Macworld Wrap-up

As usual, the focus has been on Macworld this past week rather than CES. I think that the media and even a lot of geeks have just become disenchanted with CES and have begun to care more about the words of Steve Jobs. Barely anyone really seemed to care that it's Bill Gates last CES keynote ever. By this year's end, Ray Ozzie will be the new CEO of Microsoft. Of course, there is the fact that this video from the keynote of his supposed last day at work spread pretty fast and is pretty funny. I love that he can make fun of himself and that he managed so many great cameos. Oh, and I have a lot to talk about today to make up for not writing this post like two days ago when I should've.

Anyway, back to Macworld. There are a few things I thought were worth mentioning related to that keynote. Game Daily has a great article pointing out that this was another Macworld without any focus at all on video games for Macs. I agree with them in calling this a huge oversight. I have no idea why they don't believe the power of video games. That industry has really exploded in the past 5-10 years and PC games have seen a come back with titles like Half-Life 2, Portal, World of Warcraft, The Sims, and Civilization 3. They're losing the gamer market by forcing them to run these titles on a dual-booted machine or even a VM. They should be making it easier to run them on native hardware and they could be touting the consistency of Mac computers as ensuring that any game developed for Mac could work on potentially all Macs or say right from the get-go which ones work on which. For PCs, the hardware combinations are so diverse that you lose this slight advantage, which really only hurts you when you want to get someone a game as a gift, most likely, and don't know if they can use it. They're clearly not pushing iPod/iPhone games ostensibly, though Sonic has come on board, and I just imagine that there's a bigger market there than Game Daily believes because of how many people play phone games when they're bored. I just can't figure out why Apple has no interest in supporting this market.

Joy of Tech has a pretty great comic
about the MacBook Air that kind of reflects my views also.

This isn't really related to the Apple TV even though you may see articles around with people billing this as a big blow to Apple TV, but Time Warner is trying out a new pricing scheme similar to your power bill. The more you download, the more you pay. This indirectly affects Apple TV because renting/buying those HD movies is not going to be all that attractive rather than buying/renting the hard copy from a store. In any case, the point is that they're trying to penalize you for piracy or using up the "unlimited" Internet access you pay for too much. This is like opening an all-you-can-eat buffet where you see a few fat people and decide that if you're fat then you have to pay more money. It's crazy. Unlike your power bill or your water bill, it doesn't cost them anything extra to serve up more of the Internet to you, in reality. They make so much money with their outdated networks and large base of users that they really just want more money. In some areas you may see a higher quality of service, but the quality of your Internet should be higher because they're re-investing your monthly payments into thicker pipes and not because less people are online. People are not going to like this idea in this society of rising gas prices and other things where you pay a variable cost. They claim it'll only affect 5% of users, but in this increasingly broadband world, it's going to hurt more people than that. It's frustrating, but I'm honestly not sure what can be done. Maybe it'll end up being a tiered plan, which would be slightly better but still irritating since your service won't get any better for paying more money. Somewhere at Time Warner corporate there's a guy in a tall, black leather chair laughing diabolically. Oh, and whether this is a conspiracy against Apple TV so that people buy digital cable rather than watch TV online is a little bit extreme. I honestly do not think that it has anything to do with that. I believe torrents and P2P are hurting them, and they'd rather pass the buck than adapt. They're not smart enough to think ahead to IP TV; put their execs in a room of Neanderthals and you wouldn't know the difference.

I love PicLens. I think it's the best add-on since IE Tab (or the best thing since sliced bread, if you prefer). It works in IE and Safari, too; just not the new feature I'm going to talk about. I casually updated recently only to later realize that they've upgraded the UI. You can see it in the screenshot to the left, but it doesn't do it justice. It's just so ridiculously intuitive. They've made the pictures into a wall of thumbnails rather than a filmstrip at the bottom so that you can use the fullness of your screen to navigate and use your scroll wheel to casually glance at whatever piques your interest. They've also really improved the Facebook functionality. I don't think I've ever browsed pictures so effortlessly before; not even in Picasa. I was so struck that I took the time to actually port several galleries from the NSC site to the PicLens format (really easy with PicLens Publisher tool; you just surround the code it gives you with your layout) and will be using it permanently for the NSC site. It's a great thing to try out if you're running a website where you value viewing images over comments and ratings and descriptions and all that junk, and it even has a Flash-based thing to view the images in a slideshow even if you don't have PicLens. Oh, but word to the wise: look at the CSS I have on my galleries. I had to hack it up for IE6, which doesn't support max-width.

I think I've all but declared the HD-battle over in Blu-ray's favor. Gizmodo feels the same and has shed a little more light on what has been happening in recent weeks. While it's likely true that Sony did pay some of the studios to help them decide to move exclusively to Blu-ray, the fact of the matter is that they money they paid was much less than what they stand to lose/gain in a new HD format. All the studios were pretty eager to end the format war though, and I think Fox caving to Blu-ray caused a domino effect that almost ceded the battle to Sony. I don't think we know yet what motivated Fox to do this, and the exact reasoning for Warner and Toshiba hasn't totally given up yet, but I think it's pretty clear that they're gripping at straws. Only a few loyal studios remain; I mistakenly reported Paramount's switch because they haven't jumped ship yet though they legally can. Universal is bound until 2009 or the bitter end, whichever comes first. New Line, Fox, and Warner aren't small potatoes though, and it may be enough to tempt more studios to take the leap. The battle isn't over, but I think a lot of us want it to be. After all, Blu-ray has done a poor job of future-proofing the format and, not-so-coincidentally, the PS3 is the only Blu-ray player capable of supporting the 2.0 spec because it has an Internet connection and 1GB of local storage. It looks like they're trying to use Blu-ray in 2.0 to help spread gaming to movie enthusiasts from the looks of CES demos with trivia games and the like, but these Blu-ray versions will surely cause confusion (there's a 1.1 that only a few players, including the PS3, support).

I thought it was interesting that MySpace is still dominating Facebook in traffic. If you have any insight into this, I'd love to hear it because I have to say that I'm more than a little surprised. 72% of social networking traffic goes to MySpace compared to 16% for Facebook. This is more than a small disparity. I guess I live in a bubble where only a minority of the people I know have MySpace accounts, including the adults I know who are on Facebook. To be fair, Facebook's grew 50% over last year whereas News Corp's bastard child lost 8% of its prior market share. The hype machine would make it seem like Facebook is taking over the world. Hell, I kid you not, my own mother called me last week to tell me about Facebook and this guy who started the site in college and made all this money. She thought that I should do something like that someday. I'm suddenly glad that I didn't take the Facebook interview. It's not that I believe they're failing, I just think they're in this huge bubble. I don't know if it'll pop or not, but I also don't know how stable it is. In any case, my theory is that a lot of minors are loving MySpace whereas adults and many college students who do social networking use Facbook. There's also an overlap of college students who still check their MySpace but don't actively use it. That's just my theory, and I guess that it would mean that the Facebook audience is more valuable than the MySpace audience. Anyhow, I think it's even more interesting given that MySpace has been getting bad press over privacy issues. I mean when people can see private photos of 14 year-old boys/girls, that's creepy.

