2011: The Year of the Tablet

This post is kind of two weeks overdue, but life's been busy and it's been hard to find time to finish this post. Better late than never though!

Do you hear that sound? Listen closer - it's the beating of the drums of war. It's coming! I used to think it was all hype, but it really is brewing. Apple once again has set the stage for a new product category through the iPad, and it's a market that it looks like they don't quite have completely cornered. There's plenty of room for competitors to edge their way in, of which there are three: the Blackberry Playbook, the rabble of Android tablets, and the Palm TouchPad. Surprisingly enough, they're all pretty worthy competitors.

Over 14 million iPads were sold last year, and given that that's all early adopters there's clearly much more under the surface there, so the market has plenty of room for anyone who can differentiate from the iPad and/or beat the hefty price tag. Personally, I have no desire to get a tablet, but when I think about it I can easily see the appeal for everyone else. Every computer breakthrough in the past 30 years has seemed to involve portability - convenience is key to people. Gone are the days of trying to type on a keyboard in a cramped airplane seat - here are the days of Kindles and iPads and iPhones when you're on-the-go. It never ceases to amaze me how much sex appeal matters in gadgetry. While many people are content with what they have, there's a large contingent who will drop what they have in a hot minute for something that's more fun to play with or easier to use even if they don't actually need to upgrade. Back to tablets versus computers though - I'm fairly tech savvy and yet I really only use my home computer for a few things: browsing the web for news and information, e-mail, listening to music, storing pictures, writing speeches, and playing games with friends. When you boil down your computer to a set of items like that and consider that you can get all that and more in a smaller form factor for less money, why wouldn't you want a tablet instead? I mean the hardcore PC games will stay on PCs, but we're seeing pretty compelling stuff on mobile devices now. And granted, typing is much easier on a physical keyboard, but you can accessorize your tablet if you're like me and really hate typing on a touch screen. These are all pretty small arguments compared to the general interest that has grown around tablets and the place they can fill in our lives if we chuck our desktop or laptop computers.

Let's start with the little guy: the HP TouchPad. I'm an outspoken fan of webOS and it's only getting better in version 2.0. The TouchPad was announced earlier this month, but you can see a more recent hands-on video here. It's starting off with a steep disadvantage of not coming out until the summer, but it has a sexy 1.2 GHz Snapdragon processor, a 9.7" display, and a front-facing camera. Anything that you had on the Pre is there also (Synergy, the multitasking interface, etc.), minus the gesture area (since you'll be alternating between landscape and portrait orientations a lot). Aside from the front facing camera, what sets it apart from the competition is its tight integration with the Pre 3. Notifications and texts can be shared and I'm sure a lot more. I think this is pretty much the last hurrah for webOS - if this launch fails then it's all over. I think that given how small HP's mindshare is for mobile device owners, the chips are definitely stacked against them. With an inventive marketing campaign and competitive pricing, I think it definitely stands a chance. They also need to really reach out to the developer community and get aggressive about upping the ante on the app store. There's some great stuff out there, but it's a far cry from what Android and the iPad have.

The Blackberry Playbook is set to ship in the next 1-2 months and has gotten a lot of good press. I'd consider a media darling, in fact, because the tech press seems to be really excited about it. The only pricing I've seen so far is under $500 for the 4G model, which is indeed quite competitive (there are a few different models with different connectivity options though). It's also pretty beefy under the hood with a dual core 1 GHz ARM processor - lending itself quite well to its marketing as being very much a multitasking computer. They even have demos where they look at pictures, play HD video, and listen to music all at once (although it appears that this is an optional feature as you can configure it to only keep focus on one item at a time if you'd like). Another strength is the extremely high clarity of 170 pixels per inch (even sharper than the iPad). Despite how fast and shiny the PlayBook is though, I think it's going to have serious problems standing up to the competition because Blackberry's brand is not near what it used to be even 3 years ago and the app store is going to be worlds behind every other tablet coming out this year. With competitive pricing and strong incentives to developers, I think they may be in the running, but their uphill battle could be even steeper than HP's. While it's cool that they're trying to be appealing to the enterprise with their Torch integration, I don't know if that's going to be enough for them to build significant market share around it. Let's face it, a tablet is usually not for work, it's for play.

