My Trip to India

I plan to have a normal post up early next week, but until then I thought it would be fun to put up some of my favorite pictures from my vacation in India, where I visited Mumbai, Goa, New Delhi, and Agra. This definitely doesn't cover all of my trip and is simply my favorite pictures (not necessarily my favorite memories though), which provides a pretty decent cross-section of the trip. Even though we were slumming it at times, it was definitely a lot of fun. It's definitely an adventure to be out of your comfort zone and experience a different culture. Even though my parents are Indian and some of that culture seems through, it's incredible how different life is there even compared to Indian communities in America. If there was any doubt that I was 100% American, it was definitely eliminated on this trip. I saw some things I always wanted to see, got to spend a lot of time with some great people, and re-connected with family members I hadn't seen in a very long time. Without further ado though, let's get to the pictures (you can click on any of them to enlarge, by the way).

We all flew into Mumbai and on one of our first days we visited Elephanta Island, which is World Heritage Site and was cooler than I thought it would be. However, it was also our first taste with a common theme in India: the people do not take care of the culture like people in other parts of the world do. It's sad to see trash like this at caves that are centuries old:



Also at Elephanta were evil monkeys. This monkey here is holding a bag he attacked a woman to get:



We went to Leopold's in Mummbai and the food was really good. It wasn't the best restaurant we'd eat at, but the butter garlic shrimp was pretty insane. Anyway, they served a pitcher of beer in a very fun way:



In Mumbai we took a short walk on Marine Drive at sunset. It was a very nice view of the city, and the water:



I think the beach we went to that same night was Chowpati - it was closer to the center of town:



This post wouldn't be complete without a nod to Bademiya. It's an absolute must-go if you're visiting Mumbai. It's basically Indian street food done right.



My cousin got married in a nice chapel on a hill in Goa, and the ceremony ended near sunset. It was hard to get a good picture of Goa from this hill because of the way the lighting worked out, but I did the best I could:



The wedding reception had really neat hand-made flowers:



On one of our walks near Colmar beach in Goa we ran into a water buffalo. Apparently he had an owner, who was giving it a bath:



I was surprised I got this shot, but I managed to get it without any people in it. This was at the entrance to the Qutb Minar area in Delhi:



The Qutb Minar was pretty incredible and very photogenic. Here's a few more shots I really liked from it:







Afterward we saw the Lotus Temple, which is an incredible designed Bahai Temple. It was more impressive on the outside than inside, but still tastefully simple and elegant on the inside. The lotus flower is very important in Indian culture and represents purity. The outside structure was really something to wonder at:



We couldn't get too close to the India Gate, but we did our best with as close as we could get:



We saw the President's estate from afar while we were in New Delhi, and I'd like to think I made the best of a foggy shot:



In Agra, I was actually more impressed by the Agra Fort than the Taj Mahal because of the ridiculous detail all around. I mean this right here is only the archway to a room that they used as a temple:



The room where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son:



Of course, you can't go to Agra without seeing the Taj:



One cultural oddity we discovered is that straight men (and women) freely hold hands, and even pinkies, over there. It's not considered gay at all, it's just a sign of close friendship:



We got to visit the grave of Gandhi, which was a really cool setup:



Given how much good food you can get in India, I can't go through this post without showing you one of our favorites. This was a Murg Musallam Lucknowi, and we pretty much scraped the plate clean:



One of the trippier things we saw on our trip was a cowboy themed 50th birthday party in Mumbai. These were strangely hanging all around from the ceiling:



The menu was really cute:



Also pretty trippy in Mumbai was Crawford Market, where you can get whatever your heart desires if you know where to find it and are willing to bargain:



If you're Facebook friends with me then you'll probably see more pictures go online tomorrow. Anyway, hope you enjoyed these shots and I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Avatar

A Sci Fi Classic is Born

I feel kind of silly talking about Avatar 3 weeks after its domestic release. Most of you have seen it by now. There wasn't a lot of tech news over the past couple of weeks though (just a lot of lists of things from the past year or decade or predictions), and I just saw Avatar in 3-D today so it seemed silly to make something else the headline of this post given that nothing that's been happening compares to Avatar. I walked out of the theater over 6 hours ago but it's still on my mind.

In case you haven't seen the more revealing trailers, Avatar's story falls in the family of films like Pocahontas or Tarzan - the clash of two disparate worlds. A human company has arrived at Pandora to mine for a very valuable rock, but there's a village of natives, the Na'vi, who are sitting on a large deposit of this rock. Sam Worthington's character is part of the Avatar program, in which a human's being can be transferred to a genetically engineered Na'vi version of himself, to try to learn from the Na'vi and find a way to get this village to move. I know that sounds like I just spoiled the whole movie for you, but that all probably happened in the first 20 minutes. It's literally nearly 3 hours long, so a lot happens in it. I'd say 4 major acts, in all.

There are some movies that you can look at over the history of film making and know that they are classics for one reason or another. On my short list of classics would be Chinatown, The Godfather, The Matrix, Star Wars: A New Hope, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can say what you will about them, but they're definitely classics. If I had an honorable mentions list it'd probably include Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but neither of those series' starting movie was as important as the movies I just listed (which is obviously not an exhaustive list). I think Avatar is a movie we're going to look back on as a big deal in science fiction films and probably in films, in general.



I heard all this hype about the movie but didn't buy any of it because the movie didn't look interesting to me. I was as big a skeptic as they come and insulted that James Cameron claimed a CG movie was an innovation, even if it was 3-D. Both those technologies had already existed, so what was the big deal? Well, he was right: I don't think I've ever been so impressed with computer graphics before in my life. He was able to map his actors/actress's faces to their computer-generated forms to display real emotions. It's phenomenal. I felt more for these characters than many movies I've seen with live action movies. As for being in 3-D - it looks amazing in 3-D. It's no longer that stupid gimmick at your local science museum from when you were little where at special moments you'd put on these gigantic classes to see something silly coming at you. It's not a gimmick at all in this movie, in fact - it's a part of how you experience the movie. It makes everything very palpable to the point that I don't know how I'd react to some scenes if I saw them in 2-D. The idea of depth of field you get in some scenes is very valuable for conveying a lot of information to you without having to spend a lot of time on it or just use camera tricks. To not see this movie in 3-D is a disservice to yourself since seeing it in 2-D will be easy once it's out on home video. Back to just the visuals though: the level of detail in this movie is awe-inspiring. You definitely willfully would forget that the world you're seeing isn't real and that these creatures are just computer generated - they're that realistic. Part of what makes you believe is that when you see scenes that didn't need to be computer generated - the scenes between just humans - they don't look computer generated at all. If you see this movie for nothing else other than to enjoy it as a visual feast then it was well worth the price of admission.

