wireless network. I learned all the gory details in college, but these are pretty nice crib notes.

PC World has some hands-on impressions of Moblin and they seem to be fans of it as a different kind of operating system: a platform specifically for the netbook market. Rather than being considered as a thin laptop OS it should probably be considered in genre as an offshoot of a mobile phone platform.

The webOS Mojo SDK has been leaked, and I haven't gotten a chance to play with it but I'm dying to devote some time to it.

If you're interested in what cell phone provider provides the best 3G service in your area, you'll really like this comparison. It looks like I picked the right provider in Seattle: Sprint.

Have a pleasant post-holiday hangover, everyone! I'll leave you with one of my best pictures from my weekend (click on it to enlarge):

Open Source Phones FTW

Mobile Platform Should Be Open

I'm not one of those people who thinks that everything should be open source and all proprietary software is evil. I follow the philosophy that there are certain technologies that just don't work as well being open source. When it comes to a mobile platform though (primarily cell phones), I think that operating systems that aren't open suck, and being open source just gets you extra brownie points (being open means that anyone can develop for it, being open source means that the source code is available and contributions to it can be made to a central body for organized releases).

The iPhone OS is very much locked down and you're probably thinking, "why does an open platform matter since the iPhone is dominating the market and it's not?" Actually, the iPhone only has on the order of 10% of the smartphone market with nearly half going to Nokia, so Nokia is the more appropriate example. However, parts of the Symbian OS, Nokia's posterchild, are open source. RIM beats Apple, too, in the smartphone market with Blackberry OS. Though Blackberry OS is 100% proprietary, anyone can develop for it (using certain restricted pieces do require RIM approval, however).

Enter Android (from Google) and webOS (from Palm). Both of these are latecomers to the game with a lot to prove, but they hold a lot of promise. Why? Android is fully open source and webOS is largely open source, and obviously anyone is welcome to develop applications for them and make them available to the public. I really like Tech Republic's rundown of why this matters. The primary gain you get is really open standards - the idea that lots of sites and developers can agree on common ground. Comparing what the iPhone and other locked down platforms have to Android and the Pre is like comparing a benevolent dictatorship to a democracy. Sure, the dictator may mean well, but that doesn't justify his position.

The other big gain you get from being open source/open is attracting more developers. I think a big flaw with Palm OS and the iPhone OS was that Palm and Apple decided to all but abandon the needs of their developers. Apple is obviously big on the app store, but only inasmuch as you play by their rules, which could mean that you spend maybe $30,000 developing an application that Apple won't let you release. That's a huge risk. When there's no other game in town though, what can you do? Sure, there's Symbian OS and Blackberry OS, but they're not as robust and have begun to show their age. Let's face it, much like Palm OS they're just way too utilitarian. The beauty of an open source platform is that you can help tweak it to meet your needs. If it's an open platform, then you also no longer have the risk of flushing money down the toilet. Also, I think it's lame that Apple charges you for the privilege of making applications for them and, thus, helping make the iPhone better. What's wrong with just taking a cut off the sales of the applications? Anyway, that's besides the point of this discussion, so I'll move on. The point is that being developer friendly is going to help you stay competitive in the long run. If a whole line of Android and webOS phones come out in the next year, then you can sell your applications to a wider audience (read: multiple carriers) outside the rule of a dictatorship on a budding platform (aside from the fact that Java and Javascript are easier to swallow than Objective C).

Security is going to become a larger issue for phones over the next few years. The writing is on the wall: buying stuff with/on your phone is here and soon people will be as comfortable with it as they are buying stuff off Amazon.com. A open source platform is going to be more secure because, aside from having the community to help you develop patches and find vulnerabilities you can also plug holes much faster. With major outbreaks, time is critical.

The last big thing I'd like to touch on here is syncing. Only being to sync with some proprietary software sucks. Even though the Pre can only sync by USB or iTunes, that's actually enough. By being able to access it by USB, you can develop applications around that very easily to handle syncing.

I firmly believe that open source platforms will have longer lifetimes of being popular and usable because of these things and many more. They're bound to be more customizable and more robust, and so unlike with the iPhone 3GS you can come up with huge improvements rather than just evolutionary tweaks much more easily. I'm a bit tired so I know I've been kind of all over the place with this, but I feel like this new generation of mobile platforms is our chance to get right what we've done wrong in personal computing. It's our opportunity to make these devices more user-friendly, user-customizable, and just plain useful. When you lock down your phone and you hide the source code I feel like it's totally contrary to that idea and is almost greedy. A band is nothing without all the people in it, and a mobile platform is nothing without the community of developers who nurture it. If you make their lives harder, then how can you sustain long-term success. That's why I'm so passionate about this.

