Euro Trip 2011

Sorry it's been a while since my last post but I've been busy vacationing! I thought I would blog my favorite photos from the trip since sharing is caring. I picked just 42 of my 400+ snapshots, but I hope you'll enjoy them! By the way, you can click on any picture to enlarge it. I just made them smaller so this page is easier to load.

Dublin

We began our trip in Dublin, which is a charming little city with very nice people. We were pretty jet lagged on the first day, but we found the strength to drink some beer at the Guiness factory. Here's the ingredient that gives Guiness its trademark color and flavor: malted barley.

It was hard getting good pictures from the Gravity Bar at the top, which offered 360 degree views of Dublin, but I did my best.

We were very amused by this T-shirt in the gift shop and were tempted to buy it.

We were able to draw several parallels between Seattle and Dublin, one of which being the oddities of public transit. It looks like Dubliners are as happy with their public transit as we are.

I was advised on the plane ride into Dublin by a nice Irish girl to see the Leprechaun Museum. I thought that this clearly must've been a joke, until we found a pamphlet on the ground outside Dublin Castle as well as this sign on the street (which was pointing the wrong way because a guy turned it, dressed as a leprechaun, and decided to make some money off tourists).

The Liffey!

London

Next up on our trip was London, and our first night I finally had some proper cod and chips at a true neighborhood pub (we were the only tourists there).

The street we stayed on was lined with hotels, but was still very pretty.

We saw the traditional sights (Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, etc), but those are all pretty pedestrian. How about a really pimp hotel instead? (we didn't go inside, but it looked awesome)

The British Library didn't allow pictures inside (though it was a really awesome little museum), but the British Museum did and it was pretty incredible. I loved the entrance design.

Aside from the Rosetta freaking Stone and some really great mummies and stuff, there was plenty of other cool artifacts there.

Tower of London from the Tube station:

Brussels

I'd been to Brussels before (more pictures from Belgium from my last trip here) so I knew there wasn't a ton to do there, but you can't visit Brussels and not get a Belgian Waffle:

We managed to stay pretty close to the main plaza, which had pretty nice views at night.

Paris

I've been to Paris before, as well, and I have pictures from that trip posted here if you're interested. It was still fun going back there though and I saw several things I hadn't seen before, including this tree that I just thought was really beautiful (at the Tuilleries Garden).

We followed the Garden up to the Louvre.

I saw this when we were crossing the Seine and I thought it was really cool because it sounded exactly like the proper Sphinx described in the mythology regarding Oedipus.

We went to the Hotel des Invalides (a Hotel Napolean built for injured soldiers that's now a war museum) and they had a room of really cool models of various towns and cities and such built for military strategy, including a model of the place you may recognize from The Count of Monte Cristo film.

Though I have plenty of Eiffel Tower shots, it was too nice of a day out to not take one more from a different side.

My friends endured my pleas to swing by the Dali Espace in Montmartre and I really enjoyed it - this was my favorite piece that they had on display.

The last time I was at the Arc de Triomphe, they were doing a ceremony so I couldn't get too close to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but I got closer this time.

We saw a pretty decent sized orchestra in the subway one afternoon, and they were really talented. Just not something you see every day!

The last thing we saw in Paris before we left was Notre Dame and it was my first trip to the crypt underneath where they had ruins from Paris that once was, and it was just really neat to see.

Rome

Rome was the last city on our tour, and you can see many pictures from my last trip there highlighting some the big stuff to see there here. We stayed at a pretty good bed and breakfast right in the heart of the area around Vatican City, which gave us a chance to really live like a Roman, and I really took a shine to this particular piece of grafiti because there are so many funny things about it (not the least of which being that he didn't say 'love').

This is the organ at Santa Maria del Popolo, and I just thought it was really pretty how it was designed to look like angels are holding it up.

That church is on one side of the busy Piazza del Popolo, with this being the view from the middle - very symmetrical.

The Borghese Gardens were another new thing I hadn't ventured out to at all on my last trip, and it's basically a smaller version of Central Park. I was really taken aback by the massive trees they had there.

This is just a picture I happened to like that I took at St. Peter's Basilica in the piazza. The lamp posts there were very unique.

