Mobile Eyes

This Weblog is On Hiatus

2005-04-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

As if you didn't know. Now it's official. While I've enjoyed playing around with a weblog - this one - over the past few months, I've lately gotten too busy with photography work, and with my continuing job search, to put in any time here. I think it's going to remain that way for awhile.

When you want to find me on the Web, your best bet is my Yahoo 360 pages, or else on Flickr (my Flickr pictures are here). I've been playing with Flickr quite a bit lately and I once again recommend it. Photo sites, especially content rich sites like Flickr, can demand a lot of your time. But of course any time you spend there is up to you and your schedule. And any time at all can be pretty rewarding, if you're at all into photography.

I've neglected my Yahoo 360 pages since April 1. But I can see how the Yahoo 360 facility will enable me to do things I can't do with just a weblog; and to blog more personally. So I plan to get back to it very soon.

I may take up Mobile Eyes again sometime, picking up where I left off. I just don't know when, or if. So, until then, I'll say a hui ho. Yes, this is Hawaiian. Roughly translated it means, I guess, "Until we meet again." Thanks for reading. See you around.

Yahoo! preparing hostile takeover of Google

2005-04-01T15:48:00.000-08:00

It is reported in today's issue of the off-line trade journal, RDF Express, that Yahoo! is quietly preparing a hostile takeover bid for arch-rival Google. No word on what the bid consists of or when it will be launched. No word, either, on what would become of Google founders Brin and Page should the bid be successful, though rumor has it they would each consider a monastery in the Far East, or, failing admittance there, belated entrance into the U.S. Marine Corps. Mobile Eyes will be watching this story closely in the coming days.

Sony Does It

2005-04-01T02:34:00.000-08:00

Back in January there was a lot of talk, here, on Russell Beattie's weblog, and elsewhere, about mobile media in general, and about, specifically, Nokia and Sony and Microsoft and what each of them was (or wasn't) doing to facilitate media downloads for mobile devices.

In fact, in an entry called Microsoft's Consumer Electronics Endgame, Russ pointed out that Microsoft was essentially stealing a march on its competitors with its strategy in this area. I distinctly remember posting a comment on that entry: "I was sure that Sony had seen this coming and sought to circumvent it by spending billions over the years to become a content provider for its own devices. It appears, however, that this isn't the case, since they've done nothing to utilize their media vault or integrate their entertainment and hardware divisions. How difficult would it be, to encode movies and TV episodes and offer them up at little cost for download to various Sony products, especially phones and handhelds? Or, failing that (because bandwidth is maybe still not there), offer them for purchase on flash media (MMC or Memory stick)? Something exactly like iTunes for the iPod, but in this case a broader media offering for Sony mobiles. They own a treasure vault of movies." Or words to that effect. I've since searched that entry and can't find my comment. Maybe I wrote it elsewhere. Whatever.

In any case, later that month (January), Sony announced that they were in fact planning something. No details were available at the time, but in a ZD Net article yesterday, the plan was made clear. Apparently Sony execs were thinking along exactly the lines I suggested. And the whole thing is pretty exciting.

According to the ZD Net article, Michael Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures, announced the details at a conference yesterday. Here is some of what he had to say.

"We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like (Apple Computer CEO Steve) Jobs did for music, but for the film industry," [said Arrieta], "I'm trying to create the new 'anti-Napster."

To that end, Arrieta said, his group plans to digitize Sony Pictures' top 500 films and make them available for the first time in various digital environments within the next year. He said the distribution for films like "Spider-Man 2" will go beyond just Movielink, the video-on-demand joint venture of Sony Pictures and several other major studios, which to date has hosted a limited library of Sony's movies.

For example, Sony plans to sell and make films available in flash memory for mobile phones in the next year, Arrieta said. It also will further develop its digital stores for downloading and owning films on the PC, he said in an interview. Sony's plans--and similar moves by other studios--are likely to avoid empowering any one technology company--such as Apple in the music equation--and allow studios to pocket more of the profits. The philosophy in Hollywood is "Define your own agenda or someone else will for you."

Clearly, then, Sony execs are getting back into the game. Perhaps the new CEO, Howard Stringer, has the broad picture vision many of us assumed he'd lack.

Thebusiness about creating the "anti-Napster" sounds kind of scary. And we've no reason not to take him at his word. On the other hand, it is an obligatory statement for a Hollywood exec to make. And perhaps Sony realizes that the best way to re-route developing download habits (read: defeat so-called piracy), is to offer high-quality content at extremely low prices. If I had access to over 500 films, perfectly encoded for use on my (former) Nokia 3650, and if each of them cost, say, five dollars: I wouldn't really care if they were DRMed. Especially if I could transfer them to a limited number of other devices. I can imagine having a whole library of films, and renting those I don't want to buy. It's the video sales/rental business, all over again.

Will it stop the free exchange of content across the Internet? No. But it will make Sony devices an attractive portal for good, cheap, easy-to-acquire media. And that will go a long way toward forming people's habits.

2005-03-31T14:01:00.000-08:00

I've just revised my review of Yahoo! 360°. See entry below.

More Sony Ericsson P915/P1000 Concepts

2005-03-31T03:29:00.000-08:00

These concept drawings of the next iteration of Sony Ericsson's P series device were posted in a forum on a site called Neowin.net. The person who posted them said he found them on "some website", and he wanted to know, is one of them the real thing?

The second one is a nice illustration - but it doesn't have the lines of Sony Ericsson's designers. And it's obviously based on the slideout keypad concept popular right now among PDA-centric mobile devices - something I trust (hope) SE won't stoop to, because of its obvious ergonomic limitations, and basic lack of aesthetic elegance.

The concept in the top drawing shows more promise. It looks like something designed by Sony Ericsson; in fact it looks a lot like many of Sony's PDAs. The keyboard is roomy, and the screen obviously flips around to turn the device into a mini tablet. All of which is neat. More important, it looks like it could be used as a phone. Except for one thing: where's the keypad? If the keypad is meant to be virtual, then that means the user can only dial while in tablet mode; and talk with a considerable slab of screen against his face.

All of which leads me to believe that this drawing could be, maybe, possibly, perhaps, conceivably, a legitimate prototype from Sony labs. But, if so, it's an early one, and the finished product will surely look . . . not quite like this. Still, though . . . .

My Review of Yahoo! 360°

2005-03-31T00:09:00.000-08:00

REVISED, 2 PM. I've just revised this review to make it a little more complete.