I have a few quick things to lump together here. AOL (AIM/ICQ) has finally caved and moved its protocol to XMPP, more popularly known as Jabber, which is what Google Chat runs on. I can't say anything about this other than that it's ostensible very cool since XMPP is open source. If you're uninitiated into the dark art of MySQL, this is an awesome primer. Woot has put up their always funny Wootable Awards from CES of random things including Most Racist Display and Best Alien Detector. I liked the new trailer for Baby Mama and so I thought I'd share. Tina Fey wants a surrogate mother because she can't conceive and so she turns to a childlike character(Amy Poehler). I thought it was quirky and funny. And last, but not least, my first upload to YouTube from going to Copa on Friday night:



Just because I miss it, how about some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. President :: Clinton (Bill ;)


2. Stare :: Glaze


3. Embrace :: Hug


4. Movie :: Theater


5. Everything :: On sale


6. Profile :: Facebook


7. Satire :: Comedy


8. Erratic :: Errata


9. Costume :: Party


10. Secretary :: of State

Air Just Got Pricier

I was talking to my brother earlier about this morning's Mac World keynote and he was really impressed. After keeping up with this stuff for over 4 years now, I know better. This keynote was underwhelming, and the investors seemed to agree. I guess the MacBook Air wasn't enough for them. If you want to read all the hairy details of the keynote, there's the Engadget live blog. If you have 90 minutes to spare, you can watch the whole thing. I'll give you the gist of it though and some of my thoughts. The big deal was this thing to the left here: the MacBook Air. You can see the details here and specs here. At it's thickest it's less than 0.8 inches thick and at its thinnest it's less than 0.2 inches thick. It's absolutely ridiculous. Not necessarily bad ridiculous, it just is. You can even see a video of it here. You can count the ports it has on one hand (includes headphone jack, DVI, MagSafe power, and USB) and it doesn't come with an optical drive of any sort, it costs $100 if you really want it (Steve thinks you're done with CDs). It has a great 13.3-inch screen, it comes with an 80 GB HD, it has one of the lower speed Core 2 Duos, it's 802.11n wireless and comes with Bluetooth, it has a backlit screen and keyboard, and it's fairly environmentally friendly. This can all be yours for the low low price of one arm and half your leg: just $1800. The trackpad also supports multi-touch, like on the iPhone, for pictures and I'm not sure what else.

There are a number of issues with this device. Anything Jobs presents, including this laptop, looks like gold on stage. The reality is a number of things. The battery isn't replaceable, and if you've owned a laptop then you know what a horrible relationship people have with their laptop batteries. It doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, so you have to already have a computer in your household (Mac or PC) on a network so you can connect to it to install remote disk, which allows you to install software you have on that remote computer. When it comes down to it, this is a really expensive, really thin, stripped-down laptop. For the form factor, you need to sacrifice things, and so I can accept that, but I just don't see the need for a super-thin laptop. Do people really want this? I'm not saying they don't, but besides the glamor of being so thin, what do you really get out of this? So you can carry around a manila envelope instead of a laptop case? I was impressed initially, but not so much anymore. It's a good laptop, but not better than the old MacBook or MacBook Pro lines.

The next biggest announcement, in my mind, was the Apple TV Take 2, which is a free software upgrade for the Apple TV that allows you to rent movies and download iTunes content directly to your Apple TV without the middle man of your Mac. Oh, yeah, renting movies is new, too, but it was leaked a while ago. You have 30 days to watch it, and 24 hours once you start watching it to watch it. Pretty standard pricing: $3 for old, $4 for new, and a buck more for each for HD-quality. Anyway, back to the Apple TV: they're dropping the price to $229 with this new software as well included. So this is a big step in the right direction, because you can see photos on it as well and browse Flickr from it and all that good stuff. However, it's not enough. Apple could dominate if they come out this summer with a fully featured home media Mac. It needs all the stuff it already has, plus DVR -like features and possibly another version with a Blu-ray player built-in as well. I feel like they're still not bringing the living room entirely together, but I do like the price drop. They may be able to save the Apple TV yet. There is a catch: if you rent movies on your Apple TV then you can't watch it later on your Mac or iPod, but the reverse is true (if you buy on your Mac you can watch it anywhere). Oh, and the HD-quality video is for the Apple TV only, and it doesn't come with Dolby 5.1. Plus, the Apple TV hardware isn't changing so you're limited to 1280x720 resolution. Ouch.

The last big thing is the iPhone/iPod Touch updates: you can customize your home screen (in a cute way, too), you get simulated GPS in Google Maps to find your location (triangulation from WiFi and cell phone towers), Google Maps now has hybrid view, you can SMS multiple people at once, movie rentals are supported, lyrics are supported, you can change the movie's language (if it has another language track), and you can save web clips to your home screen. Oh, and the SDK is still on track for release next month, it appears. What's lame is that the updates will cost you $20 on the iPod Touch, except that you get mail, weather, stocks, and maps now as well (though I don't think you get the SMS). Also, I don't think the GPS locator thing means that you can get driving directions in real-time, which would've been cool. So these are nice things, yes, but not as impressive as he was trying to make them out to be. It's nothing terribly innovative or exciting: the map stuff isn't new nor is the SMS thing. Only rentals and lyrics are new, as far as I know, for phones/mp3 players in general. Google improved a number of things for the iPhone as well though: faster Gmail, iGoogle gadgets, a quicker calendar, and more.

Was Mac World really that underwhelming? I suppose I exaggerated that point a bit for dramatic effect. In reality, everyone expected too much. I kept my hype meter largely at bay, but I still thought we'd see something cooler today. In my opinion, the biggest deal was movie rentals and the Apple TV stuff. Though Amazon is kind of competing with rentals since Unbox can rent to your Tivo and Amazon is posing a new threat to iTunes, which Job obviously didn't want to discuss. Anyway, in most people's mind: the biggest deal was probably the new laptop. I have no idea what'll be more profitable to them. Or maybe they'll just sell more iPhones now because of the new updates (not likely, they've already sold 4 million so they're doing pretty damn well). Fortunately, I don't have to keep droning on about Apple so let me cover a couple of other things real quick before I hit the sack.

Netflix subscribers rejoice: you can now see Netflix flicks online as much as you want. Well, if you're on their cheap plan you have a limit, but the higher tiers get the all-you-can-eat plan. It's pretty awesome, I think. I don't know if this will hurt Netflix's business or help it, but I imagine that it will help people rationalize a subscription even though they won't use it a whole lot and so Netflix will just continue to do well.

A rumor has been substantiated that Facebook is planning on buying Plaxo
. Plaxo gives you kind of an easily shareable online business card and card holder because it links you with all your e-mail addresses and social sites (AIM and such) to have a huge database of contacts with birthdays and e-mails and all that stuff. I'm really interested to see what Facebook does with this, but I imagine this goes along with the very loose idea of an online desktop whereby Facebook will empower you to share and communicate with anyone you talk to on any other service straight from Facebook.

Why did Warner go Blu-ray? It turns out that it may be because Sony paid them and others off to do so. I personally feel like this is a kind of dirty technique, but I don't think this is illegal or uncommon for other consumer products. Retailers often get a rebate for giving items more shelf space or promotion. What amazes me is that Sony has all this money to give out. They keep creating failing products like rootkit-loaded CDs, a console that is not doing terribly well in sales, the minidisc, and a ridiculous competitor to the mp3, and yet they have vast amounts of money to throw around for Blu-ray support. Anyway, it's not over for HD-DVD yet, but given that everyone is writing them off they may lose support from everyone soon enough if they don't act quick.

I didn't have time to cover CES, and it has lost its luster in the past couple of years anyhow, but here's a good round-up of what we missed. The two things I like most on that list: 150-inch TV and Optimus keyboard (I need to eventually get me one of those). The shadiest item on that list is hands-down the FryeTV thing though. I mean...wow. Will people really buy that and leave it in their living room?

Macworld Approaches

We're only a couple of days from the annual nerd convention known as Macworld. Even though the only piece of Apple hardware I own is a busted up 1st gen Shuffle (to be fair, I'm going to buy a Nano in May), even I can appreciate this convention. I always keep my eyes glued on it because Steve Jobs historically makes pretty big announcements there. After all, last year he unveiled the iPhone in his Macworld keynote.