There's a lot of Android tablets coming out soon so I won't go into hardware details, but Honeycomb is a pretty slick OS. It just oozes the kind of class that we've come to expect from Android over the years. The launcher is in essence what you normally see from Android phones but just scaled up a bit for a tablet (like a GMail widget that keeps up with live e-mail) and with a spoonful of sugar on top as the transitions are cleaner and a way to zoom out and get an eXpose-like view of things (as pictured above). A few more noteworthy items: Google Maps looks a lot more like Google Earth now that you can see 3-D models in it, the browser appears to be just a tablety version of Chrome, and the GMail UI weaves pretty well with what you've come to know and love in your browser. I think the odds that Android tablets won't survive the year are slim to nil. Aside from the momentum Android has and the number of tablets that will be out there this year running Android, it has an extremely competitive app store. The only things holding it back are pricing (the Motorola Xoom is $800 - I hope others don't follow suit) and the risk of over-saturating the market with selection.

There's not much I can say about the iPad that you don't already know, except for the fact that there's almost certainly a new iPad coming out this summer that hasn't been announced yet. Hence, the iPad could either strengthen its lead or lose a decent amount of market share to the competition. Regardless of what happens, it'll definitely still be in this game after this year - the question is really whether their majority share of the market will be staggering or just a simple one. They've got excellent market share, an enormous app store, and a leg up on the competition in having had a year head start to iron out the kinks for the 2nd generation. Their biggest downfalls are pricing, weight, the lack of multitasking, and the standard fact that the iPad plays in a somewhat walled garden since the app store is more heavily controlled than any of the others are/will be. Even with all these issues, it's still the iPad. The brand name is the trump card, even in the face of all the cool stuff the other guys have to offer (not to say that the iPad is a bad device by any means, but the competitors are no less slick).

We have four tablet OSes entering this year and I predict only three will survive, possibly even only two. By "survive" I mean by a reasonableness standard - none of these guys will quickly give up the battle, but anyone who can't get their foothold in this year firmly into the market is done for. I expect for it to be a very interesting year for tablets, and I look forward to watching from the sideline as I clutch my 16.3" Asus laptop in the face of this anti-keyboard revolution.

PAX 2010

My PAX 5

This was my third year going to PAX and it was a blast, as always, albeit exhausted (I counted having played over 30 games on the show floor). I feel like last year was a little better because there were more games I was pumped to see and less people there, but this year was bigger (the main theater was moved out of the convention center to Benaroya Hall - maybe it'll be the Paramount next year). Anyway, per tradition, I'd like to list out the top 5 games that I saw. I obviously didn't play everything and I'm not a journalist so I just did what I could with the schedule of stuff I wanted to see.

5. Infamous 2 - I was a little surprised how much fun this was to play. It was just a very satisfying experience overall and the controls just seemed to click with me, possibly better than with other people. The demo showed off how the camera does some automatic camera zooms for stylistic fighting, which I could see getting annoying after all, and it showed off a fair bit of rampant destruction of the city at your hands. I didn't really play the original, but I'll have to keep my eye on this.

4. Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 - My friend doesn't agree with me on this, but I think Lucasarts made an enormous improvement over the original here. The demo of the original was so bad that I didn't even finish it - I just couldn't get force grip to go my way. Ultimately, force grip is very hard to nail down with a normal game controller and may be better for something more like the PS Move controller where you can gesture in 3-D space. Anyway, the demo they had was pretty long and I had a ton of fun tossing around storm troopers and just being a Jedi (or is it Sith?) badass. Give this one a try before you knock it.