Burn Notice on Blu-ray

Let's switch gears for a minute so I can talk about Burn Notice - which I think anyone who knows me has heard me rave about. I recently got Season 2 on Blu-ray.

Content-wise, this was an incredible season. I thought that it was a very good show in Season 1 that I would recommend to people with the caveat that it's not the best show on television, but it's a lot of fun to watch. With the second season, amidst the other shows on television this spring, it was clearly one of the top 5 shows on television, in my opinion. It went from just being a methodical, serialized spy show to really digging in deeper into the characters it revolves around and a more concrete driving plot towards the main character's main goal.

It follows burned (fired) spy Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) as he works for the people who burned him while trying to get his freedom back from them and figure out exactly who issued the burn notice and why. All the while, he's moonlighting in really fun situations. The writing got better this season, and the acting was as solid as ever from Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar (Fiona), and Bruce Campbell (Sam Axe). Donovan really shines, but everyone holds their own. To sweeten the pot, the season finale was one of the best season finales I've ever seen. I've never seen a season come to such a satisfying end while leaving me wanting more. For example, the last season of Lost left me wanting more, but I was pissed because it's sole purpose was almost to cheat me into watching next season by not wrapping barely anything up. Anyway, I highly recommend watching this show. Season 1 is a great season, don't get me wrong, but this season was like having your cake and eating it, too. It never ceases to amaze me how creative this show gets - it's not your standard formulaic cop show like every other cable television show out there, it really does make you think and you learn some pretty neat things.

As far as the Blu-ray set: it's as unimpressive as Fox's television DVD sets normally are. There's commentary and deleted scenes on a handful of episodes, a blooper reel, and a short behind-the-scenes featurette. What I found very tacky, though it's a common practice nowadays, is that it starts out each disk with an advertisement for this very set as well as the upcoming season. This is a touch better than advertising other shows, but I feel like I should get back some of the money I paid for having to watch their advertising. By the way, the advertising is in sub-standard definition - it's terrible quality. The behind-the-scenes featurette and blooper reel were pretty neat, and some of the commentary was alright but I didn't listen to all of it. The deleted scenes were in pretty terrible quality, but they're just nice to have on there. The actual episodes had pretty decent sound quality and really spotty video quality.

A lot of people have been bashing the video quality, but I think they're being spoiled. I'm sorry, but this isn't Lost or Heroes. These folks don't get big budgets to put on stunning visuals for you. I'll admit that it's overpriced as a Blu-ray to not have near-perfect colors and sharpness and such, but it's definitely not that bad. I felt that it was plenty sharp and some scenes had really beautiful colors. Several scenes tended to have a lot of grain - typically in the background though. The people usually looked pretty good, but sometimes a black background would be speckled with white. This wouldn't bother anyone except for people like me who walk to the television to look for imperfections like that for reviews like these or people who watch way too much high definition content. I'm used to watching Burn Notice in standard definition, so I can vouch for this being significantly better than that, and whether or not it's better than what you see on USA HD is debatable because I didn't see Season 2 in HD but Season 3 doesn't seem to look a whole lot better than what I see on my Blu-ray. It is, however, much prettier than Season 1 on DVD. The graininess thing is really not that bad though - there were plenty of scenes that really do look good. My TV is fairly top-of-the-line, also, so maybe that's why I'm not seeing it as bad some others are. I do think it lives up to being a Blu-ray disc, just on the lower end. We have the same issue with DVDs: the best looking DVDs look a lot better than the terrible ones, and that's just how it is. You're going to have that with any high definition format, the point is that it's still a lot better than the previous generation.

Should you get this season? Absolutely. This show bears watching again and again. Should you get it on Blu-ray? That's a judgement call. I think the DVDs for Season 1 looked bad enough to spring for Blu-ray for Season 2 (especially with the excerpts of Miami scenery), but if you only want Blu-rays that look in line with Planet Earth then you should stick with the DVD.

By the way, the Blu-ray format still isn't doing so hot and it looks to me like prices are still a determining factor of its success. Until we reach the point where a number of Blu-ray discs are priced below $20 and players are readily available at low prices, it's not going to take off.

New Android Phones

Back to mobile phones: two new Android phones have been announced. The first was the T-Mobile myTouch 3G, also known as the Google Ion to some developers or the HTC Magic to Europeans. It has no physical keyboard (so it's thinner than the G1) and it's extremely customizable. Its TFT LCD display does not support multi-touch, but its camera does have autofocus and it does include a microSD slot.

