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Recent Articles

  • Angry Birds Now Coming to a Carnival Near You

    Now this is a reason to start going to carnivals.

    Now this is a reason to start going to carnivals.

  • Wait They are Still Around?

    Erica Naone, while reporting for Technology Review, mentions some companies being affected by a new SMS bug: They performed their tricks on handsets made by Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Micromax, a popular Indian cell-phone manufacturer. I didn’t even know people still use phones from these companies.

    Erica Naone, while reporting for Technology Review, mentions some companies being affected by a new SMS bug:

    They performed their tricks on handsets made by Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Micromax, a popular Indian cell-phone manufacturer.

    I didn’t even know people still use phones from these companies.

  • Microsoft Needs to Learn from Apple’s Near Death

    I just finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley – a sort of faux documentary on the rise of Apple and Microsoft. It was interesting to watch this film in the light of today’s world — when the movie was made no one knew that Apple would return from what looked to be certain death and…

    I just finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley – a sort of faux documentary on the rise of Apple and Microsoft. It was interesting to watch this film in the light of today’s world — when the movie was made no one knew that Apple would return from what looked to be certain death and come back to post a $300 billion market cap. Personally I don’t put much weight into the facts and events depicted in the film, nor should you, but you can see a lot of why things between Apple and Microsoft went they way they did. ((Such as why Jobs was kicked out of his company. Why Microsoft thinks the way they do. And so forth.))

    In the technology world there are two very important things: making something great for users, and being the first to ship. When you combine these two things you get products like: the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, Mac OS X. When you fail to meet one or both of these goals you get things like: Windows Vista, or the Kin.

    That is not to say that Microsoft is always wrong and Apple is infallible. No: both companies are wrong from time to time and both hit it out of the ballpark from time to time as well.

    I think as Apple fans we have this fear — irrational as it may be — that Apple will get tripped up the way they did in the late 80s through the mid 90s. We are massively off base with that fear — both Jobs and Apple have learned just how painful their mistakes of the past were.

    The problem I see is that Microsoft has yet to learn from Apple’s mistakes. There is a great scene in the movie when Gates, Ballmer, and Allen go to IBM to sell DOS. The character of Ballmer has a great line where he basically tells the viewer that Gates and Microsoft have no such operating system, but that Gates wanted to pitch it and sell it — then worry about shipping and making it. This is a theme carried out in the movie: Apple is visionary and makes neat stuff before Microsoft can; Microsoft just buys or “steals” what they can and ships it as quickly as possible with a wide channel of distribution.

    I don’t know how true, or if any part of the story depicted is true, but I think it is an apt reflection of the problems that we are seeing with Microsoft today, as well as companies like:

    • Google
    • RIM
    • HP
    • Other mobile device manufacturers ((One’s that aren’t called Apple.))

    What we are seeing is that these companies come out and announce all sorts of great sounding new products — yet by the time they are actually able to make and ship them the market has drastically changed, OR their product has drastically changed. This, I believe, is the greatest thing that Apple learned: keep your mouth shut, work hard, and ship as soon as you have something great.

    The movie perfectly shows the trouble that Apple, Jobs, and other companies ((Xerox)) got into by showing off products before they were ready to ship.

    Secrecy is a very hard thing for most companies to adopt. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and various other “small” companies are trying their best to strike a balance somewhere between Apple level secrecy and Microsoft level transparency. A healthy medium satisfies most customers, but is not the most beneficial method for the company because competitors are kept in the loop. Full transparency satisfies investors and consumers, but can be dangerous for companies because their competitors know exactly what they need to compete with. Full secrecy pisses off investors and consumers, but is mostly beneficial for the company keeping the secrets.

    Lets go back to Microsoft for a bit — last year at CES, CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage and famously announced slate tablets — tablets that he said would be awesome. ((I am paraphrasing.)) Ballmer made this classic Microsoft move as a way to try and quell rumors of a forth coming Apple tablet — one we now call iPad — yet a year later with Ballmer set to take the same stage, to presumably make the same announcement, we see very few slate tablets running Microsoft.

    Microsoft failed to ship.

    This won’t kill Microsoft, but it does hurt them both in the short and long term. Sales hurt in the short term and because the company survived the short term sales loss the executives running Microsoft will see no need to change their over arching philosophy: the pre-announcing nonexistent devices.

    If Microsoft does not wake up and fails to see a true financial hardship from making promises they can’t keep — what is to stop them from making more promises that they have no intention (or care) of keeping? I am not suggesting that Microsoft start being secretive — rather I think it is imperative for Microsoft to start being realistic about ship dates. They can’t afford to keep announcing things that never materialize.