3. Epic Mickey - I think fanfare was low for this one because it's a Disney game rather than a big video game property. Still, I thought it was pretty creative. The graphics weren't that great (better than I expected for the Wii), but the gameplay was something different and I, for one, appreciated that. I don't think Disney games appealing to an older audience are so common that this game is a write-off. The visual style is superb and it brought back so much nostalgia of playing Mickey Mania back in day, even though it has nothing to do with it. Anyway, the game hinges on you using a paint brush to thin out (i.e. remove) pieces of the world or painted in parts that are missing. It lends itself to some great puzzle elements so I'd probably call it an adventure game more than anything else.

2. Donkey Kong Country Returns - If there's one game that Wii owners need to look forward to, it's this one. I adored this series growing up. I didn't own any of them, but I rented and beat each of them (actually rented from Phar-mor, remember when they existed?). My heart grew three sizes seeing the love they put into bringing this franchise back. It's so great that they preserved the 2-D nature of the game while upgrading the graphics (very well, I might add, despite being on the Wii). The gameplay felt just as cute, clever, and fun as it did growing up, and I definitely see it being a great party game (well, a party for nerds, that is).

1. Portal 2 - Even though it wasn't playable, this game looks like it's what we've been patiently waiting for since Portal came out what seems like forever ago. Aside from being more of what we came to know and love, it has co-op (including the ability to hug - chest bump will probably be in Portal 3) and newer guns (actual I think from Tag, which I covered last year) for painting surfaces to make you faster or bounce around, etc. The only problem was that the puzzles seemed very difficult, but I imagine it'll be back next year since they have over a year to go on it. That'll give them a chance to make it even longer and see people struggle with how difficult the puzzles are (or, hopefully, to make it easier to chew for more gamers).

I do have a few honorable mentions that didn't make the list:

• Duke Nukem Forever was the biggest news of PAX, by far. That's right, after 10+ years, they really are doing a sequel to the iconic FPS Duke Nukem 3D. It didn't make my list because I didn't wait in the 2-4 hour line to play it. I decided that my priorities lied in other stuff going on during PAX. My friend played it and it convinced him to pre-order it as soon as he can. It's apparently just as fun as it used to be with the humor intact and much longer. This game stands to be pretty huge though, especially judging from the great lengths people went through to play it at PAX. I managed to find some probably illicit videos of it online and it definitely looks awesome, but I can only imagine the outcries against it when it comes out given how crude it is. They should be releasing videos soon for the rest of us to see it - it doesn't seem to be vaporware this time around though. By the way, I think this was the first major game to be announced at PAX, which is a pretty awesome achievement for what started as a tiny indie games expo in Bellevue.
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  LittleBigPlanet 2 was fun, but my playtime with it didn't involve much of the super new stuff, I'm afraid. The level we played was trying to protect these Sackbots and it was very cute. The new costumes were also really neat. I can't say I'm amped for this game since it's nothing revolutionary, but I will be getting it at some point because it's looking very good.
• Killzone 3 deserves a shout-out because (aside from them giving out the best quality shirts) it was so fun we played it twice. The graphics were some of the best on the show floor. I wasn't sure whether to put it on my list at #5 or not, but ultimately it was just another FPS. It was neat how you chose a class and had abilities based on that class, like cloaking and stuff, and the gameplay modes were cool, but nothing really new. Just a triple A FPS. They did have it in 3-D and with the Move controller, but I played some third person shooter in 3-D and it hurt my head - I didn't bother trying with the Move controller.