When it comes to the acting and writing, you start entering somewhat thorny territory. I enjoyed the story more than I thought it would. It was somewhat formulaic but still epic and engaging. It wasn't as predictable as I thought it would be, but I was still happy with the direction it went in. Some of the writing came off to me as a little kludgy and corny. Strangely, I found myself moved even by a couple of the cornier scenes. The acting by most of the leads was strong, especially Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, and Zoe Saldana. Giovanni Ribisi never made sense to me though and Stephen Lang's role as the Colonel felt hollow and stereotypical. I think that's more due to the writing than his portrayal though. I did find myself enjoying Michelle Rodriguez as the same character she always plays, but I have a soft spot for her so I was ok with that. The movie was definitely way too long. I don't know what they could've done about that, but it was quite long. To be honest, I enjoyed it enough that I didn't mind sitting through all of it, but I can see other people losing interest during the slower parts. The set up of the film feels like a bunch of scenes I won't want to watch whenever I get it on Blu-ray, but once it gets going it really does fly by. It reminds me a bit of the end of a Metal Gear Solid game where the ending keeps getting prolonged. I know I'm saying a lot of bad stuff here, but the writing was good overall and I thought the language they created was actually kind of cool. All the Na'vi characters were very cool and well-designed.

The bottom line is that you have to see this movie. There's no reason to not go out and see this movie in 3-D if you're in a place that has it in 3-D. If you do not you will almost certainly regret it. Whether or not you like sci-fi, this is an important movie to see right now in theaters. Even if you don't love it like I did, you will at least appreciate the significance of the technology at play here. Even the people I knew who didn't love it definitely didn't hate it, so I think it's a fair bet that you won't hate it either. It'll almost certainly come out on Blu-ray in 3-D, possibly the first movie to do so, but unless you're rich I'm guessing that you're not getting a 3-D TV set and this is one of the very few movies where 3-D adds to the experience. If you see it in 3-D and hate it then you can yell at me about it later. My overall score for Avatar is an A-, by the way, for those of you keeping score at home.

More on Nexus One

The Nexus One has become the darling of the cell phone world and it hasn't even been formally announced yet! For the record, I don't see what's so special about it. Word is that it'll be $180 subsidized or $530 unsubsidized, and you'll have to get a special T-Mobile plan for it even if you're already on T-Mobile (welcome to the world of many Palm Pre adopters 6 months ago). Engadget somehow managed to get a unit to test out and even put up a video. Aside from being snappier than any other Android phone on the market the only other advantages it seems to ostensibly have are UI tweaks, like "live" (animated) backgrounds and a quick view of all your homescreens. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it'll be a very good phone, but it just seems like another touchscreen Android phone (that I believe is being manufactured by HTC).

Google Voice Going Enterprise

Word on the street is that Google Voice is going to be joining Google's lineup of Google Apps targeted at small businesses (which includes stuff like Google Docs and Gmail with a higher tier of service). Everyone's best guess is that it'll be a virtual phone system, but it would make a lot of sense that this is true since they'll want to continue to milk their bigger products with enterprise licenses.

Apple in Talks For Online TV

The Wall Street Journal made a short note the week before last about talks that Apple and Disney had started regarding a subscription-based online TV service, and Hollywood Reporter put up a very interesting editorial about how this only supplements cable TV instead of killing it. It's just another experiment to diversify an industry that has dropped off a bit in recent years. In my opinion, cable TV is on its way out no matter how you slice it. In 2020 I'm sure we'll be talking about something that put the nail in the coffin of cable TV because it's definitely not serving customers' needs well enough.

DDoS and ICANN

Those two things wouldn't normally be together, but they happen to be at the core of two major security issues.

The first was pretty major: a major DNS provider used in e-Commerce was hit was a DDoS attack two days before Christmas. If your DNS server is down then that means that people can't get to your site unless they know your IP address or have you cached on their router. They were down for an hour and one of the impacted sites was Wal-mart. I can't comment on the impact on Amazon at all since I don't know anything internally, but I am impressed (just from reading that article) that they were able to isolate the issue to just Northern California so quickly. It just shows you how your site doesn't have to have a security flaw for you to get impacted by DDoS.

Here's a very interested story I actually heard about TWiT in passing but never reported on: ICANN has decided to allow non-Latin characters in domain names, which is kind of scary. If you've seen the Russian alphabet, for example, you'll note that some characters are exactly the same as those in the Latin alphabet, like the letters in the word "paypal". Now major domains will have to register their domain in multiple languages to ensure users don't get accidentally lured by a malicious fake version of their site. Be very careful about the links you click to popular sites now - even more so than before. Something like Web of Trust would probably help.

Quickies

TechRepublic has a very exhaustive article on all the differences between USB 2.0 and 3.0 including all the different connector types and the 10x speed difference.

The Kindle became the most gifted product ever on Amazon.com during this past holiday season - take that, Nook!

PC Mag has a good short list of what you need to know about Intel's new line of mobile processors: Arrandale.

Engadget wrote an article that I largely agree with regarding the ten gadgets of the past decade that really defined it, but as you can see from my post last week I definitely didn't agree with everything.

I'm going out of the country this Saturday and don't expect to post again until the week of January 24, at the earliest. I'll try to put up some pictures before then while I'm in India, but no promises. Have a great few weeks, everyone!

The Decade of Technology

Sorry that I wasn't able to put together a post this week, but between unpacking from last week and getting ready for my trip to India next week, I've been slammed. I have, however, put together a rough draft of a Toastmasters speech I'm going to be delivering next week, so I thought I'd share before I start cutting it down. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

If someone asked you how you’d characterize the 2000s, what would you say? The 60s had civil rights and the Vietnam War, the 70s had disco and Star Wars, and the 80s had terrible hair styles and the birth of yours truly. The hosts of the trivia game I participate in every week claim that it was the worst decade ever, but I disagree. I think the past decade was dominated by rapid advancements in technology. Instead of the flying cars and humanoid robots we were promised we got iPhone apps and Rickrolled (should I play the Rick Roll video on my Pre at this point? Alternate joke: lonelygirl15), but the combination of developments from the decade has created a very different world from the world of 1999. I humbly ask for your ears so I can prove it to you.