We happened to be staying down the street from a great Irish pub (I believe we visited a pub in every city we stayed in) where my friend's Guinness had a child.

Also at that pub we noticed some pretty young kids there. Here's a picture we tried taking without being too conspicuous.

I took this picture from our balcony one morning - it was just a very nice, homely neighborhood.

The most incredible part of our trip was getting a semi-private tour of the Vatican Gardens, which were an incredible preservation of a piece of God's beautiful creation. Nothing terrible extravagant about them, just their natural beauty. By the way, this is the way to go if you want to see the Vatican Museums - you pay a little extra for the tour of the gardens, but you skip the massive line for the Vatican Museums in the process. You just need to go to their website and book at least a month in advance (you can book up to 60 days early).

The castle-like structure in the back of this shot is basically the Pope's guest house for foreign dignitaries.

There's nothing super special in this last garden shot, I just like taking pictures of pathways like these. I think it's a place for gardening to tools at the end there.

This is an unfinished sculpture from the Vatican Museums that I believe was made by Bernini. I just found it very striking - I couldn't tell you why, but something is very beautiful about her.

We saw this horse outside the Colosseum trying to eat the grass in between the stones in the ground. It was too cute/sad to not take a picture of.

This in incredible work of art is from the St. Peter-in-chains church (known for having the chains that bound St. Peter in both prisons he was famously held in) - it's Michelangelo's Moses. I'll let you guess why it's called that.

We paid a visit to the Scala Sancta - the steps Jesus carried the cross up at Pontius Pilate's crib, with 4 spots of trace amounts of Jesus's blood. Really incredible to be there and highly recommended for any Christians.

Back in Dublin

We ended our trip with one last night in Dublin, followed by probably our tastiest breakfast of the trip - a true Irish breakfast (we had that other mornings in Dublin as well, this one was just better).

Alright, that's all for now! I'll post many more photos on Facebook for those of you who actually know me in real life. I'm hoping to have another post up here in the next couple of weeks on actual tech news.

We Will Pump YOU Up!

Gah - I can't believe it's already been 3 weeks since my last post! The time has been flying way too fast! I'm going on vacation next week so it'll be another 3 weeks until I can post again, but I should be able to put something fun together about my trip. Sorry for the lack of a techie post in a while, but here's something that's still nerdy: a speech I wrote up recently about working out. Enjoy!

Your average gym can be, and usually is, a very strange and intimidating place to a newbie. You've got bulky trainers whipping stringy guys and gals into shape, large men making high pitched grunting noises under unreasonable amounts of weight, and then you've got the vain folks who like seeing their muscles bulge as they lift. I've been working out regularly for over 6 years now but, like a lot of gym rats, my knowledge has been a mish mash of random online articles, locker room talk, and friends. So I did some research into good books on weight lifting and decided to pick up the Men's Health Book of Muscle by Ian King and I really got a lot out of it. So as Kevin Nealon and Dana Carvey as Hanz and Franz on SNL say, I'm here to pump *clap* *clap* you up! In the short time I have with you today I'd like to share the basics about the science of building muscle, proper nutrition, and tips on one's workout regimen.

As a card-carrying nerd I truly believe in understanding the science behind everything, and it can really go a long way when it comes to weight lifting for your own personal safety. Fun fact: you're born with all the muscle fibers you'll have your whole life - all you can do by working out is make them bigger (or smaller if you decide to stop exercising). Making your muscles bigger will in turn actually make your bones thicker and stronger, since skeletal muscles primarily exist to pull bones. There's two main types of muscle fiber: fast-twitch for maximum strength and slow-twitch for endurance. I found it fascinating that the breakdown of those two types are determined at birth and can never be changed. And did you know that the shape of your muscles is genetically coded? So there's not much you can do about that either. You have to be the best you can be with what you have. The way that you can reach that best is a process called hypertrophy, which is how muscles grow in response to a specific stimulus. In a nutshell, when you start working out your muscles get tighter to become ready for action more easily and then your muscles gradually grow by more protein filaments getting added to your muscle fibers so they can get bigger and generate more force. This only happens if all your motor units, or groups of muscle fibers, available for a specific task are in use, hence the saying "no pain no gain." Of course, our bodies are about efficiency so "use it or lose it" really comes into play given the amount of nutrients our muscles require.