• NBA Jam is back, and playing it very much took me back to middle school where I used to play it all the time when guests my age came over. It's as fun an arcade basketball game as ever, and actually transferred pretty well, visually, to the Wii.
• I'm not big on action games, but I thoroughly enjoyed Marvel vs. Capcom 3, even if I did get owned. The character models and gameplay are the high quality you'd expect from this series.
• Similarly, Mortal Kombat was a return to form. You can see some footage of it here - fatalities are back and bloodier than ever. A couple of them were so disturbing I shudder to describe them - no one under the age of 17 should be in the same room as this game's disc, but it will be a great ride for the rest of us.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was playable in multiplayer and, while the graphics didn't impress me, it was fun. I think it would get repetitive after a while because it's just about trying to stay hidden until you find your target and kill them, but it seems like something that would be fun once in a while. You get a new target once you kill yours, but of course you're also someone else's target and have to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious since there are clones of all the players walking around under AI control that are not actually assassins.
• I didn't get any time with the Kinetic, but I tried out the Playstation Move a bit and it seemed fun. Not really a game changer, but I noticed better accuracy than with the Wiimote. Supposedly, it's hit or miss and I only played one game with it, but we'll see what happens with it.

And a few dishonorable mentions, real quick:

• Bethesda really missed with Hunted. It's a medieval take on Army of Two with very clumsy controls. Nothing at all was compelling about this game, and it actually froze before we could finish the demo. I was actually glad it froze so I could leave.
• I don't know why Sega was showing off Conduit 2. If anything, they should lock it away in a box so no one knows it exists. Aside from being by far the ugliest game I saw all weekend, the controls were really bad and the AI was even worse. Nothing redeemed this Wii FPS, except that you could relax your frustrations by moving three steps to the left to try out Sonic Colors, which is classic Sonic in 3-D and on speed.

PAX Keynote

Warren Spector, associated with many great classic games including Deus Ex and Wing Commander, gave the keynote this year and it was the best PAX keynote I've seen (I never saw the Wheaton one). Unfortunately, there's not a video online yet with the most poignant part of his speech, but he basically made the claim some considered quite bold that video games are the medium of the century much like books were ages ago and movies were last century. Every new form of media faces resistance before it makes it big, and video games are growing to the point that they're becoming the ultimate multimedia experience. I've always considered them to be that way because of the ridiculous music quality and, often, voice acting nowadays, but the growth of PAX and the revenues of the industry as a whole are proof that it's becoming more and more mainstream.

He also went into a diatribe, and rightly so, about a case that has reached the Supreme Court on whether video games can be censored by the government (i.e. what games can and can't be sold). It will effectively revoke the right of free speech to video games if the governator wins, and single-handedly bring the industry to its knees. Please join the fight for rights for video games - it's not fair for the government to tell us what we can and can't create if it doesn't have a net negative effect on society.

Real Tech News

Ok, so quite a bit of stuff happened last week, and yet I'm out of time here. I had a bigger to do list today than I was hoping for and I already have spent way too much time on this post, so I'm going to quickly touch on what I thought was the biggest stories from last week before I wrap this puppy up.

Apple had a big press event where the main thing announced was a new Apple TV at a $99 price point and integrated with Netflix and TV show rentals (just $1), as well as YouTube and Flickr. It seems like a device that would've saved Blockbuster if they thought of it two years ago. There's also a new shuffle (with buttons) at $50 for 2 GB, a stupidly small iPod nano with touchscreen starting at $150 for 8 GB, and a new iPod Touch in line with the new iPhone starting at $230. You can drill into these things in more detail here, but I personally am impressed by the Apple TV offering and I think it totally stands a fighting chance against Roku (that's the only direct competitor it really has, to be honest). There's also some silly social networking music thing they're trying to do and a new iTunes with somewhat strange UI choices.

Palm is working on version 2.0 of webOS and the biggest improvements are card grouping (kind of like on Windows 7 task bar does with windows) and a display when docked that passively shows information (I assume stuff like stock tickers and news headlines). Other cool features under-the-hood: outside developers can extend Synergy for better integration with your address book, background services can be written in Javascript (leads to performance improvements over Java and easier to write for many mobile developers versus C), and applications can provide information to make their data searchable from global search. I really hope it's not too little too late because I love webOS from a user experience standpoint.

Say goodbye to national broadband - it's just not feasible.