In the year 2000, a little product called TiVo hit the market and gradually gained a base of enthusiastic users, including myself as of last year. The importance of TiVo is evident in the fact that it has become synonymous to the term “DVR” to the layman much like soda has become “Coke”. It gave control of the living room to the consumer in a way that VCRs always fell short of and paved the way for other set-top boxes, like Roku, which are what helps the Amazon Video on Demand business grow, among other things. This idea of control versus watching shows on a schedule also helped give way to audio and video podcasts, and we now stand on the brink of a world where traditional television is dying.



That wasn’t the only box connected to people’s TVs in 2000 that has had a long-lasting effect on history as we know it: the PlayStation 2, or PS2, was also released. The PS2 has grown in popularity to the best-selling console of all time and is still selling fairly well. I’d argue that this is the console that really helped bring video games into the mainstream moreso than any console before it and even lured away many PC gamers who traditionally felt that console hardware was somewhat weak. More importantly though, the PS2 was truly the first device to successfully pioneer the idea of a multifunctional home entertainment system since it also played CDs and DVDs.



From the comfort of your living room, let’s move to the palm of your hand with Handspring, which was later acquired by Palm. In 2003, the Palm Treo 600 was released and blew the door off the mobile computing world. Here was a device that had a touchscreen interface, e-mail, Internet, a camera, and third-party applications, all in addition to a great text messaging interface. It wasn’t the first smartphone, but it was the first smartphone to get it right and fostered the first true mobile platform developer community around Palm OS. Without the Treo 600 there would be no iPhone, and without the iPhone there would be no Pre or Droid or any other nifty smartphone you probably have in your pocket right now and use for everything but making calls. The world has moved away from the personal computer being at the center of our technological lives to the smartphone being at the core of it, and you get to tell your grandchildren that you lived through that.



A general theme that has naturally come out of all these advances is that they focus on improving the life of the average person, which actually gives rise to a collection of technologies that has become popularly known as user-generated content. MySpace was probably the first to take off in this category with its launch in 2003 as a social networking site – a place for people to come together and waste copious amounts of time. It was followed up shortly thereafter by Facebook in 2004. Also in 2004 though we saw the birth of Flickr, which popularized the idea of a community around hobbyist photography. Then, in 2005, we were graced with the phenomenon known as YouTube – which started out as the ultimate way to share home movies and has evolved into a major online video content platform that has impacted pop culture in probably the most significant way of anything else in the past 10 years. Last, but not least, in user-generated content: blogging and microblogging has usurped control of the news as we used to know it and broke down the barriers of entry for many people into mass media, such as Perez Hilton.

What’s even crazier than some of the stuff on Perez Hilton’s blog is that I’ve only scratched the surface of the past decade. I haven’t said a peep about the iPod, the widespread adoption of ultracompact digital cameras and camcorders, Windows XP, the rise of torrents, or a number of other equally exciting developments. The next time someone asks you what your take was on the past decade, I hope you’ll hold your head high and tell them that even though you’re disappointed that the robot apocalypse isn’t upon us, you’re pretty stoked that you can see cats swinging from ceiling fans off your mobile phone. Thank you.

Android vs. the World (of Cellphones)

Sorry that this post is kind of late, but when I'm on vacation I pretty much let out my inner laziness, which is what I ordinarily fight on a daily basis to get things done. There is a lot to talk about from the past couple of weeks though so let's get down to it.

Nexus One

The rumors of a Googlephone is probably as old as the initial rumors of an iPhone, but they have finally come to fruition. It started out as a confirmed report of Google "dogfooding" a mobile device, and then Engadget got pictures of it:



It looks to be running Android 2.1 (which includes Google Navigation for free turn-by-turn directions) and looks like it's running on T-Mobile but supports WiFi from the pictures Engadget has. Other than that, all we know is that it has a trackball and is called the Nexus One. Speculation tells us that Google will sell it unlocked, which traditionally haven't done very well because people don't want to spend $400-$600 on a cell phone anymore and the people at the wireless carriers' stores are going to sell the subsidized phones harder. I don't think this phone is really much to get excited about, to be honest. Making a cell phone is not easy if you haven't done one before. Apple had plenty of hardware experience before the iPhone and spent years working on it. I still think the Nexus One is going to be intended more as a developer Phone than a consumer device.

Why do we need a developer phone on Android? Because Android is facing the same problem as WinMo: too many devices. Developing web applications is already a nightmare for small web dev shops because now you have to design websites supported by IE8, IE7, IE6, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, in addition to mobile devices. Even here though you can push out patches and updates with ease, whereas with mobile applications you're relying on users picking up your update if you make a change that doesn't look right on a particular flavor of Android on a specific piece of hardware. The more Android phones there are, the more configurations big mobile application teams have to keep in stock for testing, which ultimately just makes it less appealing. I think this is unavoidable in a market where you're trying to get on multiple carriers to compete with Apple and RIM and I personally thing there should be a different app store for different Android versions and configurations where it's up to the developers to mark their application as guaranteed to work on certain configurations so that they can limit their quality assurance as needed and provide a better experience overall.

It's too early to tell if this is, in fact, a problem (at least I think it is), but so far Android isn't doing all that hot on market share. It's funny how a lot of my friends downplay webOS and think Android is the future, and yet it's still behind in market share to RIM, Apple, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian (Nokia). To be fair, of course, Nokia, RIM, WinMo, and Palm (via Palm OS) have had cell phones years before Apple or Android, but the original iPhone came out little over a year before the first Android phone and we've had Android phones on multiple carriers for over a year now. While it's clear that RIM and Apple have had stellar growth in recent months with Microsoft taking a tumble, and the US has never been a big market for Symbian, Palm and Android have a more uncertain future. I'm rooting for webOS and Android, but I think Palm's brand recognition/loyalty from consumers gives them a leg up. Hopefully, we can also crack down on ridiculous contract cancellation fees so that people get the chance to try out more phones and find the one that right for them.

Harry Potter and the Mythical Bandwidth Hogs

This has nothing to do with Harry Potter except that I finally popped in my Prisoner of Azkaban Blu-ray last night for the first time so it's still on my mind a bit.

Anyway, one of the arguments for bandwidth caps from the very beginning of the hub-bub about bandwidth caps (how much data you're allowed to consume on your Internet connection before you're cut off) is that there are people out there hogging the bandwidth so it'd be a lot more fair to everyone else to cap that. It turns out that this may not be quite true though. We don't have any proof that the networks aren't already configured to handle these so-called hogs such that other subscribers don't have their usage impacted. In all likelihood, the ISPs are drumming up this nonsense to convince people to fork over more money to them at an amount that's far from commensurate with the expense of the extra bandwidth.