I'm actually more interested though in the HTC Hero, which also is a touchscreen phone with no physical keyboard and has a teflon coating to protect it from the dangers of your hand. Interestingly enough, it also includes a trackball to lure away Blackberry users. Anyway, the video posted in that article is actually pretty cool and promotes the user customizability that the myTouch also boasts via "widgets". A lot of the other features are pretty standard, but I really liked footprints, which allows you to place landmarks on your map application with pictures taken on the phone. Oh, and the icing on top is that it'll supposedly support Flash out of the box. In the fall though, several platforms will be getting a beta of Flash 10 including webOS, Symbian, Android, and Windows Mobile, but not the iPhone.



Google Voice Ramping Up

There's been a lot of buzz recently for Google Voice as more journalists get their hands on it, and it sounds like it's really cool. It's basically a portal for your phone needs: you can have one phone number that manages all your numbers, and that's just the start of it. Having voicemail transcription sounds awesome and so does easily routing and screening your phone calls, but it will require a new phone number (which is ironic since it's supposed to simplifying your voice needs). Ars Technica posted their thoughts on it including a feature that a friend told me was his million dollar idea (everyone has one) a few years ago, though Google didn't get this one from him: scheduling your ringer. That way, your phone will never go off during regular meetings or at church.

What I really like about Google Voice is the idea of aliasing yourself. I've come across this a lot at work, actually, so it's cool that I'm seeing it more and more in the real world. An alias is just another name for a pointer for those who are tech-minded. Being able to change your work number without changing your Google Voice number, is pretty awesome. You could have one number for all your phone numbers forever.

Facebook has also come around to aliasing with their landrush for custom URLs. Facebook clearly wants to become the phonebook for the Internet like Twitter has started to become, but they may be a little late to that game.

The Rest

Ok, it's like 2 hours past my bedtime now. Time to wrap up!

Windows 7 prices for Home Premium and Professional will be half off ($50 and %100, respectively) if your pre-order and already have XP or Vista, and you get a Home Premium upgrade for free on any new computer you buy. These are awesome deals.

I regret not having time to talk about The Register's article on YouTube's strategy, because it is good. In essence, becoming gatekeeper of online video is going to provide for cross-pollination into Google services that do make them plenty of money.

Comcast and Time Warner have teamed up for TV Everywhere, but I don't understand what that means from reading their press release. It sounds like non-exclusive on demand online content to supplement what's already on television at no additional charge. Trials start next month.

China mandated that all computers sold there must include the government's security software, which is buggy and insecure on its own. Amidst public outrage the government has oddly decided to not make it mandatory but that it must be included in the box with any new computer sold even if the user decides not to install it.

The Pre app store has reached 1 million downloads less than 3 weeks after launch with a library of just 30 applications. Clearly, the users of the Pre are enthusiastic about the app store (from just this metric, moreso than iPhone users at its app store launch), and the end of summer (SDK release) can't come soon enough.

Sprint has come out swinging against Apple with a print ad that indirectly, but clearly, places the Pre above the iPhone. Let the battle begin! I'm still a fan of the Flow ad myself.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson. The new networks criticizing him on the eve of his death for accusations of being a pedophile irritated me - can't we spend a few days celebrating the good things he's brought to the world? Like the patented Smooth Criminal lean.

MySpace is downsizing. My prayers go out to those laid off, but this shows that the social networking of yore is really past its prime.

Apple has sold more than 1 million iPhone 3GS phones. That's crazy.

Lifehacker has a rundown of the top 10 features to look forward to in Firefox 3.5, and I'm personally really excited for TraceMonkey, smarter session restore, and HTML 5 support.

Paying for Hulu

Note: scroll down to yesterday's post for my impressions of the Palm Pre and review of Up. Consider this a continuation of that post - I'm not covering today's stories.

The Future of Hulu

There's not a whole lot really exciting stories from last week. just a bunch of little ones (not counting the Pre). There was a lot going on at E3, but I think too much for me to effectively condense down here. I was actually pretty impressed by G4's coverage.

What I want to start out with here is that Chief Digital Officer of Hulu has stated that he envisions premium subscription content on Hulu in the future. I guess this isn't really a huge shocker, but I find a couple of things really funny about this. It seems to somewhat parallel TV as we know it today where it started out low quality, free, and to a limited audience (black and white broadcast television vs. beta Hulu), then we got color TVs (compare to Hulu in HD), and now we're approaching what we know as cable TV today: content that costs you a bit extra.