Gmail has launched the coolest feature it has released in a while: Priority Inbox. It has an algorithm for figuring out what mail is most important to you and bubbling that up to the top above your mailing lists and other junk based on your behaviors and what it knows are sites just selling you stuff, but you can also add in your input to help the algorithm out. I've been using it and have been very impressed - it's really helping me manage my unread items better because you can create subsections within your inbox view and stack them however you want.

I'll leave you with this awesome video from PAX. If you liked it, please support Paul & Storm (you'll have to click through it to YouTube to play in HD - it won't fit in my layout at that size):

Apple Becomes Your Mom

Apple Removes "Sexy" Apps

Apple has finally done it: they've become like a concerned mother wagging their finger at you. Last week, they took down hundreds of apps that satisfy more prurient interests. Yes, unfortunately, this was the biggest story last week. Call it a post-MWC funk.

Anyway, I really hate to harp on Apple about the iPhone app store, but every once in a while I think they need an "I told you so". I don't mean an "I told you so" that the app store would be unsuccessful - it's obviously doing gangbusters. Rather, a lot of tech journalists pointed out that censorship is a very slippery slope. Once you start policing what can be done on the devices you sell, you open a Padora's box of customer concerns and developer frustration. This latest app store bust is pretty crazy - even the biggest iPhone lovers have to agree. When you're literally kicking apps out because they have pictures of figure skaters in them, you're taking it too far. What's worse is when you kick out the little guys, like Suicide Girls, and instead preserve Playboy and Sports Illustrated. Now, Apple is not taking a stand for morality or against objectifying women, they're instead making a token concession while implicitly supporting Playboy. Yes, that seems crazy, but it's basically what they're doing. When you establish hard rules of what you're going to throw out of the store and then let someone off the hook who clearly breaks those rules it's a big contradiction.

Why did Apple do this? Apparently, they were getting too many customer complaints from concerned parents and women, in general. Apple already ceded a while ago by allowing you to restrict a phone to not be able to download mature apps, but you can still see them when you browse the app store. I think that was a valid concession (albeit, somewhat silly since it's not like there's already half-naked women all over TV and the Internet for curious teenagers). This censorship is just another reminder that Apple literally holds the incomes of more than a few mobile development shops in their hands. It's a lot of power when you consider how popular the app store has become. It's really unfortunate that they're being so irresponsible with it. If they had removed Playboy and Sports Illustrated then that would be more understandable, but Apple is basically showing that there are no rules in the app store other than the rules they make up depending on who you are and how much money you bring them. They can do this as long as Android, Palm, and Blackberry stay in the backseat, but I really hope that competition from Android helps them come to their senses. Between that story and the one on child labor at some of their factories, I feel really bad for Apple PR.

The Other Smartphones

I do have some news on your other favorite smartphone competitors.

Microsoft is actually putting some effort into courting developers with Windows Phone 7, which is something they've done a terrible job of with previous versions of Windows Mobile. Right now, they're working with hardware manufacturers to get some unity across different Windows Phone 7 devices (a big issue with previous Windows Mobile devices), but there's still no details yet on the development kit. Surely, Microsoft understands that this platform is dead in the water if they can't attract mobile developers, so we'll see what they do in the months to come. At the Engadget Show last week, an LG Windows Phone 7 device was actually spotted, but it doesn't seem all that exciting. Just another smartphone until we see more of it.



For the two of you out there interested in webOS: version 1.4 came out over the weekend bringing a number of welcome improvements including video recording (and editing), huge compatibility improvements in the browser, a much improved way to start apps to promote multi-tasking, and blinking light notification on the gesture area. Now that webOS 1.4 is out, Flash 10.1 beta is just around the corner as 1.4 has changes necessary to support it, which will make the Pre and Pixi (and, of course, their Verizon counterparts) among the first phones to support Flash. This has been one of the biggest updates to webOS since the Pre's launch, but it doesn't matter unless Palm starts pimping out these features in their ads.