  • CarTrip

    Griffin Technology announced a product that is coming soon, allowing you to do a whole bunch of cool stuff with you iPhone and your car — most importantly figuring out what the cryptic computer codes are really saying. Griffin Technology: CleanDrive monitors your car’s performance, collecting data like fuel consumption, acceleration, top speed and engine…

    Griffin Technology announced a product that is coming soon, allowing you to do a whole bunch of cool stuff with you iPhone and your car — most importantly figuring out what the cryptic computer codes are really saying.

    Griffin Technology:

    CleanDrive monitors your car’s performance, collecting data like fuel consumption, acceleration, top speed and engine diagnostic codes as you drive. CleanDrive crunches the numbers and displays your “Carbon Score” in an easy-to-understand format on your device’s screen. Instantaneous trip and long-term averages are recorded to give you a clear picture of how your driving habits impact the environment and the efficiency of your car over time.

    Count me among the first buyers.

  • Leaving Microsoft Hell

    Alex Wilhelm got a virus on his Windows 7 computer that left him in serious trouble: Every single safeguard the OS had failed, and I ended up with a full computer that I could not restore, reinstall, or boot normally in any way without facing an immediate Blue Screen of Death. I sat there in safe mode and picked…

    Alex Wilhelm got a virus on his Windows 7 computer that left him in serious trouble:

    Every single safeguard the OS had failed, and I ended up with a full computer that I could not restore, reinstall, or boot normally in any way without facing an immediate Blue Screen of Death. I sat there in safe mode and picked at my teeth.

    Sounds lovely, this though is the best bit:

    I still love and prefer Windows 7, but I am forever adding a caveat to that statement: when it works.

    So I guess the new tag line for Windows is: “When it works”. Compare that to Apple’s: “It just works”. If you are still confused about which OS you should choose — well, actually, then I can’t help you.

  • Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform

    Kyle Baxter hypothesizing that Androids Market may be poor on purpose: If users won’t pay for applications, what will developers use to make money from their applications? Advertising. And Google conveniently owns one of the largest mobile advertising providers, Admob. The entire post is a must read.

    Kyle Baxter hypothesizing that Androids Market may be poor on purpose:

    If users won’t pay for applications, what will developers use to make money from their applications? Advertising. And Google conveniently owns one of the largest mobile advertising providers, Admob.

    The entire post is a must read.

  • My Year in Stats

    For all of 2010 I tracked various aspects of my life using Daytum, which collects and graphs various data that you enter. I became inspired to do this by the Feltron Annual Report — though I must admit my data is not incredibly accurate since I am not always perfect about recording stuff. I have…

    For all of 2010 I tracked various aspects of my life using Daytum, which collects and graphs various data that you enter. I became inspired to do this by the Feltron Annual Report — though I must admit my data is not incredibly accurate since I am not always perfect about recording stuff.

    I have held off writing about Daytum because I wanted to see what I would learn from using it to track random things. Here are some of the things that I learned:

    Email Sucks

    One thing that I tracked was my Email usage, specifically: amount received monthly, amount replied to monthly, and amount sent monthly (total, including replies). What was most interesting to me was how little I actually reply to emails — it seems I create more emails than I reply to them. Until I saw this I always thought that I spent more time replying to emails.

    email.png

    Kernel Panics

    I also decided to track my kernel panics, or lack of them. I average 2 months 11 days and 17 hours between kernel panics as of this writing — surprisingly high. In fact since 1/10 I only had 3 kernel panics and one complete computer freeze that resulted in having to force the computer off. I am hoping that most of this subsides with the MacBook Air (haven’t had one yet).

    kernel.png

    iPhone Crashes

    Like with my kernel panics I also tracked iPhone crashes: again I only had 4 this year. An average time between crashes of 3 months 20 days and 8 hours. Not too shabby.

    iphonecrash.png

    Personality

    I also tracked things relating to my personality:

    • I kept track of the amount of meaningful conversations I had this year and I counted 130 meaningful conversations on the year. Seven of those conversations were with complete strangers.
    • I was annoyed on average every 7 days.
    • Surprised on average every day.
    • I won one more bet than I lost this year.

    Overall the tracking I did on my personality showed me that I am decent at making wagers, I like to talk to in depth with strangers and that I am constantly surprised. I am glad that the annoyance factor isn’t higher! One last thing: when I shop online I order from Apple.com the most, then Amazon.com.

    orders.png

  • iPad Simulator

    Very neat CSS and Javascript iPad simulator.