I don't know if it's prudent for me to be using Gizmodo as a source for Macworld rumors since they played a dumb prank at CES where they turned off TVs on the show floor and got one reporter banned, but they have a more comprehensive and accurate list than some other places. The one thing I think they are guilty of here is expecting too much out of this keynote. It'll probably only be 60-90 minutes long, and at least a quarter of that will be hashing sales and stuff we already know (movie rentals and DVDs ready-to-rip to Apple TV and iPods/iPhones). Supposedly, a lot of people are saying that there will be an entirely new product announced, though I don't know what it would be really. Some are saying that they'll save WiMax with a super-thin laptop, but that would probably just replace a MacBook. An Apple Tablet is probably just a pipe-dream. We can problem expect new Mactel machines of some sort, maybe even MacBook Pros. It would make sense for them to re-design their computers again after staying with the current one for so long. I don't think we'll see a new iPhone or any new iPods, but I hope we'll have a date for the iPhone SDK and maybe more software updates for the iPhone. I wouldn't be too surprised if we saw a better Apple TV, but I wouldn't count on it (though a price drop would be nice). It should be an interesting keynote, to say the least.

Bad news for net neutrality: AT&T is giving much more serious thought to filtering the Internet now for their customers to strip it of copyrighted content (with the avid support of NBC-Universal) and torrents. What's scary is that they're not alone. No decisions have been made yet, but companies are already surfacing with filtering services. I don't know why these guys think some kid in high school who wants his fix won't find a way around their filtering. I still don't understand how anyone can filter encrypted packets (ala torrents), but I'm sure they all think they have a brilliant plan.

Blu-ray is inching closer to victory with Paramount going Blu-ray only, Universal's HD-DVD exclusivity contract expiring, and New Line following Paramount and Warner to Blu-ray. As if that wasn't enough, a couple of the big players in pornography have decided to sell a few Blu-ray titles as well. So much for their early support of HD-DVD. It's funny that despite several reports of HD-DVD having better quality video, Blu-ray is starting to jump ahead really quickly. I'm sure there's more to this whole thing than meets the eye. After all, Blu-ray does have a higher capacity and its high cost may provide higher margins of profit later when the technology becomes cheaper from economies of scale. In any case, I wouldn't pick up an HD-DVD player, even if it is on sale.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has released a new service called WebStore. It basically just makes it extremely easy to set up your own e-Commerce site at a relatively inexpensive price of $60 a month. The site you set up gives your customers a lot of the same benefits of Amazon.com including related products, fraud protection, etc. What's really cool is that if you're already an Amazon customer then you can shop on any WebStore, which gives any of these guys a built-in customer base. I think this is seriously pretty cool because the layout and everything is very customizable. I know that sounded like an advertisement, but I honestly do think it's pretty cool. I wouldn't mention it if I didn't.

One more thing in technology: how do you recognize a good programmer? I love this article with several high points of what to look for. I think it's entirely true and definitely a must-read for those looking for jobs in tech to understand what qualities about yourself you need to sell and for recruiters/interviewers.

I went to Apple Trailers and watched a lot of trailers. I thought I'd link you guys to some of the best ones I found. I thought the trailer for Speed Racer was interesting, but I worry that it has itself confused between a cartoon and a live action movie. I was a fan of the series as a kid so I naturally hope for the best, and it does have a pretty good cast including Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, Susan Sarandon, and Roger Allam. You should watch the trailer and judge for yourself. I don't know what to think about the Mamma Mia trailer. It also has a pretty good cast (Pierce Brosnan, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth), but I'm usually not a fan of musicals. Still, this is a pretty big musical and the trailer didn't look bad so I think it could be good. I was sold, however, on the trailer for Cassandra's Dream, though. It's the next Woody Allen flick featuring Colin Farrell and Ewan Mcgregor as brothers who get involved in some bad stuff. I know, that's a pretty bad synopsis, but the trailer really is intriguing. Plus, I haven't seen enough Woody Allen movies The last trailer I liked was for Wanted, which includes James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Common, and Morgan Freeman. It's based on the Mark Millar graphic novel of the same title and is about a dude who inherits the legacy of being part of this brotherhood of assassins that kills other, bad assassins. This plot line sounds familiar but I cannot think of what it is I'm trying to remember (please comment if you know what I'm thinking of). Anyhow, the trailer is fun and worth a glance.

Back to the Saturday 9:

1. Do you have a former lover who you feel is “the one who got away”?

Well I have one who I feel did get away, and I do miss her, but I don't think I'd quite give her that title yet.

2. Do you have a nickname? If yes, do you like it?

Not really, though I've acquired a few random ones: E, Easy E, Tiger, Eptiger, Shawn...

3. Did you go to theater, museums, or art galleries growing up?

Just museums. I probably only went to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts only a handful of times (usually during museum week), but I worked at the Houston Museum of Natural Science for a few summers so I got pretty familiar with that (plus I got in the exhibits for free so I liked that).

4. What shoes are you wearing right at this moment?

I'm barefoot =O

5. What do people who know you think is your best feature?

Do I really have a best feature? I don't know, but I kinda hope it'd be my passion for stuff. I think it's hard to stick around in this industry without passion.

6. What do you like on your pizza?

Pepperoni, mushrooms, BBQ chicken, feta cheese, or pineapple. Those are what come to mind right now (of course not all together though).

7. Do you believe people who curse generally do so because of a lack of vocabulary?

Not really. I curse (not excessively, but when I'm really mad about something I do) and I have a pretty decent vocabulary. I think when I read when I was a kid I would just really absorb words for some reason so I became pretty good at spelling.

8. How well do you sing?

On a scale from 1 to 10, probably a 4. I'm not unbearable, but I wouldn't sing except at church or with my guitar accompanying me. I can be coerced into doing karaoke on occasion.

9. How well do you get along with your family?

Fairly well. We're not extremely close (I'm closer to my brother and sister-in-law than my parents), but we don't have any inherent problems, just the standard oddities of being a family.

Victory for Digital Music

A belated 'Happy New Year' is in order! I would've posted sooner except that I've had a fever since Wednesday evening and I'm only now starting to recover from it. It did give me a chance to pop open my Veronica Mars Season 2 DVDs though. I think my recent posts have been on the attacking or cynical side, but I think it's amazing news that Sony has caved and so now all the major music labels have switched to DRM-free music downloads. I cannot emphasize how big of a deal this is. After years of issues with mp3 players only playing certain mp3s and rootkits and breaking DRM schemes and all that jazz, the big guys have finally admitted that DRM-free is the way to go. Why? It's not altruism. Rather, they're scared of Apple. Amazon made a bold move when they decided that they only digital music they'd offer would be DRM-free. Some probably thought it was stupid for a nascent service to be so greedy. Funny how in less than half a year they brought around every major record label, huh? I don't know how many of the labels (besides EMI) is selling DRM-free through iTunes, but some have been selling to others as well (e.g. Rhapsody and Wal-mart, whose pompous site insists you use IE). Somehow, Amazon mp3 has been the common denominator. I really want to meet that team when I get back to Seattle to find out how this all came to be.

The point is, this was a huge risk for these labels. They're making a huge statement in saying that they'd rather risk feeding piracy with DRM-free music offerings than let iTunes remain the #1 digital music source with no close competitors. Think about that for a second. It seems a little paranoid, doesn't it? There's probably more to it than that, but I'm really curious as to what was going on behind closed doors for Apple to piss these guys off so much. It may very well be true that the labels saw the error in their ways in sticking with DRM for so long (especially the bad PR that geeks like me spared no time in propagating). It may even be true that they crunched numbers and thought that selling DRM-free may make them more money. Or maybe they did surveys or something. It's tough to say. There's no doubt in my mind that at least one factor in their decisions was to diversify who receives their content, and the fact that Amazon Mp3 now has claim over a library formidable to Apple means that my prediction from way back when may be true: Amazon can give iTunes a run for its money. They're finally proving that Apple is not invincible, something that companies like RealNetworks and Napster never accomplished. We just have to wait and see what the numbers say at time progresses. Amazon can still blow it, no doubt (though I've only seen the UI get better). But the fact that they've made it this far is a pretty big deal, in my opinion. One more thing: if this DRM-free thing works out for music than we can hope to see it spread to movies and television shows as we see mirroring trends in putting content online.