One analyst offered to look at their usage statistics pro bono to prove/disprove the myth of the bandwidth hogs if he's allowed to publish his results, but I doubt that any ISP has responded to that. Maybe we should write in to Mythbusters and see if they have better luck.

The Apple Gestapo

It's fitting that I cover a story about the Apple Gestapo having seen a guy portraying a Gestapo officer get stabbed in the neck last night in Inglourious Basterds (vacation is the perfect time to to break out your new Blu-rays).

Many of us have heard a lot of stories about the culture at Apple and the management style of Steve Jobs, but not everyone knows how Apple has gotten so good at keeping secrets. It turns out that when a leak is suspected in a certain office, a special forces team is sent in for a lockdown operation. People's phones and computers are searched for evidence that they leaked something. In the case that they have, I'm guessing that a lawsuit is in order shortly after prompt termination (from their employment, that is).

It just shows the more extreme side of Apple and the privacy that employees have to give up to work there. Can you imagine some random guy finding drunk texts to friends on phones, or pictures of your wife in a bikini from your recent vacation? It's funny how at Amazon we just sign an NDA and we're trusted to not reveal company secrets - what a concept. Lo and behold, people generally stick to that. I haven't heard of any such gestapo in Redmond either over at Microsoft.

Apple Acquires Lala

In light of that fun-filled article, it's probably not the best news that Apple has acquired Lala. If Apple doesn't care about its own employees then it's scary to think about what they'll do to an acquisition that defies the iTunes business model. Lala allows you to back up your entire music library on their site for streaming through your web browser, and you can also buy tracks from them. Just a dime to stream a specific song forever or another 70-89 cents to be able to download them. They may leverage Lala to let people stream their entire music collections from where ever through Lala, although it uses Flash so it won't yet work on the iPhone. More people are speculating that they'll gut the company for talent and dismantle the service itself. Given that Lala hasn't proven profitable, that wouldn't be surprising. Still, I use Lala on an almost daily basis so I'd be very disappointed if it went away, to the point that I'd be willing to pay an annual or maybe a monthly fee just to use it to stream my existing music collection.

Twitter Gets Hacked

Late last week, the Twitter website was replaced by some text from the "Iranian Cyber Army" for what I believe was an hour or two. Twitter hasn't had the best track record when it comes to general security and this definitely doesn't help their case.

Back during Iran's elections, the US government intervened to keep Twitter available to Iranians to voice their opinions as well as join the world conversation on the elections (at least as best they can on Twitter) and it looks like this group of hackers was not too pleased by this. What they did here was definitely pretty childish and didn't do much other than to show that they can outsmart the ragtag security of the Twitter website. Well, I guess they also got press coverage from it. I'll give them credit for corrupting the DNS tables for twitter.com to point to their site instead, which isn't the easiest thing in the world, but attacking Twitter doesn't really solve anything. Saying that the availability of Twitter was an interference in their election is like saying that Livejournal being available is an interference because then people can blog their thoughts on the election. It shows a deep lack of understanding of technology and an untargeted take-action mentality that's as stupid as it can be dangerous.

Facebook's Privacy Settings Change

This was a pretty big deal recently: Facebook forced all Facebook users to audit their privacy settings upon logging in to which the defaults were set to everyone or friends of friends. Even I have to admit, this is pretty smarmy. They did this knowing that a lot of people will hit 'Ok' without paying attention and assuming that the defaults are whatever they had set them to. Not only did they do this, but they removed the finer grain control you had over privacy of certain pieces of your Profile. If I was on the team that carried this out I probably would've quit, to be honest. It's unethical. I'm not one of these guys who's really high and might about privacy, but this is clearly not in the best interest of your users and only serves to advance the interests of Facebook.

Facebook and Google have both taken an increasingly privacy-agnostic view of the world, with Facebook being a far worse offender. My personal opinion of why is that the more information they can make publicly available the more they have the index, which means the more time you'll spend time on their sites. This means they'll have more content to target ads around and more page views for eyeballs on ads. No one would admit this if it were true, but I don't see any other good reason for trying to actively take people's privacy away. I'm one of these people who doesn't post super private stuff online because I know that the Internet is inherently insecure and only trust a few very specific sites, which does not include Facebook, so I don't personally find this to be a big deal but I understand the big picture of why it is.

I'll give Facebook one thing though, Mark Zuckerberg's profile and pictures are largely available for anyone to see and he claims this was on purpose. At least they're not being wholly hypocritical, just deceptive.

Quickies

Alright, it's time to wrap up. Here's what I didn't have time to talk about more:

Google acquired DocVerse, which allows users to collaborate over Microsoft Office documents. Looks like they're trying to take on Office 2010's online services head-on, but I am skeptical that they'll succeed.

Google also launched Google Goggles, a visual search application for Android. It looks cool, but computer vision has only come so far that I imagine it's not super accurate. Still, it's pretty cool.

Congress is coming down on a huge Internet scam that many online retailers are complicit in: post-transaction deals that end up scamming you out of a lot of money. You should check out what retailers are doing this and boycott them, but I'm proud to say that Amazon is not one of them.

This is a hilarious graphic on how different OS users see other operating systems.

If you're looking for inspiration on transforming your office, this is a really fun look at some of the best ones of the year.

Google launched Vevo, a YouTube spinoff for music videos. I had a lot of technical issues with it at launch so I haven't played with it much, but it's linked to from any legal music videos on YouTube.

Java 7 is slated to be available next year and it has several cool features to boot including first-class language support for collections and automatic resource management as the most impressive improvements. I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

If you have Chrome or IE envy in your Firefox browser, this is a pretty impressive list of add-ons to simulate the high points of competing browers.

I laughed so much while reading this list of hilarious WiFi SSIDs that I couldn't help but plug it. Some of them are really quite creative.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone! I'll try to get something else up before the new year!

Inglourious Basterds on Blu-ray

Tarantino's First Blu Treatment

I managed to get my grubby paws on the Inglourious Basterds Blu-ray a day in advance of its release so I thought it made sense to delay my post for the week until now to be able to give my little review on it on its release date. I'm so glad I got Amazon Prime.