First things first. I have to say a big thanks to Russell Beattie for extending me an invitation to Yahoo! 360°, which happened a short time after my last post here. I wasn't expecting it. Second (second things second), it isn't really fair to post a review of something that, A) is in beta and still brand new, and, B) most people don't yet have access to. Still, I figure lots of folks are curious about Yahoo360; and Yahoo360 workers are probably curious to see the reaction of early users. So, here goes with a brief review.

I spent most of last night and virtually all of today playing around with Yahoo360. Well, not ALL day, exactly. Rather, I spent equal amounts of time in Yahoo360 and answering email. The email was from people in my address book that I hadn't heard from, in some cases, in years - people I'd sent a Yahoo360 invite to. They wrote to me after accepting the invitation and looking inside.

Have your own look inside. My Yahoo360 address is http://360.yahoo.com/dougthacker. Here is a screenshot of the page you'll see when you click on that link.

The components of Yahoo360 are

Your Yahoo360 Blog
Your Lists of favorite things (books, movies, music, etc.)
Your biographical info (where you've lived, worked, etc.), plus the option of writing something about yourself
Your Photos stored at Yahoo
The Yahoo Groups you belong to
Your Friends on Yahoo360

Music sharing, of a kind, is also offered by Yahoo360, and it could be considered another major component. This feature consists of the (supposed) ability to share your Yahoo LAUNCHcast Web radio selections. I'm using Firefox as my browser (as most everyone should be), and here's what happened when I tried to launch LAUNCHcast: I got a message saying, "LAUNCHcast doesn't support Netscape on Windows." Not sure why it thought I was using Netscape, but obviously this is something that needs to be fixed - and no doubt it will be. I thought maybe I'd already tried LAUNCHcast some time back, but couldn't remember. Obviously, though, I won't be trying it currently until this little problem is addressed.

The Yahoo360 blog is right now pretty limited. You can't write your own HTML, and you can't link images from other sources on the Web. Instead, there is a WYSIWYG interface you have to use for posting - I suppose this is meant to make things easier; and images can only be uploaded from your mobile or your hard drive - and only one per post. This single image is inserted at the top of the post, and can't be moved around by you.

I guess I don't have a problem with this limited functionality - it forces you to write personally and not rely on illustrations. But, really, you could hardly call it a blog, if we take "blog" to mean what it means here on Blogger, and virtually everywhere else. Namely, a kind of self-published electronic newspaper written by one person (or a group of people). The Yahoo360 "blog" is definitely not that. A more descriptive term might be "online journal". But since "blog" is a big buzzword right now, Yahoo will persist in calling it that. And because they will, it's going to lead to unrealistic expectations on the part of users who have experience with blogs elsewhere - even if it's only experience reading them. ("So how come I can't post pictures like they do on BoingBoing?") Unrealistic expectations will mean frustration and disappointment for a significant number of users.

Unless you're in the habit of doing it, it's a challenge to come up with lists of favorite things ("snowflakes that fall on my nose and eyelashes, brown paper packages tied up with string") - especially when we're not talking about just any old favorite things, like in the Rogers and Hammerstein song, but more specific categories like books and movies. It works best, I think, when you're straightforward about it. But I guess that goes without saying. I noticed that many people are listing things that don't fit the tight categories - authors under "books", for instance. It would be better, I think, to call the category "Books and Authors", as done in the profile section of FLICKR.

Fortunately there is (just as on FLICKR) a broad category: Interests. This leaves plenty of room to list things like "Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes" (though my own proclivities are a little less specific than that). But Yahoo360 might want to consider implementing their other categories as FLICKR has: Favorite Books & Authors; Favorite Movies, Stars & Directors; Favorite Music & Artists. Something like that.

As I said on my "blog" over on Yahoo360, I've always been ambivilent about listing favorites in public. Ambivilent for lots of reasons. But I really grokked what such lists are about, while on Yahoo360. Lists are nothing more than a way of tagging yourself, just as you would pictures on FLICKR. And it serves the same function as tagging anywhere. When you want to know which members of Yahoo360 are into the music of, say, Stereolab, you click on the Stereolab tag in your own list, and voila, you're presented with Yahoo360 users who have tagged themselves Stereolab fans.

Yahoo360 also features some components that might be called minor ones, but that, together, give the service more depth and likability. One is reviews, wherein a user can present the reviews he has written on other Yahoo sites, as well as adding new reviews. Outside of the weblog you're reading right now (Blogger based, of course), I'm not particularly into writing reviews, and won't lay claim to the few lame attempts I've made. But I can see how this would be of interest to some users.

Also, in addition to tying in its own Instant Messenger service to Yahoo360, the site provides a means for contacts to leave messages directly within the interface. A number of my contacts have already done this. I was able to respond in kind; and the whole thing seems pretty useful, since it means not having to fire up your own email - especially for those contacts who don't use Yahoo Mail.

One minor feature I particularly like is called Blast. Blast consists of a short blurb, or, if you like, a link, that you can send to friends and display at the top of your Yahoo360 pages. This seems like a good way to keep your pages active, and to draw attention to updates.

There are a couple of things I might change, if I could - and maybe they will be changed as we go along. For example, after putting considerable thought into my list of favorite films, I finally posted it, only to be told it was too long. Something about a 300 character maximum, I think it was. Needless to say, I didn't count characters. I just lopped a few films off the bottom and kept my fingers crossed. Such a limitation seems kind of silly. If someone wants to list, say, their top 100, who cares?

Likewise, I'm in 35 Yahoo groups. But a maximum of 23 appears on my groups list. And at least one of the groups - devoted to the work of photographer Helmut Newton - is in the so-called Adult section of Yahoo groups. I have a feeling that one won't ever show up on my Yahoo360 page. Is that because we're not adults, unless we're in the adult section? What's up?

But all of this is really just niggling. The bottom line for the broad concept of Yahoo360 is that it's a pretty great thing. The idea of creating and expanding networks of people with whom you share interests, and of becoming reacquainted with old friends, is really exciting. And, more important (because lots of sites have the idea but not necessarilly the execution), the way Yahoo has it set up - its implementation - is, in general and despite the little problems, quite effective. Part of this effectiveness - a big part - is in my view the total lack of ads. This gives Yahoo360 a very FLICKRish feel, and I can only hope Yahoo has the sense to maintain it this way.