If you think that the iPhone leads the smartphone market, then think again. I believe that graph reflects worldwide revenues, which is why Nokia is so big even though it's a struggle to spot a Nokia phone when you walk down the street. I know Nokias are big in India because I remember wondering when I was there how people could tolerate such terrible UIs. Nokia has even had better sales growth that Apple, who was actually 3rd behind RIM. I wish the graphic would've included webOS and Android, even if their combined market share is smaller than HTC (I hope that it isn't).

Google Hacker Discovered

The source of the attacks on Google from January has been discovered to be a Chinese security consultant. The attacks were cleverly disguised as coming from the IP addresses of a trade school, which doesn't prove anything given that they could easily have been part of a botnet. The government is believe to have leveraged this consultant's code to conduct the attack, but China still denies involvement.

This same guy may have been part of an attack on Intel that occurred around the same time. This theory hasn't been proved yet, but given the nature of the circumstances, it's likely that the attacks were related. Apparently, Intel and Google were two of 34 companies that were attacked around the same time, so this thing was a pretty big deal. Intel is remaining pretty mum on what damage the attack did, which could mean that serious secrets were leaked.

Unrelated to the January attacks, a major phishing exploit hit Twitter last week by way of direct messages. It asks if a given link is you, and when you click through it uses your account to send a similar message to 10 other people. It's not clear whether or not your login credentials are leaked in the process to send out future spam, but given that people are being advised to change their password if they've clicked through I'd bet that whatever else happens on click-through is not good.

Quickies

I'm almost falling asleep here while typing so it's time to wrap up.

Ars Technica did a really great investigation of why most of the US doesn't have 100 Mbps internet connections. I wish I had more time to talk about it, but it's definitely worth a read.

3 Google executives were convicted for failing to comply with Italian privacy laws in a case where Google Video allowed a video to be uploaded of an autistic kid being bullied. This case has definitely gone too far and Google feels pretty sore about it.

Sony, Samsung, LG, Hitachi, and Toshiba have been accused by a small electronics store of price fixing on optical disc drives. Apparently, this sort of stuff isn't that uncommon in the East so these charges may have some merit behind them.

Amazon was the most trusted brand of 2009 (according to market research company Millward Brown)! Amazon actually sells about half the other brands on that list and ships merchandise through two of them.

UT Austin made Network World's list of the nation's 10 hottest computer science schools! Hook 'em!

The winners of the Engadget Awards have been announced with the PS3 and Droid aimpressively going home with two awards apiece. It was kind of interesting that the editors thought the Nuvifone was the worst device of the year whereas everyone else was more let down by the 3G Shuffle.

Have a great first week of March, everyone!

Zombieland

Welcome to Zombieland

I've (thankfully) gotten some positive feedback for my movie reviews, so I'd like to continue doing that whenever I see movies on or before opening weekend, or when I get DVDs/Blu-rays on release week.

Zombieland is a zomedy/zom-com/whatever you want to call a zombie movie that's self-aware and makes fun of the genre actively. To be honest, the whole horror genre is predicated on movies that have fun scaring you and making you laugh at totally ridiculous situations, so a zombie comedy isn't really very far-fetched. It's also not very unique given the popularity of Shaun of the Dead. Fortunately, it's not like Scary Movie where it's actively making fun of a prototypical zombie movie but rather it derives humor from existing in a world where, without logical explanation, a zombie outbreak has spun out of control and virtually everyone except for our group of survivors are zombies. Aside from that, the plot just follows the main character (Columbus, Ohio, is his name - the characters don't use real names to avoid getting attached) as he tries to head home to find his family, which he's largely been estranged from. Needless to say, hilarity and misadventures ensue along the way.



I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. Shaun of the Dead was definitely good, but I didn't love it and didn't laugh as much as I thought I would. Conversely, Zombieland was full of situational humor and violence so ridiculous and gratuitous that it was hilarious. It had a very good visual style with superb special effects. I don't know if I've seen such detailed violence before. Part of the visual style is borrowed from Stranger Than Fiction (which I love more each time I see it and looks great just on DVD) where you have information presented to you in an augmented reality design. The main character has rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse that appear in the movie as if they're as 3-dimensional as the actors in the appropriate scenes and are just the cherry on top of already funny scenes.