This is the first new release from directorial giant Quentin Tarantino that is released on Blu-ray and DVD simultaneously. His previous films on Blu-ray were just adapted for the format and so they don't take advantage of Blu-ray's additional benefits (other than great picture and sound quality) or have high definition special features. It seems like each Blu-ray I buy gets better and better in terms of overall presentation and navigation and picture quality (not counting Harry Potters 3-5, which I didn't get on their release dates, anyway), and Inglourious Basterds takes very little exception to that rule.



I've already gone into great detail about the movie itself back in August so I don't want to get into too much of it here. However, it's a tour de force in cultivating situations around people who are plotting against Hitler and the dialogue surrounding these situations. Not every work spoken is necessary but every sentence is definitely carefully crafted and in the end feels very satisfying even though 30 minutes probably could've been cut from the film without significantly damaging the plot. The experience of that 30 minutes though is well worth it though. The acting is exceptional all around. I understand that there's definitely some contention over whether Brad Pitt did well in his role, which I feel is surprising because his caricature in this movie is one of my favorite things about it. It goes without saying that the Academy would be insane to not nominate Cristoph Waltz for an Oscar and as I watched through my favorite scenes with him again I just re-discovered while I loved to hate his character all over again. Tarantino is no stranger to ensemble casts and I think he really struck it out of the park with this one. While I didn't see a ton of movies this year I did see quite a few and this was definitely my favorite. It may not have technically been the best movie to come out, but I was totally blown away by it and am still surprised that it has already stuck with me to a similar degree that Pulp Fiction has over the year.

I think the overall picture quality of this Blu-ray may actually just barely surpass even Star Trek, but both look so good that it's honestly hard to judge. I don't think I've ever paused a Blu-ray before and had a hard time finding artifacts up close. They're usually not that bad and not noticeable while actually watching the film, but the fact that this movie looks just as crisp and clear when you pause as while you're watching it really speaks for the detail in every frame. Part of why I'm emphasizing pausing the film is that there are some really great shots that are wonderful portraits of an emotion or a plot device that I have to pause to get the full effect of, sometimes. Anyway, the colors always feel true and the detail in faces and objects and settings is unmistakeably meticulous. I didn't realize that my living room could be lit up so much by a movie set in World War II. To put it simply, this is the way a Tarantino film was meant to be enjoyed outside of a movie theater. Without a surround sound setup I'd feel weird to talk much to sound, but everything sounded great on my TV. It comes with subtitles and audio tracks in English, French, and Spanish, by the way.

For a Blu-ray presented so well I was definitely surprised by the lack of attractive features. First off, I liked the case right off the bat and its reflective quality in the light. When I put in the disc I was very happy that Universal didn't decide to barrage me with trailers and other junk like my WB Blu-rays do without fail. It's sad that it's become so prevalent that starting a disc with the main menu or feature film is something worth calling out. Anyway, it's cool that if you have a BD Live enabled player you get a ticker off to the right side with news that you can easily turn off and menu sound effects are optional (and default to being off). This is actually my first movie to take advantage of the 4 colored buttons on my remote: you can use them during the movie to help mark clips of the movie you like for easy reference and sending to friends (who I beleive must also have the disco watch your favorite scenes, which seems a bit silly but I can definitely understand why the studios would want it. Anyway, these options actually show up while your pause or seek during the movie, or if you hit 'down'.

As I alluded to, the special features are definitely lacking. I knew there was something to be concerned about when I realized that a 2-disc edition meant that one had to be a digital copy, which expires if you don't remember/have the time to use it before then. Anyway, only a few of the extras are in 1080p with the rest being in 720i (the box claims 1080i, but it didn't look it) or 480p. The best extras are the trailers, the posters, and the round table with Tarantino and Brad Pitt. The other stuff is surprising unexciting. There are a couple of fun things, like a behind-the-scenes look at Nation's Pride (that film itself is also included, but less than 10 minutes long) and greetings to the editor during takes, and then a couple of serious pieces, like a discussion of the posters in the movie and some interviews and behind-the-scenes looks with the creator of the original Inglorious Bastards and one of its stars, but that's about it. The 3 extended scenes included aren't very exciting and there's still a scene in the trailers that I haven't seen in its entirety so Universal is definitely holding back on us. There's also a trivia game and some BD Live features like live chat, streaming previews of other films, and sending clips to friends, but these are also just little things. If they had just included a commentary track I think it would've helped a lot. But alas, there are a still a few scenes that I'd like to know the original intentions of and I'll never know the intentions of, now.

Despite the failings of the special features, I think the picture quality of the feature film alone is enough to sell it. This is a movie with really great replay value, in my opinion, and that looks good enough that you'll really want to keep putting it in. I highly recommend it.

The Normal Stuff

I am actually way to absolutely exhaused to continue with my normal dose of tech news, but I will try to make up for it in next week's post. Besides, the biggest thing to happen was that Apple acquired Lala and we still don't quite know what the means.

Sprint Launches 4G in Seattle

EDIT: Since writing this post I've tried the card on Windows 7 and was unable to get it to work with Sprint's software. Instead, I had to download Clearwire's software to use it. Also, this card currently doesn't work on Macs.

3G x 3 = 4G

I was fortunate enough to get invited to Sprint's launch party last week of 4G in Seattle so I felt like it would be crazy to not talk about it because this is definitely an up and coming technology that I've been able to experience first hand. In the interest of full disclosure, I did receive a free 4G wireless card that has free service for a couple of months after the event.

First of all, what is 4G? To be honest, it's just marketing speak for WiMax, which is a technology that allows providers to serve broadband speeds wirelessly at a long range. It's the closest we have to bringing WiFi speeds to mobile devices without a hard cable connection involved for the end user. It also operates on a different spectrum so it can live alongside 3G networks like Sprint's EVDO network. The speeds that I'm seeing are 5-6 MBit down, compared to 1-2 MBit down over 3G. I don't know if any phone on the market right now would know what do with that much bandwidth even if it had a WiMax radio, but the bigger use case here is for laptops though. Anyway, by the time anyone has widespread 4G coverage smartphones should have advanced to the point of having better processing power. One of the things that the reps were making a big deal about was that the latency over 4G is half of 3G (bandwidth is how much data can fit in the pipe at a time, and latency is how fast that data gets to you), which is something smartphone owners would definitely be able to appreciate.

I have to say that I walked into the event fairly skeptical that 4G would be worthwhile, but I was definitely impressed by the time I walked out of there. I was able to play Modern Warfare 2 on the Xbox 360 in an online deathmatch without any lag (which would help prove their point of latency being better over 4G). Was I set up? They claim there were no repeaters at the event and they didn't know where the nearest WiMax endpoint was, and they had Tomato running at the Xbox 360 station showing speeds that matched what I was later seeing at home so I think everything was legit. They were even able to stream Transformers 2 in 720p on a Roku box from Amazon Video on Demand without any stutter.