The question is: will people pay? How deep is Hulu's market penetration? I think it's inevitable for this to happen, and I think that it's going to involve some messy interference from the cable companies. It may even result in breaking net neutrality to provide higher speed access to premium Hulu subscribers. Ultimately, if it's cheaper than what people pay for cable right now and it becomes available on more set top boxes (like Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand already are), I think it'll definitely do well. You could even rope in more subscribers by providing Hulu content readily available on multiple mobile platforms (aside from just the iPhone).

I think this is where the future of television is. Not necessarily in just Hulu, but online on-demand content. Just look at the Xbox 360. They announced a number of improvements at E3 to make your Xbox the center of your home entertainment experience, right down to having TV available on demand. Times are definitely changing, and the bar is constantly being raised as far as what entertains us - I'm excited to see what comes out of it all in the next 5 years. I mean can you imagine that just 3 years ago there was no such thing as an iPhone and now it's hard to enter a room without seeing a smartphone?

Google Wave and Squared

I briefly touched on Google Wave last week but didn't have time to watch the 60+ minute presentation that Google had put together on it. Mashable was kind enough to condense it down into its 6 key features, and it actually looks like a pretty awesome platform. I imagine that they'll try to integrate it with Android - can you imagine being away from work but still being able to collaborate in a meeting with your colleagues no matter where you are with this?

The real big Google story coming out of last week (there has to be at least one each week) was Google Squared, which allows you to get your search results in a spreadsheet format. This allows you to work with your results much like you would an Excel spreadsheet and may have been intended to help research into linked data. It's probably not a big deal to the average person, but definitely not a bad addition.

HDMI 1.4

The next version of the popular HDMI cable, 1.4, was revealed last week and should be available to device manufacturers next month so that we can start seeing cables and compatible products using them as early as next summer. I love HDMI because it's just one simple cable to handle your high definition video and audio, and it's easily affordable. 1.4 will support 3D, an audio return channel (think microphones), an ethernet channel (for Internet connectivity), higher resolution (up to 4 times that of 1080p), a system for automotive HD content delivery, and mnicro-HDMI connectors. The downside of all this is that it'll result in 5 types of cables instead of today's single type of HDMI, which gives way to manufacturers (like Monster) for confusing customers and charging higher prices for cables that don't cost more to make. I'm definitely disappointd in that decision, but I can appreciate how difficult putting together an international standard like this can be so I just hope that it ends up being as cool as it sounds right now.

Digging for Ads

Digg announced that they're planning to roll out an advertising system that takes the concepts of supply and demand further using the concept behind Digg: charging advertisers more money for ads that are dugg higher by people as being more interesting. I'm really impressed by this idea - they've taken an audience that is really anti-advertising and are trying to engage them in ads with an interface they already understand and enjoy. Facebook has played around with this, but I think that they bombard their users with changes and experiments so often that no one really cared.

The Rest

I'm running out of juice here (very exhausting day), but I have a bunch of quick stories that are worth mentioning (pared down from an even longer list!).

Dailymotion has launched a video platform to compete with Flash by allowing developers to simply use "

Star Trek

Star Trek [Zero]

I spent two hours on a wonderfully sunny Saturday afternoon to see Star Trek and it was worth every minute/penny. Color me impressed. If you're familiar with the series then you'll probably see several characters you know, just in a younger form:



If you haven't seen the series though then fear not because that's definitely not a pre-requisite. Other than saying that this movie is a pre-quel to the popular old school iteration of the series, there's not much I can say that without spoiling the really fun plot. Having only seen a few episodes of the original series though, I walked out not only pretty impressed and satisfied but I actually wanted to look up old episodes (which are available legally online at Hulu and TV.com and others) because it got me really interested in the show's storyline. From talking to my friend who was a fan of the series, I'm not sure how well the plot fits in with the series that succeeds it, but I have a theory that I can't share without spoiling the movie. Anyway, there were several nods to the series to give fans that giddy nerdgasm that you can only get from being in the know on the series.

Every aspect of this movie was really enjoyable. They all came together to make a genuinely fun movie experience. I think almost every actor fit their role very well - especially newcomer Chris Pine as James T Kirk and Zachary Quinto (Sylar) as Spock. By the way, don't look at the IMDB cast list because it has a few spoilers. The plot had a few minor issues, but I didn't find any of them to be dealbreakers. The script was strong, but had a few minor issues (mainly a couple of scenes I didn't think needed to be in there) that I didn't think were very noticeable. Even though it was more than 2 hours long it really didn't feel that long and there was an ample amount of welcome comic relief sprinkled throughout the film. Oh, and the visuals were tasteful and well done. You have to expect a lot of CG in a movie like this, and that's probably the only real downside to the movie. If you're one of those purists who hates seeing CG, then you'll definitely take issue with this.