Of course, not all is well in online music. Napster has raised its monthly rate by $3 to $12.95. Mashable likes to be melo-dramatic and claim that this signals their downfall, but I think that's a premature statement. I think they still have a chance, but I do think it'll be hard for them to attract more subscribers with a higher rate. Also, Apple is being sued, again, for having a monopoly in digital music and mp3 players. Given that there are some sizable competitors though that are doing decently well (not gangbusters, but not bad either), I can't see this lawsuit going far.

Warner Brothers has decided that it will not sell HD-DVD discs, only for Blu-ray. Why? Well, Blu-ray sales were apparently strong in Q4 last year and they claim that the numbers are not in HD-DVD's favor. Could this be the start of a Blu-ray victory? Over the past year there was never really a clear winner, as there isn't still, but rather one would just inch in front of the other. If what Warner claims is true though, then maybe HD-DVD won't exist this time next year. We'll have to wait and see.

I have some bad news: Intel has decided to put an end to their involvement with the One Laptop Per Child program. Sounds kind of weird, right? I don't know if Intel is fully to blame here as the OLPC project asked them to not work on any other platforms but OLPC. Anyway, they've had issues working together for a while and Intel has its own low-cost laptop platform called the Classmate PC. It's not a total loss, but the impasse is still mildly tragic.

Seth MacFarlane made a speech at one of the WGA rallies and I thought it was interesting enough to share with you all:



It just gives a very real viewpoint from their side as to why the strike makes sense and why it's not about being greedy. Plus, he does his Stewie voice at the end.

I have a couple of quick things. There's a new torrent site called YouTorrent that searches the torrent search engines for the good stuff. It's pretty good and worth giving a shot. The other thing is that Google has had a couple of high-profile defections including their UI designer for Gmail. These probably don't mean anything because it's not unusual for young talent in the tech industry to move around, but it just shows that Google isn't a paradise for everyone, despite popular belief.

To compensate for not posting in a while I figure that I'd share a video I took on New Year's Eve after we finished setting up my brother's house for the New Year's party. The featured drinks aren't out yet (mojitos and pomegranate martinis), but it still looks nice:


Shawn and Selina's New Year's Eve Tour from Eptiger on Vimeo.

Lastly, I haven't played in a meme in a while, which is kind of a shame. I thought I'd give newcomer Saturday 9 a try:

1. Do you have a dishwasher?
I do, but I never use it.

2. What noise do you hear?
The TV behind me. I swear cable is the devil.

3. Next concert you hope to go to?
I don't have one in mind, but I still need to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

4. When was the last time you said I love you and meant it?
To be honest, I'm not sure. Maybe a week ago? I used to say daily, and I usually say it to my mom on the phone, but since I'm here in Houston I don't talk to her on the phone.

5. If all of your friends were going on a road trip, who would be most likely to over pack?
Me, I'm sure.

6. Who is the youngest in your family?
I guess my cousin Sherylann's son, who is not even two months old now.

7. Do you know anyone with the same name as you?
Kind of. I know this guy is out there. ;) If you just mean by first name: I know there's Elton John, but I don't know anyone personally.

8. How many shoes do you own?
Probably 6 pairs.

9. Do you mind flat soda?
I don't drink soda period, except with alcohol. Even then, I don't think I'd mind terribly.

Looking Backwards and Forward

This may end up being my last post of 2007 because I'm going to the Texans game tomorrow and Monday night is my brother's New Year's Eve party so I'm going to be pretty busy. I've already fallen behind in my projects! User authentication without cryptography is killing me. Anyway, I wanted to piggyback on Ars Technica's summary of the past year and predictions for next year, in true end-of-year fashion. They argue that 2007 was the year of open source, online video (and user generated content), casual gaming, RIAA lawsuits, and climate. While I've encountered all those things (though I didn't get sued), I don't think they quite characterize the year, except for the online video one. In my opinion, there were few things to characterize this year. Besides online video there was mp3s gaining more ground (e.g. Amazon Digital Downloads emerged), that little thing called the iPhone, Apple cracking down more on rumor mills, the steep freefall of Vista's popularity, the renewal of World of Warcraft as digital crack, viral marketing (especially via blogs), and 300 (everyone freaking keeps saying that line and it's not funny anymore) among several summer hits (that were actually entertaining). Piracy was a hot button issue, yes, but it has been every year for the past few years. These are scattered things (except for the first two) that didn't really dominate the year but were pretty big deals and hopefully you remember them and can reminisce. If not, you can probably find news on all of those things in my archives.

What about 2008? I'm never that great at predicting the future, I just occasionally get lucky with Apple announcements. I know that for me it will be a huge year because I'm taking the frightening plunge in moving to an entirely new city and starting my first permanent full-time job. In technology as a whole though, Ars Technica bring up the good prediction of the war of the iPods. I definitely see that. I also see a war of iPhone clones upon the horizon though, which they mentioned also. I think OS tensions will rise as people stick to XP, which will remain a magnet for viruses and worms. I think people will finally be able to buy Wiis on-demand, though the Xbox 360 will still hang on and continue to beat the PS3. Of course, the Wii will get very few new games though because it's a Nintendo console. I see PC gaming gaining some increase in popularity. I see the writer's strike ending in some compromise that will ultimately hurt the writers years down the line. I see more television going online and on-demand entertainment gaining a lot of steam. Hell, surveys already show that people like watching shows online and it's helping measure ratings more accurately. And I see piracy getting stronger than ever as the MPAA and RIAA martyr more and more people. Oh, I also think we'll see more solid-state disks and Flash memory used in more places. That's all I've got though! What are your predictions, Nostradamus?

Going back to this year, DVice has a great look at why the iPhone dominated (despite all the pundits who claimed it would fail due to price): they didn't inundate people with choice. There are too many iPods, there are too many crappy phones, and in this modern-age (as I've mentioned before several times) people have to make too many decisions. They get stressed out! It should be easy to pick out and use your phone, and many people are willing to pay crazy amounts of money to reduce the complexity of their lives. That's an important concept, especially in software. Don't tell me about how the iPhone doesn't support Flash or 3G or blah blah blah, the people who are buying it clearly don't care that much. It works and they're happy. Some of them hack, and that's good and well for them. The point is, Apple's strategy worked.

I hate to talk about Apple so much, but I have more interesting news from Cuppertino: they're trying to patent a process where people can add themselves to queues for products when they're on the go. So you could order something from Best Buy when you're heading to the gym, and they'd text you when it's ready so that you could go pick it up right away. Or maybe it could skip long lines at Starbucks while you're on the way there? On the flip side, it could also track your orders: good for businesses, bad for your privacy. Apple doesn't always act on these patents, but this could be interesting, if not scary. The other big news is that the movie studios are realizing that iTunes is here to stay and are ready to talk movie rentals. No information yet, the point is that iTunes is really gaining clout with the studios for them to consider this.

One more tech tidbit: I liked this list of startup tips. It's concise, comprehensive, and interesting. It's worth a skim.