The other booth that I was impressed with was for laptops with 4G built into them. The best part is that there's no contract like with some 3G laptops - you can buy service when you need it and even get day passes to use Sprint's 4G network, both of which are (supposedly) uncapped. I tried a bunch of sites that I figured no one at the event would go to and tried various HD videos on YouTube and Hulu and it was legitimately snappy to the point that it was better than my own WiFi network at home (backed by cable).

The wireless card they gave me has a 3G radio in it, too, and the difference is more than noticeable between 3G and 4G. I was able to VNC into my desktop at work and have a smooth experience, unlike my normal VNC experience. While I don't know if 4G is going to be enough for Sprint to face off with AT&T and Verizon next year, the speeds are definitely something to be excited about. It's still yet to be seen what kind of cell phones come out next year for the network, but $60 for unlimited usage on a wireless card actually tempted me to sign up for a service plan next year after my current contract with my cable provider expires next year because it's been surprisingly dependable. I know the network isn't being used much right now, but they claim that even if it does get pegged that it's easy for them to scale up the network to accommodate the load. Anyway, I hope that 4G comes to your area soon, too, so that you can experience what it's like for your wireless network card to not really suck. It looks like Sprint is pretty serious about it and I hope it works out for them.

AT&T Strikes Back

I have to say that I'm actually pretty happy about this battle between Verizon and AT&T. It's pitting two major carriers against each other for product differentiation in which the consumers are bound to win.

Apple decided to take a little jab at Verizon with ads demonstrating functionality on the iPhone you can't get on Verizon, like talking while using the web. It was pretty roundabout though whereas the Verizon ads were dead-on attacks headed up by Luke Wilson. The ads aren't really all that fair, but they can get away with them because they're half-truths and the average person won't know any better. Still, the damage done by the Verizon ads may already be done. We'll have to see how it all shakes out in AT&T's quarterly results. The fact that they actually paid Luke Wilson to do these ads may be evident that they've already taken a hit from the ads - or it could just be fear.

Holiday Shopping Tips

There were a couple of articles I ran into that I thought were worth passing along regarding shopping for your tech gifts this holiday season. The first is from Tech Freaks and tells you what not to get. Given all the deals we're bombarded with, it's easy to forget the basics, like that the learning curve for a gadget may make it useless depending on who you're getting it for.

The other just gives you a pretty solid rundown of what the hot phones are right now and what their headline features are.

Sprint Feeding Cops Your GPS Location

I wish I had more time to talk about it, but Ars Technica has a great little article about how Sprint has given GPS data about it customers to law enforcement millions of times and the ease of use makes it unclear how many of these requests were backed by valid warrants. While this article picks at Sprint it wouldn't surprise me if other carriers were doing this. Just a scary fact to be aware of and to try to make your congressperson aware of. It's unfortunate how every year we devolve more and more into a dystopian 1984 world.

Other Stuff

I'm way over time here because I was having computer issues, so let me briefly wrap up on a few other stories.

Google and TiVo have reached an agreement where TiVo is providing anonymous usage information to give advertisers a better understanding of who they're reaching. I don't think it's as scary as it may sound - if it brings television into the current decade then I'm all for it.

For the first time ever, Firefox has beaten IE6...in Germany. Still, it's pretty cool.

Tech Radar has a very thorough review of Office 2010. There weren't any surprises for me given what I've heard from within Microsoft, and I look forward to getting my hands on it.

The White House has gone on record as stating that net neutrality is linked to free speech, which further shows their support for net neutrality. This is in addition the President comparing a non-neutral Internet to Chinese censorship. I really hope they don't back down on this, but I also hope they don't go too far with it and create burdensome regulations.

Have a great week everyone! Stay warm!

Star Trek on Blu-ray

Live Long and Watch Star Trek

It's been a brutal 6 months, which is rounding down on the amount of time since the release of the JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek to its release on Blu-ray, but it was worth the wait. There was literally a shorter wait for GI Joe and Transformers 2, which I only compare because they were big summer blockbusters (not because I think they ordinarily belong in the same paragraph as Star Trek).

I've already reviewed the movie itself, so I'll direct you to that May post instead of going into all the gritty details about the content of the movie itself. I don't pre-order movies very often at all though (hadn't since literally January) because I'm usually ok with waiting for price drops if I liked it enough that I'll want to watch it again sometime, so the fact that I pre-ordered this should be some indication of how blown away I was by this film. Months after seeing it there were scenes that stuck with me (much like my favorite of the year, Inglourious Basterds) and it proved further to me that this is a really fun film for repeat viewings. It puts together a well-constructed story (despite being controversial) with truly dedicated actors/actresses and grand set pieces that feel really worthwhile rather than tawdry reminders that this is a summer movie (that was actually intended originally for a winter release). If you haven't seen this movie then you really need to put renting it at the top of your list for movies to check out - definitely above pretty much anything playing in your local theater right now (at the time of this posting, at least).

Moving swiftly along: I was a little disappointed with the overall presentation of this set. First of all, the slip case for the Blu-ray box had the back side with the run time and pictures and such just tacked on with the junk that credit card companies use to send you new cards. I like the fact that the Blu-ray case itself is full-on Chris Pine's face (the one peeking through the title on the slip case), and on the other side is a close up of Zachary Quinto's face as Spock. I loved the focus in the marketing of the theatrical release on the characters as being powerful enough imagery to sell the film - it's simple and it works. What I was really more disappointed in was the overall menu system. It's not terrible, but I just expected something cooler given that it's Star Trek, especially compared to Iron Man. There's also like 3 trailers (or ads, as I like to call them) and a video game ad to start the feature film disc, but I actually just figured out today that you can hit the 'pop-up menu' button on your Blu-ray player remote to skip straight to the top menu (I don't recall ever hitting any menu button a DVD and going straight to the main menu until I watched all the ads).