Growing up, my mom used to always ask me if I eat to live or live to eat, to which I'd invariably respond the latter. Raise your hand if you love food. Obviously, it's fundamentally important to all of us, and I stand firmly opposed to any trendy diet plan, no matter what it promises. Ultimately, the best plan for gaining muscle or trimming fat is to eat several small meals during the day (every 3-4 hours, ideally, starting with as soon as you wake up). As far as what to eat: you should be ingesting one gram of protein for every pound you weigh and, despite popular belief, you need to eat carbohydrates so that you don't starve yourself of the energy your body will otherwise likely break down muscle tissue to extract. Of course, eating the right foods is also important: like sweet potatoes instead of normal potatoes, fresh fruits instead of dried fruits, or fish and lean cuts of meat instead of pork sausage and brisket. As a native Texan, that last one cut into me the hardest. Don't forget to have a snack high in protein and carbohydrates before and immediately after your workouts. I personally like mixing soy milk, egg white protein powder, and various other ingredients for my shakes as an easy, frugal source of these meals. Just remember that taking care of your body doesn't have to mean that you're carrying a burden with you at the dinner table; it's all about moderation and timing with your diet rather than sacrifice.

Workout regimens are subjects of near-religious fanaticism among gym rats. People swear by what they use because it works best for their body. Empirical evidence can be a powerful motivator, but Ian King has some sound advice for all of us. The book goes into great detail about exercises and his recommended programs, which are different for beginner, intermediate, and advanced lifters. They're catered toward your workout age, or how long you've been continuously working out for - which is an important concept because moving too fast too soon can lead to injury. Each program is a 4 stage progression that focuses on general conditioning, increased muscle size, strength, and finally maximal strength and power, in that order. Each stage is 6 weeks and you're supposed to take a week off either midway through and/or between stages, which is an important idea that I had never considered. These are called recovery weeks and they are the periods in which your body actually grows, but only if you keep your physical exertion to no more than very light weights or less intense sports. Another piece of very sound advice he offers is that you not do strenuous aerobic exercise, like running or bicycling, on the same days of your strength training or you won't grow effectively due to the so-called interference effect they cause since they do opposite things to your muscles. You'll have to get the book from your favorite online retailer or your favorite eBook reader to read his easy-to-understand charts on the programs prescribed.

I hope you've learned a little something today about weight training. What I learned from The Book of Muscle were the details of how muscles are composed, what one can and cannot do for one's body's growth, what the proper diet should entail, and the proven best ways to go about structuring one's workout schedule. Feel free to talk to me after the meeting if you have more questions, but I encourage you to do your part to keep Seattle on that hot list of the nation's fittest cities. I know I started because I was a chubby kid in high school who was looking to be slightly less awkward. After all these years though I've found it to be very rewarding and fun, and really look forward to incorporating Ian King's advice into my life. Mr. Toastmaster.

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.

Kindle the 3rd

I'm finally back! I'm hoping that I can end this hiatus now and get back to regular blogging. It'll be a bit of a challenge to get back in the swing of things, but I'm hoping to be able to post at least once every two weeks and maybe I'll be able to ramp up that rate as time goes by.

It's been almost a month now since I got the Kindle 3 - my first Kindle ever - which is plenty of time for me to form some pretty solid impressions. I have to confess that when I first found about the Kindle, I thought it wasn't a very good idea, especially since the Sony eReader had crashed and burned already. I thought it was too ahead of its time and it was going to be really hard creating a market for it with people so married to the idea of paper books. When you think about it, more so than any other medium it's the most resistant to change. People are really attached to their books. Of course, Amazon pioneered the idea of ordering books online, so I shouldn't have been surprised that it would be the best candidate to put out an electronic device. So why did I decide to buy something I thought was a dumb idea? Aside from the fact that the price was right (I got the WiFi model, so only $139), it was because of a screaming toddler. On the second leg of my trip back to my hometown for the holidays there was a toddler within 10-20 feet of me that literally screamed whether he was happy, sad, or just chilling out. I'm not exaggerating, I do not know what was wrong with this kid - you'd think his parents were abusing him. I finished the graphic novel I brought for the flight (I was hoping to sleep the whole flight) and the legroom in front of me was not enough to pull out my laptop and indulge in some Battlestar Cracklactica, so I closed my eyes and slept for two minute intervals between screams thinking about how much I wish I had room in my carry-on to bring more books. Needless to say, a Kindle was on its merry little way to my parents' place within 24 hours of my arrival.