As for movies, just two things. There's a new trailer for Harold and Kumar 2. Maybe it's just because I love the first one, but I really enjoyed that trailer. I'm definitely looking forward to it coming to theaters. The other thing is to look out for these Indiana Jones 4 promotional crates at your local theater:

Excited About Abrams

I checked out my old movie new haunts after a long break from keeping up with them and came up with more interesting movies than interesting tech news, so let's start with that. J.J. Abrams' current projects have me pretty pumped. First of all, there's Lost. ABC put up the trailer for the new season of Lost, and I think it's pretty cool. I guess that the whole rescue operation gets pretty complicated (I loved the flash forward in the season finale last season). They've been putting some interesting deleted scenes, too. They're interesting and fun to check out, but I haven't yet found anything extremely important. The other cool Abrams project going on right now is Cloverfield, and Yahoo Movies put up a new clip from it (an extension of the teaser trailer). I didn't see the theatrical trailer until now and I like it. I'm pretty sure now that it's not a terrorist attack or an earthquake but actually a monster attack. Its his take on a Godzilla-like movie I guess, but told from a shaky cam. This style of cinematography surely isn't new, but could make for a pretty neat thriller. I don't expect a Blair Witch Project, I expect something that will actually put us in the shoes of genuinely scared people during a slightly more realistic portrayal of an attack on New York City. I'm still more interested in the attack on Gotham City, of course, and this poster will be in my room someday:



Speaking of superheroes though, the Hellboy 2 trailer is pretty sweet, too. Guillermo del Toro is just so awesome at dark fantasy and I was never that interested in the first movie but I like how this one looks so I may have to go ahead and rent Hellboy sometime.

There's more trailers to talk about though. Apple has the trailer for The Signal in HD and it's an interesting horror movie. I like horror movies that don't focus on gore but are more along the lines of a psychological thriller. What's much cooler about it though is that there are 3 directors portraying a signal that tells people to kill and focuses on their fears and such to get them to wreak havoc. I'd say it's a movie to keep an eye on. The other trailer I thought was worthwhile was for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but only because Kristen Bell is awesome (I wish I bought the Veronica Mars Season 2 DVDs back when it was $15 on Amazon because it's back to $40 now). It's just a romantic comedy about a guy trying to get over his ex, who's a TV star, and it includes Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, and Mila Kunis as well, though I'm still skeptical. I think it could be funny, but I can't justify running out and seeing it until I've seen reviews because the trailer just didn't grab me. Plus, the main actor is the writer (Jason Segel).

Then again, I was wrong to think bad things about Walk Hard because Moriarty is pretty vocal in his recommendation of it. I can tell from his impressions that it'll be hit or miss with most people because of how off the wall and obscure it can be, but color me intrigued.

While I'm on movies, Gizmodo is still pushing DVD as being better than Blu-ray or HD-DVD, and I agree. The DRM, the lack of content, and the price are pretty big deterrents, but there's also the fact that you need a pretty big HD TV to tell the difference and so it's just not worthwhile yet.

Wired has a good list of the top 10 startups worth watching, and I definitely agree on a few of them. It kind of goes without saying that BitTorrent is hot because torrents are so popular. Powerset is a great one because semantic web is such a fascinating field and so I definitely think that there's a bright future in natural language search. Then there's 37Signals, whose Basecamp project management application is well-known among programmers as is Ruby on Rails. You can see the article for more, but those aer just my top 3 from that list.

Remember that whole Fake Steve Jobs being sued thing from last post? Yeah, that was a joke. I guess I'm just stupid for having not seen it coming, but it was just a big satire, though plenty of people commented on his blog and fell for it, so I'm not alone (though the ThinkSecret settlement was real). Also real is the Philips LivingColor Lamp, which is a cool lamp with a wireless remote that allows you to adjust the color settings on this really bright but subtle (and small) lamp. I would totally get that lamp if for nothing else but to help out at theme parties.

Yo Ho Ho, A Pirate's Christmas For Me

I had a couple of noteworthy items on privacy, so I felt like I could stretch the title a bit. The RIAA just gets more and more ridiculous as time progresses, it seems. They decided to distribute their own news segment about a big crackdown on pirated CDs and how to look out for pirated music. It's one of those things that's so stupid that to even highlight what's wrong with it is to state the obvious. I can assure you that a pirated CD does not have worse sound quality than a normal CD though, that's one of the things wrong with this video. Oh, and no one wants Christmas ring tones. The bottom line is that they're focusing too much on the negative and their scare tactics are clearly not effective. When you tell your consumers that CDs that are "too good to be true" are probably pirated, you're kind of a moron. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but it seems like everyone realized but them that there has just not been an upward trend in the quality of the content of music nowadays and so the reason the industry has been faltering is that people have been using the Internet to become more selective and only buy what they know they'll like as opposed to the 90s where people bought CDs that looked pretty or were from familiar/recommended artists. In this world of Internet radio and Seeqpod and Pandora and Last.fm, the playing field has changed. They need to move towards embracing that.

Famed torrent site Mininova found their pirate spirit and decided to use it to build a legitimate service: content distribution. You give them the content and they'll help you seed the torrent and everything, all for free. It's intended for independent artists and filmmakers, but there doesn't seem to be any restrictions on who takes advantage of it. I love it because they're just showing off how torrents can really help the world past just piracy.

Apple's PR people never cease to piss me off. Their desire to protect trade secrets is relentless. They finally got to Think Secret, which was a pretty well-known blog for Apple rumors and leaks. So basically, they were paid off to shutdown. They went to the Fake Steve Jobs blog and made him the same offer. He's under contract with his sponsor, so he's resisting at his own peril. Get this: they sent him a detail list of his assets at risk if he doesn't cease a desist, including his kids' college funds (with their names). That's all kinds of messed up. Their case against him is pretty thin. There's nothing wrong with writing a satirical blog about someone, even if it is about Steve Jobs. The posts they claim that are in violation don't prove that anything was leaked; the evidence is circumstantial. It's just upsetting to me that they have this cult following and they choose to run their name in the ground among geeks, their most loyal followers, with this craziness. Oh, and Fake Steve criticized the EFF for promoting censorship (i.e. helping bloggers settle with Apple and basically being sell-outs) so they won't help him. Hypocrites. Hear that, EFF? No one takes you seriously and no one ever will.

While I'm pouncing on Apple, they've filed for a couple of patents. The first patent made sense: auto-shutdown after charging or file transfers. Great idea. The other patent is for programmers to inject code into software's run-time stream so that it can restrict execution to certain hardware. So if you tried running a Mac application on hardware that Apple didn't like, it wouldn't work. First of all, this is bad for the same reason DRM is: you're restricted use too much. Let consumers do what they want with what they bought, don't nickel and dime them out of possible uses. Don't force them to use your hardware just because you wrote the software. That's called being snooty. Second of all though, am I the only one who sees the potential for security issues? If it actively checks the hardware and you put out a virus that gives it faulty information, couldn't you theoretically crash people's machines who ran software based on this patent? Oh, and what about the false positive rate? Let's not forget about base rate fallacy. I hope that this patent is an idea they don't intend to implement, but I'm afraid given their issues with people hacking iPhones that they will. On the bright side though, Apple is adopting Intel's UMPC platform Menlow. That doesn't mean a whole lot to us right now except that they're following Intel's roadmap so we can hopefully expect to see Apple on the cutting edge of mobile applications past just the iPhone (or even improving the iPhone in 2G).

Just a couple of quick, fun items. Google Talk lets you translate in real-time if you invite one of their translation bots into a group chat. Isn't that pretty cool? I've run into the language barrier before on Google Talk many months ago, and that would've totally helped then. Remember Y2K? It turns out that Linux wasn't built to last past 2038! I'm sure it'll be fine by then with the increasing acceptance of 64-bit processors, but it's still kind of quirky. This and this are wickedly funny. They're what video game boxes would say if they told the truth. This is one of my favorites:



Have a great Christmas, everyone! I'll have another post for you soon enough. Hopefully I'll be more productive over the next couple of days.