Why am I whining about something so trivial? Because that's about all I can complain about here. I was floored by the ridiculous video quality here. I can't recommend it as a gold standard for introducing people to Blu-ray necessarily because it doesn't have bright colors like Planet Earth, but I think the only Blu-ray I own now that looks better than it is Wall-E. Still, the transitions between dark scenes in this movie and those with color are quite smooth with all the colors looking very true to how they should be (the more vibrant they're supposed to be the more awesome they look on your TV). There are a lot of face close ups in this movie and the clarity in even these shots made me want to get up off my couch and just applaud the folks who did this transfer. If you are disappointed with the video quality of this disc, no matter how big or high-end your TV is, there may be something wrong with you (or your TV video settings). I don't have a high-end surround system so I don't want to pass judgement on sound, but it does sound great as far as I can tell. I can't complain about anything except for that maybe it's a bit soft in some places. Clarity is stellar, even in scenes where I was afraid I would be straining my ears to understand what they're saying.

There are so many special feature videos on the second disc that I couldn't get through all of them. What' truly remarkable is that each and every video you see on these discs is in high definition. I think the movie itself certainly looks better than the special features, but we're really talking about shades of gray here because they still look like you're watching an HD channel and whatever the aspect ratio is on them fits my widescreen TV perfectly (whereas the movie has black bars on top and bottom). There's actual more content here (in minutes) than the running time of the feature film, and this is one of those movies that actually has interesting backstories for how every aspect of the production process came about so they're pretty addictive if you have an afternoon/evening to spare going through them all. The deleted scenes are also more interesting than you normally find on a home video release, including the original opening sequence of Spock's birth. The only other features on this disc are a gag reel, all 3 trailers, and 3-d models of the Enterprise and Nero's vessels with details about specific parts of them. As a cherry on top, these features actually have subtitles (which, in my experience, is pretty rare). On the main disc, there's also commentary, which I didn't listen to a whole lot of it but I have to say that it was hard to stop watching once I did turn it on because it's very much like you're peering into the minds of the writers and producers in the format of a candid, relaxed conversation that doesn't feel forced or scripted at all. I don't usually listen to these, but I think I'll have to make an exception here.

Simply put, if you have a Blu-ray player and liked Star Trek at all, you're really doing a disservice to yourself by not picking this up. The studios are trying this crazy thing now where they price Blu-rays equivalent to DVDs instead of price-gouging, so $20 for this one is more than reasonable. They really didn't put this out there to set up for a double dip, or they're doing so with great stupidity because I can't think of what else you'd realistically want from a Blu-ray set for this movie in any sort of re-release. It's going to quickly become one of favorite Blu-rays, for sure.

More Chrome OS Details

It's been quite a few months now since Google Chrome OS was announced. It was a pretty no-frills announcement since they didn't have anything to show for it and very little to say. To keep interest up in the operating system, Google held an event going into more details about the look and feel of the OS, a few of the applications, and the security model. You can get a pretty brief summary of the event here. I don't know if they fully grasp the weight of what they're trying to do, but this event seemed to really hammer hard on simplicity regarding an idea that's really not that simple. Getting users to trust a computer that is wholly dependent on the cloud is a really hard sell, and I didn't see any remarks about what happens if you lose your connection to the Internet or how they're going to ensure the security, safety, and integrity (i.e. that it doesn't get corrupted) of your data. There was a lot of talk about how you configuration is remote so you don't lose it even when switching computers, but that doesn't explain what happens if they shut down their servers one day. I'll admit that the look and feel is pretty nice - for a netbook. It doesn't look to me like a viable OS still for anything but a netbook. Which is fine, but is that really going to be a strong market once this finally ships?

I don't want to be too discouraging of the idea of Chrome OS because it's ballsy and I like that. The security aspect of it is very bold in that it aims to not only have your computer run in a sandbox (since everything lives in the cloud, after all) but aims to do boot time verification of every system element, which is actually a concept that dates back all the way to the creation of the Java Virtual Machine (I'm sure it's older than that, it's just probably the first big implementation of it). It's a pretty good plan that relies on the idea that valid signatures for infected system components can't be forged, but it's too early to tell if Google is doing everything right here. Even with these two big protections, it probably won't be foolproof (it's still built on Linux, after all, which definitely has security flaws in every distribution), but it sounds like they're really taking security seriously.

Palm Pixi Released

It didn't receive a whole lot of press fanfare, as far as I could tell, but the Palm Pixi is now available on Sprint. I know they're a little biased, but Pre Central had an interesting enough review of the Pixi that I actually read the whole thing on my Pre at the airport last week. Their biggest complaints were that it felt a bit small and runs a bit slower than the Pre. I think it looks really attractive and I love webOS so I can't imagine that it's a bad phone for someone who's not a power smartphone user but wants a smartphone nonetheless.

While Sprint launched the Pixi, Verizon was busy launching more AT&T attack ads, which you've probably seen like a hundred times by now. AT&T is still in a legal battle with Verizon claiming that the ads misrepresent AT&T's network, but they don't since it's clearly specified as AT&T's 3G network rather than their entire data network, and the red map really is Verizon's 3G network - it's just that widespread.

And, off in a corner, Samsung launched a new mobile OS called Bada. It's cute that they still think they're a big player. They took too many gambles that didn't pay off and now they're often an afterthought when people shop for a new phone. Fortunately, Bada is an open platform and I have to give Samsung credit for at least trying something new instead of floundering with outdated phone UI designs. I wonder if they ever considered building Android phones?

Bing Captures More Market Share

Claims of Bing's market share being a fluke are now way past us as they sail into grabbing 10% of the search engine market share. It could be their marketing, it could be the quality of their results, or it could be the new features they keep rolling that keeps them in the news and, theoretically, in people's minds. The new feature last week was integrating Wolfram Alpha results. You have to click on a bar on the left side to get to some of this added stuff, but it is pretty neat.

Quickies

I have to pack for my trip home, so it's time to wrap things up here with some quick stories.

Google has invented its own programming language called Go. It doesn't seem all that exciting to me, but I'll probably come back to it when it's more mature and see if it's viable as a quick and dirty scripting language since it does run so quickly.

If you're interested in learning to program, Lifehacker has a surprisingly good guide. Knowing how to program is definitely only one facet to being a good software developer, but that article covers great ways to see if you have an interest in it that you may want to pursue with formal education or side projects.

SquareTrade pitted a bunch of laptop manufacturers against one another and found Asus and Toshiba at the top in reliability. I wasn't surprised about Asus since they've been a little-known excellent brand for a while now, but Toshiba has definitely come along.

If you want to know what not to ask in an interview, check out this story from some bad Google interviews. If you're still asking riddles in your job interviews then you need to hop in your time machine and go back to 2006 where those questions weren't considered useless.

The PS3 saw some interesting improvements this month including Facebook support and Netflix support.