In fact, Yahoo would in my view be well advised to tie in even more closely FLICKR and Yahoo360. Especially where photos are concerned. It might also be a good idea to add tagging to their new My Web feature (elsewhere on Yahoo), to make it similar to del.icio.us. And then tie it in with Yahoo360. This would be in keeping with the essential social networking nature of Yahoo360. I could see a "My Bookmarks" section. Or even a "My Tags" section that applied to both bookmarks and photos.

Anyway, as it stands now, even in beta, Yahoo360 is nicely done, and I intend to keep using it (unless I start getting spammed with ads). I think it's going to be a huge hit.

Waiting for my Yahoo360 Invite

2005-03-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

UPDATE, 6 PM: I just received my invite. Thanks, Russ!

Given that I announced, long before Wired - or anyone else, for that matter - over on Russell Beattie's weblog, that, "Yahoo seems to me to be a much stronger company than Google, in every way I can think of;" - in some sense I could lay claim to some part of getting the meme started; - and given that I tout Yahoo good stuff at each opportunity (along with, granted, the bad), I'm expecting any day now to get my Yahoo360 invite, which I signed up for some time ago. Hello? We'll see how soon - and if - it comes. :)

Kurt Bigenho (of the Mobile Phone Photo Show)

2005-03-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

A lot of people seem to think that SENT was the first exhibition of photos made with mobile phones. While SENT was interesting, what I didn't like about it was that it was so celebrity oriented. The organizers invited certain celebrities and near-celebrities to submit photos made with their camera phones. These were exhibited as the main part of the show, while the seemingly lesser part consisted of random photos sent in by an anonymous public.

I much preferred the mobile phone photo exhibition that preceded this one - and not only because I participated in it. Called MPPS (for "Mobile Phone Photo Show"), it was organized by Kurt Bigenho, of unfinished.com and Multiverse, and took place in San Francisco's Rx Gallery in May and June of last year. For MPPS, people from around the world were invited to send in photos made with their phones. These images were then displayed on monitors throughout the gallery, before being printed for gallery goers to take home.

I sent in maybe a couple of hundred images from Hawaii (where I lived at the time), and even went out on a couple of shooting forays with my Nokia 3650, just for the sake of the show.

Consequently, I was really excited about having the chance to meet Kurt and see the space where the show took place, upon moving to San Francisco. After exchanging numerous emails and missing each other a number of times, Kurt and I are finally getting together later this week. We'll get to know each other, I hope, and possibly talk about some future projects.

Catching Up . . . Again.

2005-03-29T12:10:00.001-08:00

Mind of God

Imagine if there were a type of search engine that indexed your whole person. Based on genetic markers, psychological states, and social situation, this engine could not only give you an accurate inventory of your own traits, talents, and weaknesses, but could also predict, with uncanny accuracy, the reasonable probability for success of any action, train of thought, or plan, you might develop; as well as predicting your near and long term health. It would serve as a combination wise physician and agony aunt or counselor. Such a utility would be invaluable, and all you'd have to do, in order to have it, is agree to give up any pretense to privacy: your personal index, with its probabilities and predictions, would be mirrored on several servers - some of them commercial - where the dynamically changing real-time data would be used for tailoring advertising campaigns directed to you; - and some of them owned by state agencies, for the simple reason that state agencies love this sort of data - or would love it, if they could get it.

This is the search engine Google would like to have - one more step toward becoming the mind of God (their oft-stated goal). We're not there yet, but I kind of felt like we were when, a few days ago, I installed Yahoo's beta version of desktop search.

I already had a pretty good mental inventory of my own data on my home machine, so, given its current limitations, Yahoo's desktop search wasn't all that useful to me. There's a long list of file types the utility can find - but I still felt as though there was a great deal it was missing - just what I'm not sure. I imagine that in the aggregate, a machine you've been using for awhile says more about you than even you know. Or that's the thought, anyway - and I'm not sure I like that thought. Inference is best left, I think, to highly trained Viennese psychiatrists. But that won't stop corporations and governments from thinking they have it right. No sense in helping them.

On a more positive note, Yahoo's new Creative Commons search is fantastic. Fantastic because it is truly innovative and useful, allowing you to mix, match, and mash up other people's work, even for your own commercial purposes, without fear of stepping over the boundary from fair use to actionable offense. Providing such a service is, in my view, the true role of search engines - and far preferable to trying to be the mind of God.

For the past few days I haven't done any blogging - something you'll have noticed if you're a regular reader. interestingly, I've been getting almost as many hits not blogging as I do when posting regularly. Right now there are maybe ten people who come back here regularly, plus ten or so more who subscribe via RSS feed. Most days this weblog gets about one hundred unique visitors - though, depending on the topic and the time of week, that can go up to as high as one thousand. All told, a small and obviously select readership. And not bad, considering that it's so new, and still in the process of taking on a definite identity: tech blog? photography blog? personal diary? blog of whimsy? All of these and none, of course.

It's surprising to me how much time it takes to blog every day. In order to find something worth writing about, or pointing out, I first check the links over to the right; then, if need be, and if there's time, I go through a long list of RSS feeds that I have set up on a My Yahoo page devoted to science and tech. When I finally get an entry written, with links and just the right images, I often have several hours into it. And that's assuming I don't get distracted along the way. I suppose I should fire up Photoshop and rig some sort of Gone Fishin' sign, for those times when I just can't get to it, or don't want to.

Here are a couple of things that I would have blogged about, had I been blogging over the past few days.

"Our living Earth nurtures an abundance of life. And we believe that human beings are the peak of all those abundant life forms. Human beings are the only ones that have created glittering civilizations one after another, or have sent rockets into outer space. But it is also these outstanding human beings who have damaged nature and our world to a critical degree. Now, we have also started to notice that we have to believe in all seriousness that our living planet Earth is made up of a delicate balance of life forms, and that Earth itself is one living organism.

"That's true. The biggest living organism on Earth is Earth itself. We must protect this important living thing, this irreplaceable Earth, and by making this life even more brilliant, human beings can make themselves truly great.

"Through this exhibition of EXPO 2005 AICHI JAPAN, we in the Mitsui Group want to help people live healthily and prosperously on this greatest of all living things: our planet. A world sparkling with life - that is the theme that we in the Mitsui Group wish to pass on to the children who will support the next generation."

This copy is from the website devoted to the Mitsui-Toshiba pavilion at the above-named expo. So refreshing to see such optimism. How unlike the dreary pessimism and (Christian) nihilism that is so often manifest in the west nowadays.