Hulu and Cranium Wow

My Fall semester is officially over! Academically, I couldn't be happier that it's over, to be honest. Aside from Network Security and Privacy, I won't really miss my classes very much. I managed all the grades that I wanted, so I'm pretty excited about it. Marketing was lame, OS was a drag, and Vision was just way too difficult. Finance was alright, though I wish I didn't have to take that final (she drops the lowest test and I screwed up my last one). Network Security was definitely a ton of fun though, and I really took a lot away from it. Now I can start my extremely busy Spring Break. I have to start looking at this research project I want to help with, I have to code up an internal professor review feature for the NSC site, and I have to help write a web application to help prepare high school students for TAKS (standardized test). Nice break, huh? Oh well, I prefer it to be productive rather than boring. Plus, I should have a pretty easy time this Spring, which is nice because I want to hit up all the happy hours in Austin.



On to the good stuff. I got my private beta invite for Hulu and I was definitely pleasantly surprised. You can find out a little more about it here. The concept? Basically, your television on-demand from anywhere. It has full-length shows, clips, reviews/previews of games, and feature films. It's a huge step up from Joost, mainly because it's so ridiculously easy to use and very responsive. I eventually stopped using Joost (though I still have it installed) because it was clunky and it always took me forever to find the content I wanted. I really wanted to love it because the videos were high quality and generally loaded pretty fast, but it was a pain to navigate.



Hulu, on the other hand, is like everything I could've imagined in a free, on-demand service. It really lends itself to casual browsing. You can browse popular clips or search for content and then there's a little link below each video to add to your playlist (see the first screenshot). Then, you can just mouseover the playlist link in the top right corner to see a drop-down of the top 5 items and start playing them (see second screenshot). It keeps your history as well so that you can always show your friends videos you saw a week ago. Each video page shows you related videos, lets you submit reviews and rate it, and all that good stuff. What's really neat about sharing the videos is that you can not only e-mail it but embed the whole video or a clip of it. Check out this clip from Friday Night Lights from the second to last episode where Smash Williams is in over his head with college recruiting:



Plus, the ads are unobtrusive. There's occasionally an ad before the video, but they're usually really short and the ad in the top right corner is pretty small also. The video quality is also better than I expected (much better than YouTube), and it's all legal so you don't have to worry about your favorite Family Guy clips disappearing.

I do have a few gripes though. When you browse by show, you can't add episodes to your playlist, which is kind of annoying. You also can't do this from the video itself, only from the home page, popular clips, or a search. You can't mark favorite videos, which would've been nice. You can't tag videos, which would be really good for making search easier. Overall though, it's pretty amazing for being just in beta. There's a ton of content, and I think that the major networks could shut down their full episode players and hand over their content to Hulu. It makes it so much easier than going to each different site for a different show.

Now to switch gears, I want to give a brief review of Cranium Wow. I got it as a birthday gift a little over a month ago, but I've played with other people's sets to so I've played it quite a bit. So what's different about this from the old Craniums? Well, a few rule changes, different die, new games, and movers. The rule changes are pretty minor: the soonest birthday rolls first and I think that's new. When you get to the middle of the board you do all 4 categories in clockwise order and then your opponents pick one more for you to do, which I believe is new. The die has 10 sides for the 4 colors plus purple to fast track to the brains. The new games are Side Show (move a team mate's body to get your team to guess whatever the card says), Team Gnilleps (spell the word backwards, except that the whole team has to participate now), and Mind Meld (everyone on the team writes down 3 things in a category and if 2 people match in 1 item then you win the roll). I think that's it, but I haven't played regular Cranium in a while so there's also Copycat (act like the person on the card) and Odd Couple (pick the 2 things on the list that don't belong) in case that wasn't in original Cranium. The movers are cute and the hair is changeable. There are 12 in all, and your box comes with 4 of them. Oh, and it has 600 cards which appear to be all new and has some more pop culture mixed into them.

So how does it play? To be honest, it's faster and at times can be easier. There are a number of easy cards, and some hard ones. Then again, difficulty is subjective based on who you're playing with. But still, the purple color on the die makes the game a lot faster. You can finish a whole game with 2 teams in under an hour. If you have more teams though or if you get a lot of hard cards the game can take about 2 hours. Despite this though, it's still a lot of fun. I find my friends pining to play it whenever we have out get togethers. I think it really does revitalize the series with great presentation inside and on the outside of the box, and it's a lot better than getting a booster pack if you have an old Cranium set. It's pretty much what you've come to love, plus more. Yeah, it has quite a bit of easy cards, but that doesn't mean your team will get them. I don't regret getting this game at all, and I think it actually doesn't work too bad with small groups (though it's obviously best with larger groups).

Alright, I gotta jet for now, gang. I'll bring you guys another post this weekend!

The Dark Knight Trailer

I'm seriously only posting today to tell you good people that the first theatrical trailer for The Dark Knight is up. I really want to blog right now. It's taking a lot of willpower to not chunk my Finance notes and just wing the final. However, I've come too far to not see this class through. I'll try to put up a post tomorrow night, but it all depends on how many martinis I go through after my final in the process of celebrating. From then on out you'll definitely see posts more often (my goal is at least twice a week, and all being high quality posts). My next post will be a review of Cranium Wow and Hulu (I just got in the private beta).

Until then, keep re-watching this. It's only the most phenomenal trailer I've seen in a while because of my intense anticipation for this movie, so I don't want to get your hopes up. That being said, omghi2u Joker. For the first time, I think I finally believe in Heath Ledger in this movie. I didn't hate him before, but I wasn't convinced until seeing him in the role. I know I've said this before, but what I love about the Batman series is that the villains are really human, just like Batman. Batman has no super power, and his villains' strengths and plans really play off of dark, sordid histories or psychotic tendencies. There's this gray line that Batman begins to play with over time as far as his own sanity goes, and the Joker is this awesomely complex character who I just love as a bad guy. He's more than just prototypical, he's a great arch-nemesis. I have faith in Nolan bringing that out in this movie because he's just a great director. When you bring back Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman, and then you decide to add in Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhart, how can you go wrong?

Speaking of Usability

My Hell week was quite interesting culminating in me screwing up my Finance test and forcing me to take my Final or be stuck with an embarrassing 89. Since then I've been trying to play with my Vision final, but it's really not very fun. So I thought I'd take a break to write this post. This weekend has had its ups though, my friend has a murder mystery party last night and I highly recommend trying it out if you haven't before.

Anyhow, I don't think you guys came here to read about my weekend. For some reason, I like talking about usability. It's a gift and a curse since it's really important in today's fast-advancing society that people can keep up with technology, but at the same time I feel like a broken record player. At least one other person is with me on this one as he talks about usability problems on a professional blog. I like that he makes it a conversation, because that's really what our interactions with technology devolve to. I know it sounds silly, but don't you think you subconsciously talk to your computer? 90% of the time, you say how much you hate it and want to kill it. The rest of the time, you're praising it for those cute pictures of your brother's dog, or for answering #4 on your number theory homework, or for finding you a route to the liquor store so you can pick up some gin. When it comes down to it, we've become a little spoiled nowadays with the web when you consider how it used to be.

Back then, it was just text on white backgrounds with images that took a commercial break to load. Now, have you noticed that we're mad when pages don't load fast enough or when we can't find exactly what we want? He kind of unknowingly makes a great point: our attention spans are so much lower. When we don't find what we want, we register a bad experience and move on. We search somewhere else. First impressions really are everything, and the web has gradually shifted over the past few years to being dominated by blogs. So it's definitely important for professionals to relay to their users what their site is really all about very quickly and easily. The RSS button should be easy to find. Any ads should be unobtrusive. Basically, the opposite of this blog. I'm not much of a fan for Dvorak anyway because his opinions are almost purposely ridiculous to get a rise out of geeks, but I only know what that blog is about because I'm a nerd. Yeah, my blog could be better, but it's far from professional. I could go on and on, but I think I've made my points pretty concisely about the importance of usability on the web.