I'm pretty amazed at how much I love the Kindle. People told me things like that it was the best thing they've bought in their life and that seeing is believing and all that jazz. I'd heard this sort of talk before when a little device came out called the iPad. I played with an iPad and I still don't believe it's worth $500. It's a very nice toy, but it's heavy and I have no desire to lug it around. The Kindle though is an entirely different story. It's remarkable how light it is. Holding it feels right - like it yearns for the warm touch of your fingers. I don't say this that much when it comes to electronics, but it's a thing of beauty - I'm impressed by how nice it looks and feels. The WiFi one only comes in graphite so your fingerprints don't stay visible for long and it just feels soft and elegant - especially the back which feels like thin silicone.

The first thing I love about the Kindle is a result of its sexy body: you can hold it in one hand comfortably. I always hated that with paperbacks you have to angle your hand in a special way to hold it with one hand, and even then you need you other hand to turn pages, which isn't convenient if you're standing on a bus or in numerous other situations. The first thing I hate also is related to its body though: the d-pad placement is silly. I hit the "Back" and "Menu" buttons on accident far too frequently when I try navigating up/down on the screen. To be fair, I have nails on my right hand (for playing guitar) so it'd probably be less of a problem if I didn't, but anyone with bigger hands is going to experience that irritation. Additionally, the bottom row of the qwerty keyboard is shifted one key to the left, which is frustrating for a touch typist like me who is used to a normal qwerty on his mobile phone. Aside from that though, the other keys are superb, especially next/previous page, which are wonderfully placed on either side of the device. I think it's really neat that the power button is on a light that appears as if from nowhere and indicates when you turn it on or when it's charging - very cool.

I have to hand it to the Kindle team, they know how to ship a product. As soon as it was on its way to me, I got an e-mail saying it was registered to me already and I could start buying stuff immediately to download on it when I switch it on. I was already blown away because I'd never had a product shipped to me that was already personalized without my request. When I pulled it out of the box, the screen had instructions on it when I un-boxed it, which I thought were on the screen protector until I followed the directions and the screen changed and I literally gasped because I was so shocked. This was my first experience with the text sharpness on the Kindle 3. The first two generations were cool and all, but this one really takes the cake in terms of contrast and the fact that it's literally sharper than words printed on paper. It's like when the iPhone came out that had a higher resolution than your eyes knew what to do with - the difference is that drastic. I cannot sing enough praises for the display - it makes me want to read more because I don't have to strain my eyes at all and that makes it fun to read again.

Oh, and it's quite snappy. Turning pages is very responsive, and waking it up from sleep is less than 5 seconds (less than 2 seconds if you left your book open when you put it to sleep and don't need to navigate to it). The overall interface is just logical. It comes with a huge user manual if you ever have questions (on the device, of course - not printed out), but you really only need the first chapter or two (that's not much reading) to get the basics. From there, you can figure it all out. The "Back" button always does what you think it will do. You can start typing text whenever to search or lookup words. There are just numerous examples of good UI design, especially the fact that the screen real estate is never cluttered and organizing your books into collections is super easy. Buying books is also easy - it's easy enough to buy on the device itself, but if you go online and do so then it'll start downloading to your device in literally seconds if you're on the home screen and your wireless is turned on. To conserve battery life, the WiFi/3G is never on when the Kindle is asleep - it's worth it, the battery life is incredible. I only charged it once since I got it, but only to be cautionary for another flight - I don't think I needed to have charged it since my first charge. Some other noteworthy features: taking notes/highlighting/bookmarking is super easy and syncs to the cloud, you can see passages highlighted by a lot of other users, you can share passages on Facebook/Twitter, your last read page syncs to the cloud whenever you turn on wireless, you can change the text size, approved books (by the book publisher) can be read to you, and you can send lots of stuff to your Kindle for free over WiFi (pictures, word docs, PDFs, Mobi). One feature that doesn't work so great is the web browser - it's adequate for things like logging on to WiFi networks with a gateway or browsing news articles, but the screen simply isn't designed for rich web content. A friend said something very true the other day to this point. It was something to the tune of "I already have a laptop and a mobile phone to browse the web, I just want to read books on my Kindle!" That's very true, and the Kindle does that very well.