If you've ever fallen for one of TechCrunch's crazy stories, you'll like this PC Mag editorial about Michael Arrington.

YouTube is adding auto captions for deaf views - goodonya Google!

Skype bought itself back from eBay.

Amazon Fresh is now more usable on the iPhone - grocery shop on your work commute so you can spend more time sleeping instead of shopping.

Have a fantastic Thanksgiving!

Facebook Cons

The Latest Facebook Scandal

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

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

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

Google Feature Bonanza

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

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

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

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

Selling Software With One Hand, Laying Off With the Other

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

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

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

It's All About Android

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

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



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

Quickies

Just a few brief stories left...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Motorola Names its Comeback Kid: Droid

Droid Details Announced

I've mentioned Droid a couple of times recently and my last word on it was that it was probably going to be a line of Verizon phones instead of a single phone. Fortunately, it looks like that's not true and there is an actual Droid phone from Motorola that's due out later this week. Other than the gold colored square on the keyboard that I still haven't figured out, this is a pretty attractive phone and the first to market with Android 2.0. I personally don't think the aesthetics are as solid as the Pre, but it sounds like it feels solid and features a physical (landscape) and virtual keyboard. Plus, the screen looks like it's pretty awesome quality.



PC Magazine already has a review up and they sound somewhat impressed with it. They point out some pretty big failings in the physical keyboard, call quality, and slowdowns despite the powerful guts of the Droid, but it does sound like the multimedia software is strong as is the camcorder. Even though this may not be the most impressive phone on the block, I think it can do well if Verizon's marketing works and people do perceive it to be a good alternative to the iPhone, and I'm sure that it is a worthy alternative.

This is the first big release from Motorola in quite a while. I'm not counting the Cliq since it's not out yet and doesn't sound like it's as well-rounded of a smartphone as Droid. It's pretty clear that Motorola is changing their tune so that they can start making real money again and jumping in bed with Anrdoid. Their plans for 2010 are pretty firmly rooted in Android, and it's quickly starting to look like 2010 may be the year of Android for mobile phones, in general. The iPhone will still be popular, but I predict Android phones to pick up steam and could outsell iPhones as an aggregate. Given that Droid doesn't really undercut the iPhone on cost I don't think it's going to be a huge hit, but as the first worthy Android phone on Verizon I think it's the start of a crusade from Verizon to strike back at AT&T in the wake of AT&T chipping away at Verizon's subscriber base differential.

Google Navigation

One big feature of Android 2.0 that I neglected to mention above is the inclusion of free turn-by-turn directions. Given the ridiculous price of turn-by-turn on the iPhone, this is a pretty decent leg up that Android now has on the iPhone OS. I don't have a read on how much people care about turn-by-turn on their phone since I have a dedicated GPS, but I can see people using a feature like that to help justify buying a new phone. As demonstrated by the stock market, this is a pretty big blow to Garmin and Tom Tom as this application has a robotic voice, POIs, traffic and other common, rich navigation features, plus Street View (though the usefulness of that is debatable). If more Android 2.0 phones have car docks (like the Droid does), this could end up being a pretty popular feature, especially given that Android has voice recognition.

The only catch is that it sounds like this application requires data access, which is the only thing giving the GPS companies a fighting chance. When you're taking trips outside major cities and you have spotty 3G, you definitely don't want to get lost because you need Internet access. Of course, if you could pre-load the data you need for your journey and destination surroundings this wouldn't be so bad, but may be an expensive burden on the network.

The really good news about this though is that it's a pretty aggressive move that's going to really benefit consumers. This is going to drive down the prices of competing cell phone navigation products and probably of dedicated GPS devices, as well. Plus, you'll see more innovation across the board now that everyone knows Google is going to try to give them a run for their money.

Other Google Releases

There were a few other releases from Google last week.

You now get a link in image search results to find images similar to a given result, which is a pretty complicated feature when you consider the problem of establishing links between images.

Less surprising but still cool was the release of Google Music Search, which allows you to preview songs directly from your results and subsequently buy them.

The last thing Google talked about last week was that you can actually set up Google Voice on an existing number if you're ok with the fact that it's a lighter version of Google Voice with only a subset of the features. The main features it looks like you get are international calling and Google Voicemail (including transcription and usage of the online interface for managing it). I love the transcription and think it makes Google Voice valuable all on its own, so I tihnk it's cool that they're able to pull this off.

The Case Against Net Neutrality

I've spoken a lot in favor of net neutrality recently, with this picture being a pretty good depiction of what the world could be like without net neutrality, but there's definitely been a lot of concern with allowing the FCC step in. CNet posted an editorial that I don't agree with but I think poses some worthwhile alternate points. The jurisdiction argument is a tough one since the FCC is skating on thin ice in trying to legislate the Internet, but I definitely don't think such protection would be as paranoid as the CNet editorial seems to hint at.

Congress is starting to side with the dark side though an both houses are putting up bills to kill any possible net neutrality legislation, one of which was authored by John McCain (one of the reasons why I was really against him last year). Their motivations are definitely misled claiming that regulation kills innovation, in which case you could argue that monopolies should be allowed because they foster innovation being unregulated. Their bills sound a bit heavy-handed and I think you go to an extreme opposite the FCC in possible overstepping its bounds. I'm not sure how well either bill will do, but hopefully not very in a Democrat-run Congress.

Quickies

I'm literally at the point of dozing off here so time for the last bits I have here.

Joel Spolsky put up a really good essay about capstone projects that mostly hones in on how undergraduate CS programs are not focusing enough on skills needed in the industry with regard to time management and some of the biggest parts of the software development process (almost feels like an extension of my recent essay). It's misguided at times but still great overall.

Did you know there was a new Magic Mouse with multi-touch gesturing functionality? Cool. Not sure if I really need gesturing in my mouse, but still nifty.

This is a pretty awesome, comprehensive guide to using HTML 5.

The UN has approved a universal cell phone charger, which could be a great win for consumers tired of being over-charged for their charger should the lose/forget theirs on a trip away from home.

You can now buy stuff on Amazon and some other partners with just a single phrase to confirm who you are. It's a pretty cool concept and adds a layer of security on top of normal 1-click so go set up your phrase. If you don't pick a good phrase though then it's just adding a weakness to your security, so be careful.

Inglourious Basterds on Blu-ray is now $20, which is cheaper than its DVD equivalent. Times have really changed! This is almost certainly a pricing strategy to encourage Blu-ray sales in the holiday season, and I hope it works because I love my Blu-rays and wish more people had the players.

Have a great week!