    Very neat CSS and Javascript iPad simulator.

  • Traveling, Miami, Airplanes and Paid WiFi

    It is Jan 3rd, 2010 9:00a EST or 6:00a PST (aka the time zone I am accustomed to) and as I write this I am flying high over the U.S. aboard Alaska Airlines — returning from a quick trip to Miami, FL for my sister-in-law’s wedding. This trip could not have come at a worse…

    It is Jan 3rd, 2010 9:00a EST or 6:00a PST (aka the time zone I am accustomed to) and as I write this I am flying high over the U.S. aboard Alaska Airlines — returning from a quick trip to Miami, FL for my sister-in-law’s wedding. This trip could not have come at a worse time for me from a business stand point as I had a large amount of work to complete. I loaded up my standard compliment of travel gear and my MacBook Air — with the hope to get work done on the plane.

    MacBook Air and Flying

    On the way to Miami we flew coach and I was position in a middle seat. The work that I needed to do was in Adobe’s InDesign app (report design) and I can tell you that after 10 minutes of trying there was no comfortable way to do this type of work. A trackpad and a middle coach seat are not conducive to this type of work. I stowed my computer and caught some ZZZ’s before we landed.

    Fast forward to the end of our trip and on our return flight to Seattle my wife and I were able to finagle a cheap first-class ticket. First-class is far from an ideal spot to type in, but it certainly is not uncomfortable. I don’t care much for the distractions that in-flight WiFi offers so I have forgone paying for the service.

    I feel confident now in saying that the 13” MacBook Air is not usable for anything other than video watching in the coach cabin of Alaska Airlines — it is very usable in the first-class cabin. I would gather that you would be fine typing on an 11” model in coach, but heavy trackpad use would still remain challenging. The tray tables are a bit too high for natural typing and resting the computer on your lap will cause strain on your neck after a bit. Overall I was pretty happy with using the Air in first-class and miserable in coach with it.

    Sunny Isle, Florida & AT&T

    The wedding was held at the Trump International Hotel in Sunny Isle, FL and that is also where my wife and I stayed. We were fortunate enough to get a room on the 30th floor facing the ocean — a beautiful and distracting view. The Trump hotel and the area surrounding it offers some of the worst AT&T data speeds that I have ever experienced.

    The coverage seemed adequate (I usually had at least two bars), but the network speed was almost unusable. It was not unusual to not be able to refresh Twitter or check email. I had to precariously hold the phone on the top to get some Internet access.

    Pathetic.

    I talked to a few other AT&T users without iPhones as well as some Verizon users with Blackberries and everyone seemed to experience the same problems. From talking to some local residents this is the norm for that area, in part due to the amount of users in the area and also complicated by the tall structures and dense walls. Frustrating for sure.

    WiFi & MiFi

    As with most hotels, the Trump offered its guests WiFi Internet for a fee. There were two levels as I tweeted — the first was priced at $10 a day for 512kbps and the faster optioned was $13 a day for 1.5mbps access. Both were less than stellar options. I would be at the hotel for 5 days, and there was no way I would be willing to pay this monster rate for each of the five days.

    Instead I decided that I would use my Verizon MiFi, tethered to my Laptop via USB (doing this gives you slightly faster Internet speeds and infinitely improved MiFi battery life).

    This worked out great for the most part with the MiFi averaging a 4/5 bar signal strength on the EVDO network. The problem though: the internet speed I was getting was around 0.3MBPs — which is anything but good.

    The work I was doing was minimal (aside from uploading stuff to Flickr) so the Internet speed didn’t kill me, but it certainly was not enjoyable. Perhaps the fact that I am getting older is making me more frugal, but I just despise when hotels deem it necessary to charge guests for WiFi access.

    I will say this once more: cheaper hotels offer free WiFi and business travelers love it, expensive hotels charge you for crappy internet access and everyone complains. Perhaps expensive hotels need to pull a page from the Starbucks playbook and convert their WiFi to free. Starbucks is leading the charge in how to offer better customer service for a cheaper price — there is a reason I like to go to Starbucks for remote working — time to wake up hotel industry.

    Printing

    The second day at the hotel presented a new challenge: two people set to give toasts at the wedding were told that it was preferred that they not talk while reading from an electronic device — instead they were encouraged to use paper. No one brings a printer along though, so I being the resident geek was tasked with printing about 7 pages worth of stuff.