I have a couple of side notes before I wrap up here. I got the lighted leather case (as pictured up above), and I love it. It's definitely pricey, but I personally felt it was worth it. It looks and feels nice, it keeps the Kindle nice and safe, and that light is a Godsend. I use it at the most random times. It bathes the screen in light perfectly without being distracting to people around you, and it's powered by the Kindle itself. The elastic band is quite sturdy, too. The other side note I have is that I find it fascinating that each technological advancement in media makes us more ADD, and the Kindle is no exception. When TV first started, you watched TV on a set schedule and you could only watch one thing at a time. Now you can watch multiple programs at once through DVRs and whenever you want. With music you could only listen to one record at a time, then cassettes brought about the mix tape breakthrough (for better or worse) and now mp3s have blown out the ceiling with podcasts and playlists and personalized online radio. Again and again, we're getting inundated with options and taking all of them. With the Kindle, I'm literally reading three books at once. I've discovered that I'm not the only person with this affliction. I think it's actually a cool thing though - one book is only good for reading in large chunks, one book I like to take pauses in just to think about it before I move on to the next piece, and one book is a collection of short essays that I can easily read on-the-go. Aside from schoolwork, this was a much rarer occurrence before eBooks, and I find it to be a fascinating advancement.

I think I've rambled on long enough. The bottom line is that the Kindle is a ridiculously capable e-reader. The idea that all your books are backed up in the cloud and you can still read them no matter how many Kindles or mobile phones you go through (or reset since resetting the Kindle clears its memory out) is a truly powerful concept. Aside from the initial oddity of saying to someone that you're going to plug your book into a wall to charge it, it feels so natural that once you get one in your hot little hands you'll wonder how you lived with that one. I'm not exaggerating - for me it was that drastic of a change. I had a few nit-picks with it, but I'm really happy with my purchase and am still very happy when I curl up to it at night. In fact, I think I'll do that right now.

It's Not Over...

Sorry I've been away for so long. I haven't given up on this blog, life has just made having time for it a challenge. It has taken me longer and longer to put together these posts and I think it's time to reboot how I do this blog. I want to try posting on a less regular schedule (i.e. not every Sunday, maybe Wednesday or Thursday or something sometimes) and focus on specific issues . Covering all the news that interests me is just too much and I think not providing a lot of value - I much prefer giving developed commentary on the big things.

Stay tuned - I want to start posting again very soon. It may start out bi-weekly and improve over time.

Lots of Cell Phones

Cell Phone News Galore

Sorry I haven't been around the past couple of weeks - life has been busy! I was out of town on business a couple of weekends ago and had a wedding to go to last weekend. Should be back in action for a while now though!

I've seen a ridiculous amount of cell phone news in the past couple of weeks, hence the headline. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is because we're nearing the holiday season that so many phones are coming out of the woodwork.

Verizon has added a feature to its Android devices much in the vein of what Apple gives iPhone users with Mobile Me. If you lose your phone you can have it play a really loud noise (even if its volume is down) or turn on GPS and track. Like many other phones, it also supports remote wipe. Unlike Apple's Mobile Me, this service is free. Gotta love competition!

HTC has officially unveiled the Desire HD, which was hotly anticipated by some Android fans and looks pretty damn slick. It has a 4.3" screen and an 8MB camera, and the specs are pretty tricked out with a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, and 768 GB of RAM. Plus, it supports microSD.

When you instead look at the Nokia E7, you can see why Nokia still doesn't have a foothold in America. I feel like their designers are living in 2006 or something. Sure, it has a 4" screen and 8 MP camera, but a phone with an angled slideout keyboard is something you'd see in a movie and seems like it would be cool but practically probably sucks. Also, the software doesn't seem very impressive. If you can't beat Android then why even try? Maybe I'm biased because I've never understood Nokia UIs.