Current Christian nihilism in the West notwithstanding, one of the things I most like about Europe (which shows a promising abandonment of such ideology) is its recent tradition of form follows function. Here we see it manifest in taking the hood-is-home concept of the hoody to its logical extreme. The illustration above is from the international (but decidedly European) design firm Gopingpong.

Both Gopingpong and the reference to the Mitsui-Toshiba pavilion are from what has become my favorite weblog of all, Near Near Future (AKA We Make Money Not Art) - like BoingBoing, but without the smugness and self-conscious hipness.

Sony PSP News

2005-03-23T11:58:00.000-08:00

Kutugari-san reported to be
disappointed, as well

The biggest PSP news of all, for me, anyway, is this - and it's disgusting: I've been planning for some time to be standing in line RIGHT NOW, as I type this, at San Francisco's Sony Metreon store, waiting for the midnight launch of the PSP. Problem is, I've yet to figure out how to position this with my landlord - i.e., "See this shiny new device? Cool, huh? I knew you'd like it. Your rent money is tied up in here." I still don't have a job. I was SURE I'd have one by now, but I don't. Ergo, while the rest of North America is celebrating with Sony, for me it'll just be another day.

Yes, it does suck, but I'll live, I think. When it finally happens, I won't have to wait in line.

Not to be left out entirely, however, here is a list of new links for the PSP - starting with a few from the LINUX community :) :

Linux on PSP

Linux Sony PSP

PSP Linux Project - Coming Soon (includes active discussion board)

PSP Linux (discussion)

Other current PSP links

From the clued-in:

Two from Russell Beattie, here, and here.

Playstation Portable Omegapost (Gizmodo)

PSP Review Roundup (Engadget)

Sony PSP Fashion Model Gallery (i4U)

PSP Japan

PSP: All it's cracked up to be (CNNMoney)

From the clueless:

PSP Wows - But only if you stick to games (Washington Post)

Sony PSP Great for games, not much else (Forbes)

So there you are. Something to read while in line. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a job to find. :)

UPDATE: We now interrupt this job search to bring you breaking news: The line at Sony Metreon, San Francisco.

More FLICKR Fun

2005-03-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

The above is a screenshot from Krazydad ("Creator of handcrafted software toys of wondrous delight"). It's the Flickr Experimental Colr Pickr, devised by Jim Bumgardner, and, it's a delight alright. This, along with the other Flickr stuff in this post, has been sitting on my hard drive for at least a week. While having fun with all of it, I was ambivlent about blogging it because - get this - it seemed like just so much pretty eye candy. Then it came to me, limping on the knees of middle age: what better thing to share?

Jim used the Flickr API documentation to create Colr Pickr. Colr Pickr offers twelve themes to choose from (such as "color fields", "flowers", "urban decay", "catchy colors") and a color wheel with a slider beside it. Click on a theme, then click on any point in the color field, and Colr Pickr will pull up the appropriately themed and hued images from Flickr. You can then use the slider to change the color value (light to dark) and thereby the images. It's really fun and beautiful.

One quote from Jim that I like, and that, reading it, made me decide to blog this topic:

"To those that question the utility of this little application, let me point out that it is a toy -- like all the stuff on my website. It's purpose is simply to provide wonder and delight. Nothing more, nothing less. Isn't that enough?"

Spell with Flickr is another cool app developed using the Flickr API. This one involves inputting a word, phrase, or URL in the search box and clicking "spell". Spell with Flickr then finds Flickr images and uses them to recreate your input, in the form of images.

Lastly, I've been finding great images on Flickr. Sometimes entire collections are interesting, like the one documenting a graveyard of commercial jets.

So there you have it. Two toys among many for Flickr, and an interesting photo collection, one of . . . well, quite a few. (I've been involved in lots of photo sites, and some of the images on Flickr are exceptional.) Yahoo clearly got this site at a bargain price, and has some interesting times ahead.

FLICKR. At Yahoo!

2005-03-21T02:00:00.000-08:00

Earlier today (or, rather, yesterday, since it's now 2 AM), I was planning to write an entry about Flickr. In fact, I've been meaning to for some time, as I keep running into more and more neat Flickr things. But one thing led to another and before you know it, it was time to get ready for work. Well, I thought, it can wait until tomorrow.

I didn't write the entry but kept thinking about it. Some of what I was thinking ran along the lines of, "I sure hope Yahoo! buys Flickr. If they don't, Google probably will. Flickr would - or could - add so much to Yahoo!'s offerings - they could tie it into the upcoming Yahoo360. And do God knows what else with it. I just hope, if they do buy it, that they don't fill it up with ads and ruin the interface."

I come home from work tonight, check on the status of this blog at Statcounter, follow a referrer link to Tagsurf, and see this.

So, Yahoo! buys Flickr. Now this should be interesting. I love everything about Flickr. Even - especially - the name of its co-founder: Caterina Fake. (If she didn't make that up, she maybe should have. I would love to write a movie - maybe a latter day spy thriller - something with an artful edge - and give its protagonist that name. See her post about the acquisition here.)

According to Jeremy Zawodny, a great deal of Yahoo! is going to be Flickrized. Good. The more the better. I could see a Flickrized Yahoo! really cutting a unique, dramatic profile in the Web world. While a case could be made for characterizing Google as, say, Web 1.20, a Flickrized Yahoo! could define Web 2.0 for portals.

I can also see that it will take months, if not years, to fully realize the potential of this. How will Yahoo! implement Flickr? I imagine the first thing they'll do is integrate it into Yahoo360. And hopefully both will be integrated into Yahoo groups. I could see a Yahoo Group having a PHP bulletin board, and Flickr functionality for its pictures, all of it with moderator selectible colors and so on. (And, by the way, if you'd like to sign up to be a beta user of Yahoo360, you can do that here.)

I liked what Jeremy had to say about Flickr:

Flickr has the potential to set the new standard for on-line photo sharing, management, etc. Why? Because Flickr...
does one thing and does it well
provides a clean and simple UI
has clear and helpful documentation
exposes core functionality with a documented API
account sign up is brain-dead simple
makes extensive and intuitive use of RSS
like del.icio.us, uses tags to help organize
doesn't spam me with graphical/animated/flash ads or try to unexpectedly pop up any sort of window
In other words, it's developer friendly, user friendly, and is a web site as well as a "service" or "platform" (in the Web 2.0 sense) all at the same time.