I think the cast really works, overall. There's something seductive and sweet in a scary way about Emma Stone and it plays out perfectly here. Woody Harrelson really steals the show though and clearly has a lot of fun doing so. There's also a cameo so good that I'd urge you to not go to the iMDB page for the movie until after you've seen it. The cast is literally just 4 characters plus a cameo, and I found it really cool that they were able to do much with so few characters. There's no question that the plot has its issues and there are as many things that don't make sense as your average zombie movie, but you find yourself caring less about those as you have more and more fun with the movie. It has its scary parts, but they're few and far between and well-balanced with comedy, which I thought worked really well overall.

If you can stomach a few scares, this movie is well worth the price of admission. Try to see it with a group though (or with a date) - it's just one of those movies that work better when you're with other people. I give it a B+ just because I can't in good faith give a B movie and A score, but I definitely highly recommend it. It's probably the most worthwhile movie in theaters right now (unless your theater has Inglourious Basterds, which is one of the best of the year and everyone needs to see it).

Joel on Overengineering

Joel Spolsky put up an essay last week that was somewhat controversial called "The Duct Tape Programmer" as he was inspired by Coders at Work (which is on my wish list now). The essay is all over the place, but it makes a couple of points I really liked. It's important to design something well and stick to your design without being tempted with sexy new technologies. Over-engineering lurks around every corner so it's really important to stay practical. I hate that he advocates cutting unit tests in the interest of making a deadline because I hold firm to good QA being the bedrock of a successful project and I don't accept his statement that someone is just born into being a "duct tape programmer", but understanding that you're working on a project to ship a product rather than writing the most beautiful code in the world is really important. Just because you can make an optimization doesn't mean you should - it can over-complicate things and cause headaches later on. Getting the job done as minimally as possible the first time through is really a good habit to make - iteration is a good policy.

First Looks at Office Web Apps and Wave

The idea of Microsoft Office Web Apps should come as a surprise to no one - Google paved the way for online environments to do word processing and spreadsheets and the like. The technical preview is out there and PC World seemed impressed with it. It aims to seamlessly integrate the desktop experience with the cloud-based experience of web apps and sounds like it hits the mark even in this preview stage.



Meanwhile, Office sent out the first wave of invites for Google Wave. Lifehacker put up an article peeling back some of the mystery of what Wave is. Apparently, it allows you to send out "waves", which are rich documents that are easy to edit (WYSIWIG easy) and allow you to embed multimedia easily, but these waves allow for advanced collaborative functionality ideal for groups of people working together on something. Where it gets cool is the idea of widgets and robots. Widgets are little applications built on the platform that are interactive with a group of people, like a video game. Or you could send out a teleconferencing wave where the invitees put in their phone numbers and are subsequently added to the call. Robots are like bots you can add to your waves to modify them or do something with them, like blog them or plug in links automatically. I don't think Wave is useful in an enterprise situation just due to security concerns, but I can definitely see it being useful in people's personal lives. Like what if you're planning a getaway with your friends and want to organize what you're going to do online but you're all in different cities? Or what if you're just trying to catch up with friends some school and want to share information about one another in a place where everyone can be in on the conversation? I've found resistance from several of my friends in using Facebook, which makes planning events somewhat challenging since e-mail threads can get unruly and Evite is the same site as when it first launched, but I could definitely see Wave doing well here.

While I'm talking about Google: they added two new features to search. One addition is that it combs search results now and adds links within the results to key sections on a given result. The other feature is just a variation on this that specifically calls out what you were searching for if it detects it as a major section on the page. You could speculate that they're starting to feel the competition from Bing, but it's more likely just Google being Google.