Notice anything different in that picture? No? Actually, neither did I when I first tried it. It looks just like Firefox 2.0. Surprisingly, it's Firefox 3. You can try out the early beta yourself here. What's really awesome about it is that it's a "portable edition", so it's essentially running in a sandbox and won't write anything to your machine (except for transient data during execution I'm guessing while it's running because of virtual memory usage) or screw with your current install of Firefox. It lets you just try this one out. I couldn't figure out how to get to the famed "Places", but I did like a couple of things that I stumbled upon. You can bookmark things with that star on the far side of the address bar. I like it because I never was a fan of the whole pop-up to add a bookmark. The other big thing is that when you click on the URL favicon (left of the address bar), it basically tells you if this site is really who they say they are and how Firefox knows it is, or if no information is available on it (which most sites I looked up were as such, so I don't know how this will work). Also, it'll give you the extended SSL information I showed you above, which is much easier than clicking the little lock in the corner and is much more detailed so that people other than security gurus can understand it. The verifier is who gave you the key that you're using to encrypt (i.e. hide so that eavesdroppers can't understand your messages) anything you send to Gmail, which is more important than you may immediately realize. It provides just a huge overhaul of security features though, and I'm extremely impressed. All these things make a lot of sense and go a long way in helping people browse the Web safely. If they really pull all this together, I will become a Firefox evangelist, because this really goes beyond IE's stabs at improving security.

I should really get going here, so just a few quick things. If you're looking for a free, online project management tool, consider Project2Manage. I just started playing with it tonight and I think I may use it. Netflix is going to be redesigning their mailers because the current ones are causing extra labor for Postal Service workers and, thus, costing more to ship than Netflix is paying. I wonder what they fix to make it easier? Any thoughts here? Facebook is mad at people putting up ads on their pages because they claim it'll make pages too cluttered! Isn't that the craziest thing you've heard the executive team at Facebook say? Not the applications, no no, but people trying to put up ads now. Really, they just want to be making money off their own product. That's cool: just make a first-party application to put ads on your profile and the hosts will just share in the profits. How many people will really do this anyway? You can keep banning these 3rd party things, but you don't want someone else to monetize this kind of thing before you. At worst, you decide you don't like it and you take it away later (like course listings). Apple's next man in line may be a Briton! I just found that interesting. Lastly, if you're on a Treo or another phone with wireless web but haven't been able to figure out IM (like me), check this out. it's not great, but it's not bad either.

Hell Week

Hey guys, I promise a post this weekend. That's right, I actually guarantee it. I'm itching to post again, but I physically cannot right now. I'm so swamped. It's actually a little scary (I went to bed last night at 8AM), but I think I can get through it with enough willpower This week (past and future) involves an OS homework, a gigantic OS project, a gigantic Vision homework, difficult Network Security homework, an OS exam, a Marketing test, and a Finance test (back-to-back on the last two). Yeah, it's beyond ridiculous. After this though, my next (and last) exam is next Thursday, plus a take home final for Vision. So I'll definitely have time to post this weekend. I didn't get a chance to post last week because it was my last week with someone very special in my life. They're not dead or anything. In fact, she's still around and it's nice that I can still hang out with her. I have every faith that we'll end up together if it's meant to be. If not, I've been happier beyond all measures with her and I'm so glad that she's still a part of my life.

There are a couple of quick things I would like to briefly mention. Gmail has made some great improvements to the Gmail including Group Chat, AIM support, and better usability of labels. I love how the Gmail team is so receptive to user feedback; good job, guys! The other thing is that my Network Security professor, being the badass he is, made Slashdot last week. He broke anonymity with the Netflix contest data. Netflix has a running contest with a prize of $1 million for an algorithm that recommends movies more accurately than their current algorithm by at least 10%. They attached the records of 500,000 of their users to the contest with their identities stripped from it, but my professor and a grad student here at UT found an algorithm to link identities extremely accurately to IMDb. How crazy is that?

Oh, and please sign this petition. YouTube marks videos of stutterers as comedy. To me, this is utterly unacceptable. Speech impediments are not a laughing matter to those of us with them, and I also fear that kids who sneak onto YouTube and see videos like that being called 'comedy' will feel motivated to make fun of stutterers or clutterers at their school.

Before I sign off here I'll leave you with a picture of my loot from Black Friday:

Shying Away from Vista

Sorry it's been a while, but I spent last week working on my hardest project ever: exploiting buffer overflow in 7 programs for Network Security. We worked at least 45 hours over 4 days to get 6 of the 7. I've gotta say, hacking is hard work. Now, over the break I have homework in three classes and a project to start on for OS, so I still can't post much. Exciting, no?

Not to throw unwarranted support for Macs (I think they're cool, but I'm not part of that cult), but I think that this is a pretty funny little ad:



I remember a time when people were just railing on Vista for being too flashy and having too many versions. Now, IT professionals are shying away from upgrading. When the integrity of your business relies on a piece of software that has more anecdotal evidence behind crashing than the alternatives and it has known issues with certain hardware (though this has been a receding problem, to Microsoft's credit) and potential problems with business applications it's a bit daunting. It's past irrational worries, these people don't want to deal with a mess. This is a pretty sizable issue for Microsoft. Windows is their bedrock, and a significant portion of their sales goes to enterprise customers. If they lose the trust of these people, and they turn to Linux and OS X, this will surely erode the good name of Microsoft. In my humble opinion, this could be the beginning of the end for Microsoft. I know, that's an extremely bold statement, but I don't think it is because I think that they're going to re-organize, smarten up with Windows 7, and put out a more worthwhile OS after getting feedback from Vista. If it's another flop though, you'll see more defections, and by then it'll be too late for Microsoft. They'll still be around, sure, but they won't be the powerhouse they are today because when it comes down to it, their fame and fortune is predicated upon Windows. They have a bevy of other products, and they'll continue to bring in money, but without their crown jewel they'll bleed for a while. I hope they see Vista as a stepping stone to a better OS, because I think that it's the shell of what could've been something amazing.

Across the water in Washington, Amazon put out a new product called Kindle. I have no private knowledge of this product other than totally ambiguous rumors back in the summer so what I'm about to say is just my own personal thoughts. It's a pretty cool little product, but what confuses me is the target audience. Basically, it's a e-Reader that runs on EVDO wireless (for free) so you can download books on demand pretty much where ever you can use your cell phone and you can also have news papers and blog posts delivered straight to your Kindle automatically. It uses a special screen that's easy on the eyes, which takes little power to hold the display of text so it lasts an extremely long time on one battery charge. The problem? It's $400! I don't understand who would buy this because any bibliophiles would find it cheaper to go to a library or just order the books, and it doesn't support pdfs so the business professionals who could use it for reading company documents and such are out of luck. I think at $200 that it would be a much more palatable product. Not to mention the fact that people just like to have a hard copy of their books. Still, I think that for this product category, this is as good as it gets. It's easy to use, it's small, it's lightweight, it actually has built-in wireless, and it's just a great niche product. If the price goes down, I think you'll see more interested persons.

This Friday is Black Friday, a day named such because business use it to go in the black (turn a profit) when the holiday season starts. I encourage you to be careful if you brave the crowds. There are a lot of nuts out there. If you're not sure what's out there, this site has a nice compilation of the deals in a spreadsheet. Supposedly, Amazon will have some good deals also, but you have to wait until Friday to see them.