Everything, in other words, Yahoo needs to be. (I especially like - as you may have noticed - the part about "doesn't spam me with graphical/animated/flash ads".)

Anyway, it's late. Haven't gotten to the "fun with Flickr" part of this post yet. I'll see about that tomorrow. We'll call it Part II.

I, Vacuum Cleaner

2005-03-19T10:46:00.000-08:00

Childcare Robot PaPeRo

According to this article ("NEC Realizes Enhanced Version of its PaPeRo Robots") at PhysOrg,

NEC has been engaged in the development of a childcare robot as one application of its partner-type robot. It has thus developed "Childcare Robot PaPeRo" that boasts enhanced security features and functions enabling it to play with and watch over children. The Childcare Robot was developed by using one part of the technological functions of PaPeRo 2005 and in particular by focusing on interaction between the robot and children.

And further,

There is great expectation surrounding the development of partner-type robots, which will be able to live with us and assist us in our daily lives. Although a variety of robots have been developed in response to such expectations, they still possess insufficient performance in terms of speech and image recognition, in addition to their interaction being monotonous and boring. Therefore, development of a robot, which enables natural and enjoyable communication, as well as a wider variety of interactions, has been highly sought after and desired.

This is all great - I love robots and the idea of robots. But the bottom line is, given the intelligence level of todays computers - namely, zilch - having one of these things watch over your children is like leaving the vacuum cleaner in charge. Except that in this case the vacuum cleaner is networked, so that you can use your mobile to see and hear the kids remotely.

Give NEC and companies like it all credit for trying to bring "robots" to market. But clearly there is a very long way to go.

Teleblaster

2005-03-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite artists when I was but a wee teen was Nam June Paik. The Teleblaster, from Aristarkh Chernyshev at the New Age of Television, available from electroboutique, follows on the heels of Paik, and allows you to, shall we say, enhance your TV experience. No chemicals required.

As electroboutique describes it, "TeleBlaster allows mixing users' videofeed with a TV broadcast, and therefore gives unlimited possibilities for creativity: television becomes, literally, a Lego set from which users/watcher creates his/her own worlds."

Of course, you could, in the manner of Paik, accomplish the same thing by jury-rigging your own gear. Which might actually be more fun, if you actually did it. But then you wouldn't get this cool looking appliance.

Update: I sent this link to boingboing an hour before they posted it. When they did post it, it was credited to someone else. Oh, well. Hmmm, I'm thinking my time could better be spent on my own weblog. They obviously have enough readers on the lookout for them.

O-Ring Holographic Finger Watch

2005-03-18T09:23:00.000-08:00

It seems that Timex, the watch company, is having a design competition to celebrate their 150th anniversary. Called Timex2154, the object of the competition is to design concepts for timepieces as they might appear 150 years hence. One of the featured designs is the O-Ring watch above. No word on when this might be available, but I think it'll be in fewer than 150 years. In the next five years, more like. Via Technovelgy.

For Sale: Star Wars Landspeeder

2005-03-18T08:27:00.000-08:00

Low miles, high hover rate. Place your bid.

e-Go - Computing for the Fasionista

2005-03-18T08:09:00.000-08:00

High tech comes to the European fashion world: Tulip e-Go company presents the e-Go mobile computing platform. One part tech, two parts style, three parts price.

A tight skirt, expensive heels, and this laptop. Fits right in. (Err, I mean . . . did I just say that?)

Odor Alarm Clock . . . at pasta and vinegar

2005-03-18T02:57:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite new blog discoveries is pasta and vinegar. That's where I discovered this odor alarm clock, which is designed to exude a "pleasant odor" ("Two fragrances—lemon mint and eucalyptus mint—evoke a morning freshness") into the room starting thirty minutes before it's set to wake you. Link.

Pasta and vinegar describes itself as, "A blog by nicolas nova about pasta (human computer interaction, innovation, technologies, futuristic trends, location based services, mobile computing, user-centric stuff, video game design) and vinegar (digital culture and various weird stuff)." It's now on my regular reading list.

Welcome Changes at Yahoo!

2005-03-17T11:59:00.000-08:00

According to Yahoo News, the company will introduce a service called Yahoo! 360. The article describes the new service as blending "several of its Web site's popular features with two of the Internet's fastest growing activities — blogging and social networking."

Whether this new feature will be an update of Yahoo! Groups or an adjunct to it, the article doesn't quite make clear. (I have a feeling it's the latter.) But in any case, and as I said earlier, it's about damn time. With this launch Yahoo! will take a page from Google's marketing model: initial users of the new service will be by invitation only. "Early participants," says the in-house article, "will be able to invite others." No word yet of any objections to the name from the makers of the Xbox 360. I guess the two things - Yahoo!'s service and Microsoft's console - are far enough apart that there's no conflict (or, rather, no reasonable opportunity to sue).

Funny there's no mention of this new feature in Yahoo!'s blog. There's also no mention that I could find of the new My Web feature, which can be found by going to Yahoo!'s new My Search and signing in to your Yahoo! account. The salient feature of My Web is the capability to create online bookmarks on the fly - and share them. This is similar to other social networking bookmark sites, such as del.icio.us - though as far as I could tell in my short time trying it, My Web doesn't support tags, which it really should. Everything on the Web today should support tags. All aboard the Cluetrain. . . .

For staying current of all things Yahoo!, a good bet is Yahoo! Next and Yahoo! Research Labs. Looks like Yahoo! is up to some interesting stuff lately.

Guerrilla Network and Wireless Communities

2005-03-16T02:16:00.000-08:00

It's an intriguing idea. Build an open source wireless mesh around the world that can be accessed for mobile and fixed communications, including data - thereby bypassing the commercial network. This, apparently, is what a good number of people have in mind. Sort of like a cross between old school shortwave hobbyists and social activists. (But maybe those were always crossed.)

This may not be news to you, but it is to me. I just came across two sites at the center of it. One of them is Guerilla.net, which describes its goal as being the establishment of

An Internet INDEPENDENT network free from Governments, commercial Internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and dubius Internet regulatory bodies.

The other site is WirelessCommunities. This site is less clearly centralized, merely serving, apparently, as a locus of info about free culture wireless efforts around the world.

WirelessCommunities are popping up all over the world, here we maintain a list of all of the communities we've managed to find all over the world. If you know of another one please add it to the list.

Note: This is a list of community wireless groups who are building free and open networks. If you are a commerical provider we wish you the best of luck but this is not the list for you. Thanks.