I highly recommend running to your nearest theater to see this one. I'm actually probably going to pre-order it on Blu-ray, in fact, so that I can watch it again. It's one of those movies where I can't recall all the scenes because there were so many great scenes and they were quite dense. I'd say it's a solid A movie and appropriate for the whole family. There was almost no nudity and no bad language, although the plot may be too complex for some kids.

The Kindle DX

There was a lot of criticism for the Kindle when it came out (both times) for being a bad experience for reading magazines and newspapers, but the DX changes all that. It's a large format (9.7" screen) electronic reader that's really ideal for magazines, newspapers, and textbooks. Additionally, it can show PDFs without having to convert it to the Kindle format, which is because the Kindle 2 screen is simply too small to display PDFs natively without being irritating to browse.

PC World has a great walkthrough of the device showing you everything you could want to know about it. They note that it's still a great travel companion, the navigation joystick is better than before, it has an accelerometer to easily change orientation, and it includes enhanced notation features for textbooks. You can see a lot more about it at its product page (the video tour is pretty neat), but be forewarned that it's not going to be out until later this summer so all you can do is reserve your place in line. It's also pricier at over $400, but I think it has enough features to entice book lovers to give it a shot.

More Microsoft Layoffs

Microsoft promised more layoffs this year and they have, unfortunately, arrived. Approximately 3,000 employees were laid off, but from talking to someone who was laid off in January it sounds like the severance packages are pretty generous and I think many were bright enough to find work elsewhere before their severance runs out. Also, some layoffs are getting re-hired in different parts of the company, and this may be the last of Microsoft's layoffs for the foreseeable future (at least they hope so).

The work on Windows 7 continues though and Gizmodo has a cool little article that's kind of an FAQ for Release Candidate 1 (RC1). It explains things like that it'll work on your computer comfortably through March of next year, the upgrade path is really easy from Vista or the beta, and that the bugs right now seem to be pretty trivial.

ATM and Botnet Scandals

In last week's security news I have two small-time scandals.

The first has probably been going around through people's inboxes (which I think is a bad way to spread security tips, to be honest): having your bank account stolen at an ATM machine. You can see a video here of how a hidden camera over the number pad and an attachment on the card reader can record not only your account number but your PIN. It doesn't appear to be in more than a few places (on the west coast, at that, I believe), but with the Internet spreading an idea like this far and wide, I wouldn't be surprised if it starting popping up in random locations sooner than later so please be on the lookout for it (even at your usual ATM).

Some researchers at UC Santa Barbara hijacked a botnet for 10 days earlier this year to see just how bad they are, and the results were definitely grim. In a single hour the botnet was able to collect 56,000 passwords. Since these passwords were often used at multiple sites, the original hackers were able to steal much more sensitive information from these users, and all via pretty simple crackers designed to break weak passwords. It kind of just shows a common theme in my posts: people have to be responsible when they use their computer online, especially when it comes to their finances. Please, at the least, pick strong passwords and try to rotate them (i.e. change them) at least a couple of times a year.

Quick Stories

I actually don't have much to say about these last stories, but they're still noteworthy:

The MPAA is so backwards that they think teachers should videotape showings of films used for educational purposes rather than rip the DVDs for fair use purposes. Wow. To put together a video explaining how to do this is even worse (almost a slap in the face to teachers).

Trent Reznor made a pretty frustrated post about the Apple iPhone app store and its rejection of an update to the Nine Inch Nails application that allowed you to stream a song that had profanity in it (which you could actually buy through iTunes). I just really liked how straightforward and sensible his arguments were (concise, too).

Vic Gundrota recently left his position at Microsoft as General Manager of Platform Evangelism in promoting their APIs to become Vice President of Engineering at Google. There's a short interview video that's become popular in which he explains that his young daugther's knee-jerk reaction to consult his phone when he didn't know something sparked in him the realization that the personal computer was dying and smartphones were the future. I thought it was a cool epiphany and while I think that personal computers still have a long life ahead of them I agree that smartphones have become more and more pivotal in our everyday lives.

Aleptu has a roundup of some really tricked out keyboards. I'd really like to try the keyless ergonomic keyboard - it sounds pretty interesting (but radical).

Hopefully, data recovery will never be an issue for you. Just in case though, you'll probably want to pay attention to this roundup from Lifehacker of the five best free data recovery applications.

I hope everyone has a great week! If you live in Seattle: sorry, it looks like our week is going to have a pretty rainy start, but we can hope for a beautiful weekend (it looks like it'll be a definitely possibility, and just in time for the cheese festival at Pike Place).