That right there is the rumored Samsung Continuum phone. What's super fascinating about this phone is that it sports not one, but two OLED screens. Why would a phone need two screens? It's actually rather clever - the bottom one is like a news ticker for updates and notifications you can subscribe to and would show up when you put your hand on the device. Aside from being nifty, it'd save you battery life on checking that kind of stuff without firing up the whole main screen.

Last, but not least, two mystery webOS 2.0 devices are rumored to be getting announced this month. I may be the only person who cares about this, but I still love the webOS software and just need better hardware.

Internet Explorer 9

Internet Explorer 9 is on the horizon (like every other Microsoft product, they have to put in 3 years of development time), and some of the upcoming features truly are noteworthy. Apparently, the integration with Windows 7 will be tighter than in IE 8 including the ability to pin websites to your taskbar. What's really cool though is a performance advisor that tells you how much load time each add-on you have tacks on to your clicks. The other features are improvements from Chrome or Firefox: searching within the address bar, new tabs showing you most frequently viewed sites (color coded though), and a more compact interface. In a lot of ways, it looks like a Chrome clone to me; I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Must be surreal for Google since Internet Explorer is the top dog for browsers.

Apple TV is Out

The Apple TV is now available and PC Mag put up a review with plenty of footage of the UI. As you would expect, it's slick and simple like the first generation. In fact, just think of the UI as that one with just some added features. I acknowledge that this is a cool device at $99, but it bothers me that it doesn't have a hard disk. It would be so cool (though I know, impossible) if you could rip Blu-rays and DVDs to it so that it'd be like your traveling media hub. I wonder if the Boxee Box is dead in the water at $200 though it supports 1080p and is more open.

Digg Traffic Down

Anecdotally, the Digg redesign wasn't very well-received, but now we have metrics that traffic has dropped 26%. Despite popular belief, most of that traffic did not go to Reddit. That's a really significant drop and I think there are a couple of really important lessons to learn here. The first lesson is that they didn't have their biggest users test this out. That was stupid - they would've caught the problems in the redesign immediately. Secondly, they added the functionality of following people without including the old Digg - there was no good reason to do that. The experiment alone would've been valuable and it may have even succeeded comparing the two. Instead, they alienated a very loyal user base.

Additionally, it sounds like Kevin Rose may be leaving Digg due to burnout. He said they could've been bought out for $80 million but the board turned it down. Too bad, because they're in a rather precarious position now.

Galaxy Tab and Blackberry Playbook

In tablet news, Digital Trends got some hands on time with the Samsung Galaxy Tab and it looks cool. It's funny that the Desire HD is actually more powerful, but the specs aren't bad. I haven't seen pricing information, but I wonder how it'll fare against the iPad now that a lot of tablet enthusiasts have already picked that up.

Meanwhile, Blackberry has announced the Playbook, a QNX-based tablet to be released next year. They're developing QNX with full support for Javascript, HTML 5, CSS 3, and Adobe Air. I'm going to guess that they're going to push hard on video conferencing and other business-oriented features here, but it may be too little too late depending on how late into next year it's going to come out.

Quickies

Music download sales are flat right now, which doesn't seem all that odd to me. It's a pretty mature industry now, how much should it be growing, especially given that the holidays are just around the corner?

Netflix is going to start streaming a bunch of NBC content, including every season of SNL. Given that SNL used to be so much better than it is now, that's pretty big news.

Google wants to replace JPEG with a more efficient format: WebP. If anyone can force a new image standard, it'd probably be Google.

The Super Mario Brothers anniversary was a couple of weeks, so please enjoy this belated bit of anniversary nostalgia. So many memories of being a preteen.

Have a fantastic week!

Censorship in the US

What do Rackspace and Medal of Honor have in common?

These are big enough stories that you probably do know what they have in common. While this topic is a bit more political than I like to get, they're probably the biggest things to get noticed last week.