I wonder to what extent the two sites coincide, in terms of effort and personnel? In any event it's encouraging to think that people around the world are engaged in such a project. I'll definitely be looking further into this, and reporting back.

Firefox Web Browser

2005-03-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

Normally I use Firefox as my web browser. I've been using it for months and I love it. Firefox better adheres to Web standards - unlike the Windows Internet Explorer browser - so pages are more likely to render on the screen as they should. Plus, it's just more fun to use. Firefox is also a great deal more secure than Internet Explorer.

I just took a look at this weblog using Internet Explorer and it doesn't render properly at all. If you're using Internet Explorer, you won't even be able to read many of these posts. Do us both a favor:

Get Firefox

Sony PSP Phone

2005-03-15T02:24:00.000-08:00

While I was looking at all the concepts from Sony's design competition at SlashPhone, I came across this little baby, buried among the others.

Notice how, at the lower bottom of the picture, the phone is compared in size to a standalone PSP. In the model's hands, the device looks maybe a little too big to be a proper phone - but I think you could make it just a bit smaller and still get good gaming functionality.

Notice also that it seems to have a dual screen - one top and one bottom - similar to the Nintendo DS. A device like this would sell in the millions - and be what the N-Gage should have been and never was.

Will Sony Ericsson follow up the PSP in a few months with a PSP phone very much like this one? Who knows. But they'd be crazy not to. This thing is brilliant. They really ought to hire the guy who did this - if they haven't already.

Concept Mobile Devices

2005-03-15T01:36:00.000-08:00

Sunday's posts about mobile gadget form factors inspired me to search the web again for concept mobile devices. I love these things. I've found a few in the past, but they are far between, due, presumably, to their proprietary nature.

I came up with a couple of things I hadn't seen before, as well as a couple I had - I'd meant to write about those but never got around to it.

Clicking on screenshot above will take you to a Flash presentation called au design project, presented by Japan's KDDI. Another essay, from the same company, can be found here.

I guess back in October the Sony Ericsson Concept Phone Design Competition was probably a big deal on all the gadget sites. At the time I wasn't paying attention, since I was right in the middle of moving from Hawaii to my new home in San Francisco. If, like me, it got by you - or if you'd just like to see it again - here it is. Sony should do this every year. Nokia, too.

Here are a couple I particularly liked.

Today is Einstein's Birthday

2005-03-14T23:02:00.000-08:00

Albert Einstein was born one hundred twenty five years ago today. Here are some Einstein quotes and links.

"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited
in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as
something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his
consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to
our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our
task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of
compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its
beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such
achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner
security"

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."

"The only real valuable thing is intuition."

"In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself."

Einstein Revealed - from the PBS series Nova

Einstein Archives Online

Albert Einstein Archives - from The Jewish National & University Library, Jeruselem

Einstein's FBI File - 1,427 pages.

The Holy Grail Converged Device

2005-03-13T23:49:00.000-08:00

I took the liberty of swiping the swell illustration above from Russell Beattie, the man who created it. Hope he doesn't mind. Russ used this picture to illustrate a problem he poses on his weblog. In an entry called Mobile Gadget Form Factors (which is a helluva lot less pompous than my title, but I had to come up with something), he points out that the ideal form factor is different for each of the functions a converged mobile device is supposed to serve. And he asks for ideas about how to solve this dilemma.

I posted my answer over there (so if you arrived here from Russ's blog you might want to skip this). But my answer was so damned long, I thought I should grace my own blog with it. Especially since this is a question that I've been mulling over for some time.

I agree that the form factor we seek has to be elegant - and that means the Motorola MPX isn't it (though it might be fun, if you grew up playing with, as you say, Transformers). It has to be well suited to each of its functions - meaning easy and intuitive to use, and ergonomically sound.

I think four of the six essential functions you present would be equally at home in a landscape screen orientation - and it wouldn't necessarily have to be 16:9, just so long as it was wide-aspect. Those four functions are gaming, watching, typing - and reading. I really think that typing and reading, in terms of what your eyes do, anyway, are essentially the same. And I, for one, find it less fatiguing to read, say, two longer lines than three shorter ones.

So this leaves us with two functions, listening and talking. Listening we can dispense with right away, because of course you'll be using headphones or external speakers. The important aspect of the form for listening (to audio) is the controls; the ease with which you navigate through files and control their play. But I'll get to controls, for all these functions, in a second if you'll bear with me.

Talking, the final function, doesn't in my view require a flip form; but the ergonomics of it are certainly enhanced by something that is somewhat shaped to the face and ear, or at the very least not in conflict with them - and the various bricks and slates that mostly pass for smartphones right now obviously aren't it.

The only form factor I can think of that comes closest to meeting these requirements is Sony Ericsson's P series - the 900 and 910. These devices are small enough to be pocketable phones, yet large enough to serve several other functions. I think the ergonomic problems with the P series can be solved with an OS update and a few hardware adjustments.

You need to be able to operate the thing with one hand for most of its functions, obviously. And to change the screen orientation pretty much at will. And of course the QWERTY keypad on the 910 has to go.

If you put an ergonomically enhanced QWERTY keypad on the *outside* of the flip, where it belongs - and either put the number pad on screen, or, combine it with the QWERTY, a la the Treo 600 - I think you'd go a long way towards making a usable device. For any real typing, you're going to use a Bluetooth keyboard, anyway, with the device in landscape mode.

It might be helpful for music and gaming to add a navi-key type thing to the front of the device, putting it in or near the keypad (easier said than done, no doubt), or, perhaps on the *inside* of the flip, at least for gaming.

Anyway, I think something like the P series is the form factor that holds the greatest promise of becoming one day the holy grail converged device.

The BioMotionLab

2005-03-12T23:13:00.000-08:00

Above is a screenshot of a Macromedia Flash presentation featured at theBioMotionLab. As you can see, there is a figure made of light points in the center, and, off to the left, sliders corresponding to various characteristics (male, female, happy, sad, etc.). The way it works is this: in the actual Flash animation the light points are (of course) moving. You adjust the sliders and the posture and gait indicated by the light points changes accordingly.

The idea behind this . . . well, here, I'll let the researchers say it:

We are working on several aspects of visual perception and cognition. Our major interest is focussed on questions concerning the biology and psychology of social recognition. That is:
conspecific recognition
gender recognition
individual recognition
recognition of an agent's actions
intentions
emotions and personality traits

The lab is currently split into two parts, one located at Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany, and the other at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Playing with the sliders and watching the figure morph is lots of fun. It's also interesting to observe your own perceptions - the figure almost takes on bodily form, after a bit.