Ok, I need to get back to Finance homework, so I'll do my best to post again before the end of the break. My special girl got me Cranium Wow, and I've played it a couple of times already. It's been a lot of fun, but let me play it a little more over the break before I give you guys the skinny on it. It's basically originally Cranium with a couple of new games, some fun figurines, and a couple of twists on the rules to speed up the game. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

Pay the Writers, Already!

So I don't have time to post today, but this is way too huge to not talk about it. Watch this first:



I know, you're watching a biased piece of media there since the Writers' Guild of America (WGA) created it, but it's not like the studios created one explaining their position or anything (unless you count this or this). You can see an AP video about it here. The strike has been going on for three days now, I think, and there's a bunch of people out there with them include actors from Reno 911 and Heroes, among others. If you think this is small potatoes, take a look at some pictures.

We're going to start feeling the effects of this strike very soon. Jack Bauer joined the strike, so no 24 until it's settled. That probably hurts the most. But wait, there's much more. The Office is no more until the strike is over. A lot of showrunners have been picketing, so it's only a matter of time before they're on reruns as well. Heroes has been lackluster this season and promises a better show if this strike goes in their favor (oh yeah, they'll stop at episode 11 because of the strike). Oh, and your precious late night shows are no doubt now in reruns because of how heavily they rely on writers. Jon Stewart is paying his staff while they go on strike, actually. In a matter of speaking, we're screwed.

Fortunately, The Governator is trying to step in and resolve this, which is refreshing because we all want our shows back! Meanwhile, the studios are suspending staff not working on currently running shows in a diabolical showing of idiocy. Awesome, what a great PR move. Kick yourself while everyone already hates you.

Personally, I support WGA. I don't think this many people join a strike out of greed. Nor do I really see more than a few people online saying so. I have no reason to believe that they are being paid fairly as no one has provided any counter evidence. Their demands really aren't that bad: give them back the percentage they used to get on video sales and give them a fair cut of the Internet market. They're very smart in mentioning the whole PC/TV merging thing, because I already see techie homes doing this. It's going to happen, sooner or later. It's not just a crazy theory, it's going to happen. It's a slow road we've been driving on for a while now. They really do need to get in on this market. The studios are definitely making money online, and they need to start paying the people responsible for it instead of using all of it to line their pockets. I signed the petition, and I hope you will, too. I want 24 and Heroes and The Office again, damnit!

Oh, and while I'm posting, check out the first trailer for Valkyrie. It's about how a band of German soldiers commit high treason and try to plot the assassination of Adolf Hitler during World War II. I definitely want to see this one.

Predicting the Future with the Past

Yep, I'm amazingly still alive! Things have been relentless at school. I have two tests next Friday, a project due Monday, and a crazy homework and project due a week from Tuesday. It looks like by the time I can breathe it'll be Thanksgiving! My girl has been keeping me going though, and I did end up taking the offer with Amazon so I'll be going there next July. I look forward to it and still don't regret the decision. I'm only sad when I think of being there alone, but I take solace in how beautiful the city is and how satisfying work was there. Speaking of Amazon, catch the new layout now that it's actually out? I love how much more dynamic the pages got, and I like that many toys and games now have videos with them. Very neat stuff; I'm proud of them for finally enhancing the user experience in some unique ways (including video reviews).

I've spent a while here looking through all kinds of news and have come up with a few things I want to talk about before I go to bed, starting with Joel Spolsky's entry on Evidence Based Scheduling, a system it sounds like Fog Creek pieced together from other existing ideas, but I'm not clear on that. Anyhow, this is an excellent read if you ever want to be a technical manager. Scheduling projects is typically not very fun for a programmer because it's a little daunting to time out everything you have to do to get something done, and you're worse at it as you look farther into the future. I know that we've definitely drawn upon some of those planning suggestions at work over the summer and they worked great, but his post highlights in more detail the aspect of using the accuracy of past estimates to better keep track of how close your ship date is to when you say it is. I don't know if there's any mathematical validity to his technique, but it doesn't sound too shabby because you almost never are right on the money in planning out your future. No matter how experienced you are, it's just tough in this field. Software construction is a whole different ballpark from building construction: we don't have those pesky laws of physics and nature to bound our work, just ourselves. In reality, we really are our own worst enemies: either perfectionists or sloths or even victim to requirements creep. Though I do believe we follow a trend in how we do these estimates, so that's why I'm promoting the concept.

It's funny, I don't know when I started using Google. I remember one fine day in early 2007 using the Internet at my neighbor's house with only one URL given to me: www.yahoo.com. When we got the Internet later that year, I naturally used Yahoo to find Flash games and other junk to occupy my pre-teen boredom. Then I moved to Metacrawler, because it was concise about searching and Yahoo gave me too many crap results, and then people started using something called Google, which I argued was still too many results compared to my Metacrawler and probably wasn't as efficient. Then I somehow got lured into Google by the simplicity of it. Back in those days, we didn't have Broadband, so I loved anything that loaded fast. I don't know if this phenomenon is more apparent anywhere than this picture timeline of the layouts of Yahoo and Google. What's really telling is the real estate dedicated to advertising: it was one of the primary reasons I wrote off Yahoo's early beta of their new AJAX-ified Yahoo Mail. It really amazes me that as backwards as several of Google's products are in UI design (though I still champion Google Maps as being the best free online map service, despite the fanciful Live Maps), Yahoo always makes itself worse. I'm honestly amazed that they're still doing so well; I guess they've made some pretty good acquisitions. It's sad because they have all this potential, and they're just not doing anything with it. They really shouldn't let Google bully them around in market share.

Am I to know that Blockbuster is going down the drain? I was shocked to see the headline of that article. Granted, Netflix is doing well, but I never thought that Blockbuster has been actually digging themselves into a hole. I figured that their strategy with Total Access was balanced enough to keep them afloat, but it looks like they're still operating under losses ($35 million worth). Ouch. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised though because I always use I Love Video in Austin since rentals are like dirt cheap ($2.50). In any case, it's pretty noteworthy, and speaks to the power of a little guy (Netflix) coming out of nowhere to take on a formidable giant (Blockbuster).

I just think this story is funny. Some guy on a train jammed the phones of everyone in a 30-ft radius of him because a girl in her twenties said "like" too much. I say like a little too much myself, but I do see the irritation of people having long, drawn-out conversations within earshot. It's like I'm being distracted with information I never cared to know. Why do people get on a bus and have personal conversations? If I want a soap opera I'd be watching Friday Night Lights (which is really excellent right now, if you don't watch it).

The only movies I want to mention briefly are trailers I liked. A newer trailer for The Golden Compass is online in glorious HD and it's just awesome. I'm definitely biased here because this is a movie I seriously daydreamed about as a kid. I enjoyed that book so much that I would totally imagine what the movie would be like or a game and was amazed that it hadn't happened already. I have to see it. Another book is being made into a movie: There Will Be Blood is actually based off of the Upton Sinclair novel, Oil, about the conflict that oil brings to a small town during California's oil boom (I think this was the early 20th century?). The trailer just really fascinated me for some reason, and I liked how it ended in a semi-creepy way despite this movie not being a horror/thriller movie at all to counteract the title. The other trailer is for Southland Tales, which has been out for a while but it's still a funky one. It got mixed reviews at film festivals, but I'm still hella interested given that I can damn near act out Donnie Darko myself.

I'm too tired to do a meme, and it'll probably be another week before I post again (sorry), so here's a picture from Broomball a couple of days ago. We lost, but it was still fun.



I just got a 1GB memory card for my camera so I guess I'll be able to take even more pictures now (I was using 512MB). In fact, I'll share one more picture from yesterday: ACM's Big Event. I had two plates of this delicious Rudy's BBQ and I'm pretty impressed that I'm still alive right now.