Medal of Honor, which I played at PAX and was quite fun, has been getting a lot of attention for the ability to play as the Taliban. This is only in multiplayer so it's not like you play a single player campaign trying to bomb an American landmark or something, but has ruffled quite a few feathers. It's been banned from American military bases, in fact. This strikes me as especially ironic because these guys go out and fight to preserve our freedom and for the freedom of others - whether you politically agree with what they've been sent to do or not, they serve their country with honor and believe in this freedom. Yet, they don't get the freedom to play this game. I know you give up some rights when you're on a military base, I totally understand that, but they might as well start outlawing war movies, right? How is that different from a game? An immersive movie can be just as powerful as a video game. Video games are an artform and should not be considered a second class citizen in today's media, it's not fair. I applaud EA for sticking to their guns. You can play as the Axis Powers in World War 2 games and you see things from Hitler's side in the movie Downfall, so why is it so wrong to play a game with the Taliban? It's not my cup of tea, but this clamoring for stores to not sell it is effectively censoring freedom of speech for EA, and it's not right.

In a totally different arena, Rackspace has denied service to a church that was planning to burn copies for the Koran. At first reaction, I'm totally with you: burning Korans is hateful and terrible. And yet, the right to peacefully assembly is what America is all about. Who is Rackspace to judge this church? I can appreciate the right of a business to refuse service to anyone, but being a service provider as Rackspace is, they're in a unique position. They may not be the only game in town, but they shut off this church's primary voice to the world. Imagine if Wal-marts started refusing service to Catholics because they don't believe in the death penalty. How different is that from this situation? In some places, Wal-mart is the primary source of a lot of random stuff, much like service providers like Rackspace. Their power is larger than that of a lot of companies because of this.

Maybe I've opened up a can of worms here, but I just believe in freedom of speech. Call me a wide-eyed optimist if you want, but I love this country and stories like this kind of suck.

G2 and Milestone 2 Announced

The cell phone is taking a cue from the movie industry with all these sequels they're coming out with. Motorola's Milestone 2 is a slick-looking slider phone that looks to be targeted more towards Europe and will be released there this fall. Of more interest to us is probably the T-Mobile G2, which is the first HSPA+ (basically, T-Mobile's 4G). Apparently, it has an unusual flip keyboard of sorts. The hardware under the hood sounds pretty similar to the Milestone 2. Aren't there processors other than the Snapdragon?

In more interesting mobile news, Nokia has replaced their CEO with a Microsoft exec. I do not know why they think he'll do any better, but I guess anyone else is better with the rut that Nokia has been in. To be honest though, Nokia needs something pretty drastic to get back in the game, at this point they need to take some pretty large risks. To go from having more than half the market cornered to 34% in 4 years is pretty bleak.

Apple Changes App Store Rules

I don't fully understand this, but Apple has decided to lax their app store rules a bit by not restricting the development tools used to create iPhone apps. This has prompted Adobe to go back to work on Flash for the iPhone. This doesn't mean the browser will display Flash, only that Flash-based applications will start appearing in the app store. There's speculation that the about face was from the antitrust investigation that Adobe is said to have instigated, but the investigation hasn't stopped as a result. I'm really curious to see if this will really create many more quality iPhone apps - Flash just doesn't seem as big of a development tool as it did even 5 years ago, but it's hard to predict where developers will hang their hat. It's a very fast-changing industry.

The Rest

Alright, I have to work on a speech so it's time to wind down.

Kevin Rose spoke a bit about the Digg issues on Diggnation and it didn't help their case tremendously because it made their engineers look like they didn't prep well for the v4 upgrade. If Digg were to add a tab to also show the old Digg they'd be doing just fine right now with their users.

If you're confused between Apple TV and Google TV, this is a pretty good article breaking down how they're conceptually different products altogether. Personally, I pictured what Google TV is purported to be to be where TV was going, but I like the idea of renting shows (especially if there are marathon sales).

This seems like old news now, but GMail released Priority Inbox to all users last week (not just Google Apps users as the week before) and it's pretty sweet. I've been using it and it's the biggest improvement GMail has had probably since Google Chat.

Google also released Google Scribe to help auto-complete everything.

This is old but I forgot to cover it last week: Google posted resources online to help with teaching computer science. Very cool stuff.

Have a great week, everyone!

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):

Traitorware From Apple

Apple's Odd Patent

It was kind of a slow news week, and when that happens there's always some interesting incendiary anti-Apple article to talk about. I'm going to start out by saying that the EFF calling a patent Apple filed "traitorware" is going a bit far - after all, it's not even a real product yet. Still, it's an interesting solution to the problem of theft.