My only question is, what are the cultural factors involved in these perceptions, and how can they be identified as such? Would observers from disparate cultures have similar perceptions? That would seem to be the key question. And since the experiment discusses the "psychology of social recognition", I guess this is the whole point - but also the most difficult question to answer, short of taking a statistically valid worldwide sampling. In any event, even more fun to play around with than it may look.

Methuselah Foundation's M Prize Reaches Milestone

2005-03-12T21:50:00.000-08:00

You may recall Cambridge biogerontologist Dr. Aubrey De Grey. I had a short entry about him here and the pioneering work he his doing on life extention, on the occasion of the asinine hatchet-job MIT's Technology Review tried to do on him. (I'd planned to write a longer piece about this story but never quite got around to it.) According to the site FuturePundit,

Dr. William Haseltine, biotech pioneer of Human Genome Sciences fame, has joined the Three Hundred, a group of individuals who pledge to donate $1000 per year to the M Prize for the next 25 years. “I am delighted that my decision to join the Three Hundred has pushed the prize fund over its first one million dollars, which I trust is only the first of many millions,” said Dr. Haseltine of his decision. “There’s nothing to compare with this effort, and it has already contributed significantly to the awareness that regenerative medicine is a near term reality, not an IF.”

Similar to the X Prize for rocketry, the M Prize is a privately funded effort to spur life extention discoveries. It's direct goals are two-fold: to extend as long as possible the life of a mouse; and, to rejuvinate a mouse who is already aged.Link.

o c t o p u s d r o p k i c k !

2005-03-12T21:05:00.000-08:00

First of all, what is it with all the exclamation points? First Draw! and now this one. Maybe Yahoo! was on to something all along. . . !

Anyway, if you're fascinated by all things Japan, as I've always been and still am, you'll want to check out Octopusdropkick!, which is a compendium of Japanese TV, film shorts, street art, anime, gadgets, games, and so on. Like a Japanese bOINGbOING. Only better.

Drawn!

2005-03-12T20:45:00.000-08:00

Speaking of art (and John Coltrane!), I just ran across a site called Drawn! Drawn! describes itself as

a collaborative weblog for illustrators, artists, cartoonists, and anyone who likes to draw. Visit us daily for a dose of links and creative inspiration.

Currently Drawn! is featuring, among many other cool things, a film called Giant Steps. "Giant Steps [. . .] by designer Michal Levy [. . .] explores a number of different art aesthetics, all while put to the music of Jazz great, John Coltrane. It’s definitely worth a view." As indeed it is. Go there

Jack Kirby, American Genius

2005-03-12T19:41:00.000-08:00

Born in New York City in 1917, cartoon artist Jack Kirby could more properly be called world genius. Except that he and his work represented everything that was best about the USA - its originality and creative dynamism, its openness - its verve, in a word. The work of even the greatest cartoon artists - Hal Foster and Will Eisner come to mind - was dwarfed by the caliber of Kirby's output.

Although he is celebrated among comics fans and fellow cartoonists around the world, it's fair to say that, in general, this is still very much outsider art in the art world. Which is sad, because this work is as central to the plastic arts as, say, John Ashbery is to literature. Or John Coltrane to music. And in fact the work of all three has a great deal in common - namely orginality, audacity, wit, and high lyricism.

The greatest and most ambitious of his work was the Fourth World series - a tetrology of titles that Kirby conceived, drew, and wrote for DC comics in the mid 1970s. If you're not familiar with the work of Jack Kirby and want to see what raw, high, creative inspiration looks like, I recommend you check it out.

Apple Growing New Rep: As UNCOOL

2005-03-12T02:11:00.000-08:00

Suing bloggers is bad enough - it doesn't need to be any worse. But I just read an account from February 28 in Wired News, about how Apple lawyers apparently put the kibosh on artist Francis Hwang's eBay sale of his self-customized iPod. Yep. He paid for it, he modded it (he just modded the box, actually), and he tried to sell it on eBay. You can read all about it here. His auction was shut down at eBay, so now he's hosting it on his own site.

Can anybody say LINUX?

How to Destroy the Earth

2005-03-11T22:50:00.000-08:00

Preamble

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.Read

Talk to Aliens

2005-03-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

New Scientist reports on a new service that allows you to beam a telephone call into space. The service, called Talk to Aliens, utilizes a 10.5-foot parobolic dish antenna and a 900 number. Dial up, from either your landline or mobile, and say whatever you like. Your message is transmitted in real time into the cosmos. It does cost $3.99 per minute, but we're talking long distance here.

According to New Scientist, this service has the capability to transmit your voice, in recognizable form, up to two lightyears from Earth. According to the same article, the nearest star system that might harbor life is twice that distance away -four lightyears. Still, what have you got to lose - besides $3.99?

If 900-number connections to sexy aliens isn't quite your thing, why not do a little marketing to them for free? (Have them call your 900 number.) Craigslist, having expanded to the four corners of our own dust mote, is now reaching out into the cosmos. You can read more about that here.

I may be the first photographer on Earth to market to aliens. The ad I placed a few days ago is here. In case that link is broken, the text of my ad ("Photographer Available to Work Off-World") follows.

If you are a non-terrestrial creature who would like to have your environment or project documented by a first rate Earth photographer, feel free to contact me.

Here is a link to some of my work:

http://americanphotojournalist.com/member.php?user=dougthacker#

Please be patient in waiting for the link to open - there are likely to be latency issues. My contact info can be found on linked page. You can call, email, or drop in -- just land in my backyard.

If by chance you are an Earth creature reading this, and would like to have your environment or project documented, you can contact me, too. I am species inclusive.

this is in or around Milky Way and Beyond
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
ok to transmit this posting into outer space

Is Apple working on a new handheld? Why, yes they are.

2005-03-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

They would have to be. Engadget (I seem to be riffing on - or is that ripping off? - their stories a lot lately) has another interesting entry again today, this time asking, "Is Apple working on a new handheld?", and going on to say "[PowerPage] reports Apple is working on some sort of new mini laptop/pocketop that will fold neatly 'into your pocket' and run on a stripped down version of OS X and use Apple’s Inkwell handwriting recognition technology. They’re describing it as being something like a large Motorola RAZR V3, just with a keyboard."