    I grabbed my iPad and MacBook Air and headed down to the business center. There were instructions for hooking up your laptop to print — though all were for PC users and not having a lot of time (and that I am not Rhone) I decided it would be best to use the PCs that were available.

    10 minutes, 14 pages and $24 later I was done. The computer cost $7.50 to use for 15 minutes and $0.50 for each additional minute. The black and white printing I did was priced at $1 a page. Outrageous. (I ended up printing two copies of each speech in two different formats to allow the reader to select which ever would be more comfortable for them to read.)

    Home

    Overall the trip was fun, but the AT&T network was unbearable and Verizon was hardly better. The 13” MacBook Air was a perfect companion once in the room and fit perfectly in the small room safe. My iPad was perfect all around once again.

    My iPhone made me understand why people want a Verizon model so badly and the hospitality industry is responding to the recession by adding fees instead of providing incentives for people to stay with them. Overall all this made me feel as though I was constantly being ripped off.

    I miss Seattle with its robust AT&T network. And my own bed.

  • New Daytum iPhone App

    I have been using the app for a while — it is strictly for data entry IMO — but very pretty and easy to use. I love Daytum and I will be posting about it later this week. If you already use Daytum be sure to get the free iPhone app.

    I have been using the app for a while — it is strictly for data entry IMO — but very pretty and easy to use. I love Daytum and I will be posting about it later this week. If you already use Daytum be sure to get the free iPhone app.

  • Why Bing “Likes” Facebook

    Paul Boutin on why Bing may be a better search engine for most things (particularly if you use Facebook): Beyond beating link spam, your friends’ preferences and recommendations may also provide a better guide to what you, as an individual, really want to find. If, for example, you’re shopping for a new pair of shoes,…

    Paul Boutin on why Bing may be a better search engine for most things (particularly if you use Facebook):

    Beyond beating link spam, your friends’ preferences and recommendations may also provide a better guide to what you, as an individual, really want to find. If, for example, you’re shopping for a new pair of shoes, the most valuable search results may not be the most linked-to pages on the Internet but, rather, what your best friends want to be seen wearing.

    It is an interesting dilemma that Google will need to deal with: unless you tie into Facebook/Twitter how do you provide results that are more relevant that page ranking? My guess is that Google would rather use tracking cookies and other methods of tracking user behavior — than they would tying you into a social graph that they don’t own.

  • RSS Is Dying [Being Ignored], and You Should Be Very Worried

    Kroc Camen: Google Chrome has no RSS reader. It doesn’t even try to render RSS, or even help the user with it in any way. It gives less of a crap than a French man smoking a cigarette in public.

    Kroc Camen:

    Google Chrome has no RSS reader. It doesn’t even try to render RSS, or even help the user with it in any way. It gives less of a crap than a French man smoking a cigarette in public.

  • Automatically add Tasks delegated by Email to Things with Applescript

    I previously posted about an applescript that will send an email to OmniFocus as a task — for those emails that you want a little tickler on. Now with the help of Sven Fechner you can set this up for Things too. It’s no OTA sync, but hey it is free.

    I previously posted about an applescript that will send an email to OmniFocus as a task — for those emails that you want a little tickler on. Now with the help of Sven Fechner you can set this up for Things too. It’s no OTA sync, but hey it is free.

  • Real Power Users

    Chris Clark trying to defend Facebook messages over email: It’s been a recurring theme this week, but the Pro users of yesteryear’s products, the people with the biggest investment in old technologies, are not the people who should be calling the shots in the design of their successors. These are the people who complain that…

    Chris Clark trying to defend Facebook messages over email:

    It’s been a recurring theme this week, but the Pro users of yesteryear’s products, the people with the biggest investment in old technologies, are not the people who should be calling the shots in the design of their successors. These are the people who complain that an iPad can’t have third party software installed from anywhere but the App Store, ignoring the massive convenience and security gains the policy affords average users.

    I think this statement is massively off base:

    1. Plenty of “Pro” users that I know (myself included) are more than happy with the App system Apple has in place.
    2. There is a relatively small user base that Jailbreaks when they are not happy.
    3. Others will just move to a “open” ((Yeah, right.)) system like Android.
    4. Lastly I would argue that Steve Jobs is a “Pro” user so by Clark’s account — Jobs should not be allowed to design future systems.

    That means that clearly millions of people are wrong for buying products that Jobs makes? I think the problem here is that Clark is using the word “Pro” and “Power User” when he should be using the definition: “Niche Users”. He and his friends clearly are a niche where they are best served by something other than email. I am no fan of email, but I certainly don’t agree with what Clark is arguing.