In a nutshell, the patent is to use things like taking a picture, measuring various biometrics, GPS coordinates, voice recognition, whether your phone is jailbroken, and/or keystrokes to determine if you're the one using your device. The article from Computer World focuses a lot on jailbreaking for some reason - Apple can already technically remote wipe your device if they know it's jailbroken - not even they're crazy enough to do something like that though. The real issue is that giving them that level of information about you is scary. Your heart rhythm is pretty private health information - can you trust Apple with something like that? What's even scarier is the prospect of them collecting this information without you knowing about it. Doesn't this all seem to be going a bit far in the name of identifying unauthorized users of your device? Not if you think of it as their device that you're borrowing instead of your device, which may be their mindset.

The point that I'm trying to make in a somewhat roundabout way is that technology is a wonderful, magical thing, but it's up to us to keep advancements in technology in check. The EFF is just trying to sound the alarm on this issue early. If we don't speak up when scary stuff like this happens, we get on a slippery slope of trading away our privacy for less important advancement in software. Apple has not implemented this yet and it's very possible that they never will, but if they do then how will you react? Will you continue to support them?

Net Neutrality Worst Case Scenarios

In the wake of all this Verizon/Google net neutrality stuff, Mashable put together a few frightening and (mostly) believable scenarios of a world without net neutrality. It's funny that the first two relate to the progression of TV, which has clearly evolved into a far from a consumer-friendly industry ripe with petty fighting and unreasonable pricing.

A couple of the situations are on the other side. The government could go power crazy and over-regulate the Internet, but I think that there are too many Internet lobbyists to alow something like that to happen. There is an argument to be made for the fact that the amount of wireless spectrum available is limited, but I don't think that rules out a net neutral WiMax network if built correctly (not an expert in wireless communication though). I know that Verizon disagrees, but I don't understand how constrained capacity means that you can't send bits faster instead of just more bits at once.

In any case, I think people would have less problems with nominal wireless network management from Verizon if it was more clearly defined as really benefiting the greater good and being abundantly transparent. When you throw in clauses to add tiered services, you lose a lot of points even if there can be some argument made for wireless network management.

Galaxy S

That's the line of Samsung Galaxy S phones, and it looks like every major network gets one, though there are tiny differences between them, like 4G on the Sprint one or better battery life on the T-Mobile one. I personally think that the keyboard on the Sprint Captivate model is really cool because most Android phones lack a physical keyboard, but all 4 are probably the sexiest phones Samsung has come out with in a while. What's interesting is that these are much more multimedia focused than other models, which makes sense since Samsung is known for superior video and audio quality. Maybe they'll be able to attract more 3-D games to Android. In any case, they're definitely devices to keep on the radar.

Netflix for the iPhone

This is one of those things that I think really helps sell iPhones: Netflix has made an app for streaming some of their movies directly to your iPhone. It's apparently not quite optimized yet, but I think this is a pretty big deal since it's yet another way to consume movies aside from their ideal venue (a move theater). It just goes to show how much that industry is evolving as much as the MPAA has tried to resist it (obviously certain studios do get it for this app to exist at all). Of course, you could have probably also guessed that from Blockbuster's current problems.

Digg v4

Digg got a face lift last week, and I personally really like it. Public opinion has been mixed, but I think change is always like that on the Internet. I think they've done a really great job trying to innovate in the news aggregation space by taking into account the people that you actually care about. It applies the technology you use to get from useless information from your Facebook feed to information that you should care about: actual news. It's still a little rough around the edges, but I do hope that it works out in the end for Digg.

Quickies

Just a few one-liners:

Beware of HDMI cables upselling you on their refresh rate - it's all marketing lies.

This is a pretty interesting article on what fields of study Computer World thinks will be useful for getting a job in the future.

For a bit of cell phone nostalgia, you'll appreciate these old school ads.

This year was the biggest price hike yet for movie theater tickets, mostly because of 3-D. Ouch. When I was growing up, a movie was just $6!

Last but not least, the new Kindle is out!

Have a fantastic week!