Hot Stuff from Redmond

The temperature is dropping in Seattle just as it's starting to sizzle in Redmond! Ok, not really, but I thought it was funny that Mashable called some new footage on a tablet with a spine "hot". The new footage is pretty slick though. Courier is a rumored Microsoft touchscreen tablet that folds like a book. The video is almost certainly just a concept video rather than a demonstration of something that Microsoft actually has, but what I like about it is that it very much feels like if you were working with a digital spiral notebook that has access to everything on the Internet. Plus, it's a good use case for browsing magazines and newspapers. No one really knows if this is any more likely than the heavily rumored Apple tablet, but it's turning some heads so there may be more of a market for tablets than analysts think (or it could just be a lot of hype drummed up by tech journalists).

What is tangible is Microsoft Security Essentials, free anti-malware software from Microsoft. Ars Technica reviewed it and seemed quite impressed with it. They convinced me to try it out myself and I'm also pretty happy with it. It's very lightweight and easy-to-use while still providing a fair amount of customization for advanced users. I think it's cool that it has DSS, which is basically anomaly detection since it's not looking for the pattern of a specific virus or worm but rather just behavior that seems malicious.

Android and webOS Get New Releases

Android and webOS are tied for the second-highest customer satisfaction rate among smartphones (with iPhone taking the top spot), and both just got updates. The Android updates were pretty back-end including CDMA support, the introduction of WiMAX, better performance for the camera software, and universal search.

Meanwhile, webOS 1.2 is also an incremental improvement but has been long awaited from Pre users for features like copying images and text from the web and e-mail, LinkedIn support in synergy, a decent number of performance improvements that really shine, LED notification (opt-in), automatic backup to the cloud for browser data and pictures, and, perhaps most significantly, an app catalog that supports paid apps (but still has none). What really excited me about webOS 1.2 is that it's a number of things that Pre owners have been asking for and Palm has actually listened. I find that surprising and impressive. Having paid apps will definitely up the ante in the app catalog for the really good stuff. Also, Google Maps now has transit and walking directions, which is something I've wanted ever since I moved to Seattle so that's pretty awesome.

Somewhat controversially, a 1.2.1 update made available over the weekend fixes syncing with iTunes, which definitely puts a bee in the bonnet of the USB Implementors Forum since Palm broke a rule in restoring the syncing capability, but it looks like Palm is willing to take the risk to get the Pre syncing with iTunes. To be honest, I wish they'd just license doubleTwist instead of fighting with Apple - it's getting a little old now.

The Leftovers

It's past my bedtime and I'm on call so I need to turn in soon. Here's a quick rundown of what else happened last week.

PC Mag put up an impressively concise article about what you need to know about the new Intel Core i7 architecture and it definitely sounds pretty dead sexy. They're inexpensive, have an L3 cache, and add turbo boost? Sign me up.

I wanted to talk more to this, but Slate has a little editorial up about why the Netflix Prize was brilliant: they basically got a team of brilliant scientists to improve their recommendation algorithm for the bargain price of $1 million, which is much cheaper than hiring each of them individually for even a year.

Tech Radar has a good rundown of USB 3.0. Aside from being 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and supporting simultaneous read/write, it's more power efficient.

I was pretty blown away by a post on the Yahoo Developers' Blog about bandwidth. It explains the concept in a very easily understandable way and provides some great tips for improve page load times on your website.

MakeUseOf posted some tips for tweaking Internet performance on your Vista machine and, after trying a few myself, I have to admit that they actually work.

If you're bored and are looking to just surf the web, start here.

Fox put up a Dollhouse application that I think is super cool because it creates an augmented reality using your webcam where you can interact with Echo virtually (not in a dirty way!).

The "Did You Know" meme that spread like wildfire a while ago now has a fourth update on YouTube.

Enjoy your week, everyone!

Microsoft Store Details Leaked

The Microsoft Store

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

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



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

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

Amazon Buys Zappos

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

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

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

HTC Hero

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

iPhone 3GS Encryption Sucks

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

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

The B&N eBook Store

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

webOS 1.1 is Out

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

Quick Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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