    People keep sending me emails about this article and I can’t say that I agree with anything that he is saying in it.

    People are not flocking to Facebook because they want better email — they flock because they want to see what their ex looks like now. Facebook is not popular because it is a communication tool — nor is it an underutilized communication tool — Facebook is popular because people like to spy on each other.

  • The Problem With Ping

    Nik Fletcher on Apple’s Ping network: A purchase of a song isn’t the strongest indicator of a user’s liking of a song: the playing of a song is. Ping with Scrobbling would offer me far more of an incentive to visit – I care much more about what my friends are listening to as opposed…

    Nik Fletcher on Apple’s Ping network:

    A purchase of a song isn’t the strongest indicator of a user’s liking of a song: the playing of a song is. Ping with Scrobbling would offer me far more of an incentive to visit – I care much more about what my friends are listening to as opposed to what they’re buying (and even when buying, there’s no guarantee the purchase will be via iTunes and thus tracked).

    What a great point.

  • Twitter for iPhone FAIL

    San Francisco we have a problem: Twitter for iPhone has become the most crashtastic app on my iPhone over the past month or so. I can’t pinpoint when this first started to happen but Ian Hines lamented on Twitter the other day: @twitter for iPhone crashes roughly 30% of the time. Unacceptable.. For an app…

    San Francisco we have a problem: Twitter for iPhone has become the most crashtastic app on my iPhone over the past month or so. I can’t pinpoint when this first started to happen but Ian Hines lamented on Twitter the other day:

    @twitter for iPhone crashes roughly 30% of the time. Unacceptable..

    For an app so good and as high profile as Twitter — this is hardly a good thing. On my iPhone it seems to happen most frequently when I am trying to reply to a Tweet, followed closely by the times that I am simply trying to tap out a Tweet. Normally I use a mix of Tweetie and my iOS devices, but while traveling this weekend Twitter for iPhone was my primary interface and it was frustrating to say the least.

    I am hardly in the mood to switch apps at this point, but I may be forced to if this continues much longer. Then the questions is what app do I switch too? I am not much of a Twitterific fan — Icebird seems nice, but is hardly great. Suggestions?

  • Lending Kindle Books

    Amazon: Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days. I don’t know about you, but I rarely finish a book in just 14 days — I am a slow reader and have way too many other things going on. One would think that Amazon (by the very nature of their…

    Amazon:

    Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days.

    I don’t know about you, but I rarely finish a book in just 14 days — I am a slow reader and have way too many other things going on. One would think that Amazon (by the very nature of their business) would have a damned good idea of just how fast people are reading books — 14 days seems a little bit faster than I imagine most read.

  • Matt Gemmell Reviews the MacBook Air 11″

    Gemmell does an excellent job reviewing the 11″ Air. Most importantly he decided the best way to talk about the limited screen space was to put together a Flickr gallery of screenshots with popular programs running. This is the type of reviewer that I love.

    Gemmell does an excellent job reviewing the 11″ Air. Most importantly he decided the best way to talk about the limited screen space was to put together a Flickr gallery of screenshots with popular programs running. This is the type of reviewer that I love.

  • Tablets and Input

    Tim Bray: Tablets and handsets can displace computers as play and reading devices, but they really can’t become dominant as work tools until we have a better solution for high-speed low-friction text input. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised to see dramatic progress in this area; it’s so obviously the number-one usability barrier…

    Tim Bray:

    Tablets and handsets can displace computers as play and reading devices, but they really can’t become dominant as work tools until we have a better solution for high-speed low-friction text input. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised to see dramatic progress in this area; it’s so obviously the number-one usability barrier for everything that isn’t badged as a “computer”.

    Agreed — though I don’t agree with much else in his post. Reviewers take note: you need to dedicate at least 250 words to talking about how the text input experience is on each device you review — this stuff matters.

  • The Daily Post

    So you want to try and blog everyday in 2011? WordPress.com is there to help. WordPress.com: This is an experiment in blogging motivation from the folks at WordPress.com. We will post every day here with ideas, suggestions and inspiration, hoping it will help you get the most out of your blog.

    So you want to try and blog everyday in 2011? WordPress.com is there to help.

    WordPress.com:

    This is an experiment in blogging motivation from the folks at WordPress.com. We will post every day here with ideas, suggestions and inspiration, hoping it will help you get the most out of your blog.