My comment on this: it's a phone. Or, rather, a 'converged handheld', and they will come out with it. It may be along the lines of the Sony Ericsson P series - i.e., more telephony oriented; or, it may resemble more the OQO, with telephony as an adjunct; but Apple will definitely bring something like this to market. Whether it happens next quarter or 18 months from now, it will happen. Without OSX in a handheld (or at least the Apple name on one), the company has no long term future.

Why do I say this? For two reasons. First, because it's obvious (as I pointed out in an earlier entry) that's the direction personal computing is headed in - converging with wireless telephony, electronic entertainment, photography, etc., and shrinking down to fit in your pocket. And its happening so quickly, manufacturers can already barely keep up. This is the trend that will drive the computing business over the next ten or fifteen years, at least. You'll see Microsoft and Linux on the platform - of course, you already do - and you'll see OSX there as well. Steve Jobs is a prescient man - which is the other reason I say this.

See also Apple Developing New Palmtop Mac [PowerPage].

Tales of Future Past

2005-03-08T01:09:00.000-08:00

Dr. Heywood Floyd phones home.

The Future: it was going to be large. Now that we're half a decade into the twenty-first century, it's interesting to look out at the world and ask, just where is this future? Fifty years ago or more, people seemed to have the impression that we were on the cusp of revolutionary transformation. Fifty years later, it still seems that way. Aside from personal computers, the Web (which may seem like it's always been with us, but of course has only been around for about ten years), digital photography, the smartphone, and the undermining of the republic, things still look pretty much the same.

In light of this, it's fun to look back on the predictions of the last century, to see how they - the people of the past - saw us - the people of today. It seems that for the most part they thought we would be just like them - only happier. Well, perhaps we are like them . . . but still looking for the happier part.

In the future, you may do your shopping from home.

21st century housecleaning chores will be a breeze.

From Tales of Future Past, via Picturephoning. See also FutureWire.

Sony Ericsson P915/P1000

2005-03-07T02:25:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: You can find additional P915/P1000 concepts discussion elsewhere on this weblog, here.

I really should read Engadget more regularly. On February 27 - I just discovered this - they had a little entry about the possibility of Sony Ericsson announcing the successor to their P910. The SE announcement, said Engadget, could come as early as March 1. Well, that date has passed and still no word. Still, something is in the offing for this year.

Engadget got its info from the forum of Russia-based site Mobile Review, which apparently has the inside track on these developments (or claims to). One of its forum participants even made a (purely fictional) mockup of the upcoming device.

I doubt the P-whatever will look anything like this. At least, I certainly hope it doesn't. Way too much like the Benq P50 brick.

I think the big challenge for Sony Ericsson, with the P series, is the QWERTY keypad. This keypad seems to be pretty much an afterthought on the P910, and not a very good one at that. For such a keypad to be really workable in this form factor, SE engineers will to have to design something really innovative, and with the ergonomics thoroughly tested. The keypad on the Treo 600/650 would be a good place to start - the convex buttons on these phones feel solid and are actually operable by feel. The downside, for me, is that the keypad here is fixed and takes up too much real estate better devoted to a larger screen.

Whatever form it takes, though, the new P series device has to offer, in my view, and at a minimum, a speedy, top-of-the-line processor, such as the 220 MHz ARM 5 found in Nokia's 6630; at least 64 MB RAM-flash memory (but preferably 128); a one megapixel or better camera, preferably with flash; Bluetooth; UIQ3 - use of two hands has to be an option, not a requirement; and, most importantly, 3G capability. The later in the year this comes out, the more important this capability is. By this time next year, no higher end phone will be less than 3G capable.

Perhaps SE will do the smart thing and leverage Sony's imaging technologies in upcoming camera phones, including the latest in the P series. This might mean giving the new P device a DSP chip dedicated to imaging (a la Sendo X). It will definitely mean utilizing the imaging algorithms, and perhaps one of the CCDs, used in Sony's digital point-and-shoot cameras. In any case, I suspect that since it will be coming out toward year's end, SE will leapfrog ahead in megapixels, to something like two or three. Otherwise, the thing will be outdated before it hits the streets.

Parenthetically, I've seen a lot of comparison in various SE forums, between the P series and Nokia's 9500 Communicator. When I was in the Cingular shop recently, picking up my piece of crap, tide-me-over, walled garden flip phone, a woman game in, visiting from New York, with her new 9500 (which she bought, she said, on the "gray market" - for $1000. Nothing gray about that figure). Man, that thing was HUGE - much bigger than I'd expected. The 9500 is, I'm sure, a happy sight for those who long for the old Psion devices; but if Nokia thinks North American business people are going to buy them in any numbers, they've obviously been smoking too much Norwegian wood (I guess that would be Finnish wood), or spending too much time in the cold. People who are nostalgic for Psion devices have, I think, too much influence at Symbian - and apparently at Nokia, as well.

But, anyway, I hope by the end of this year Sony Ericsson will have introduced a P series phone that is truly exciting, one that I can buy, use, and keep for a good long time. I'm looking forward to it.

2005-03-04T17:08:00.000-08:00

Via Engadget.

Yahoo!?

2005-03-04T13:07:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to add something to my earlier comments about Yahoo. This is prompted by a Geocities site I just visited, (Geocities, as you're probably aware, is a Yahoo property), and it will fall under the heading of rant. Just so you know.

It's interesting to contrast the styles of Yahoo! and Google. The Google identity, much like that of Apple, is based on minimalism: understatement, subtlety, and the appearance of cool. The Yahoo! model, on the other hand (and as is indicated by the exclamation point), is characterised by the opposite of that: a jangling, whirring, pop-up advertising presence that hits you over the head at every opportunity. The underlying ethos seems to be one of "we'll build in so many useful features, people won't mind putting up with this." So the approach to the user, in terms of advertising, is adversarial.

This adversarial approach is an old school way of thinking about the user. From Yahoo's standpoint, their customer is clearly not the user but the advertiser. This is no less true for Google, no doubt, but Google's different approach leaves the impression that their intended customer is the user, and the advertiser is just along for the ride. This gives Google a lot of cache (most of it unwarranted but all the more valuable for that) and the appearance of integrity (equally unwarranted but ditto its value to them). From a user standpoint, Google's approach to advertising makes their products - search and so on - a great deal more pleasant.

Nowhere in Yahoo is this hit-em-over-the-head advertising more egregious than in Geocities. For me it really renders the sites unusable. In general when I see that a site is located at Geocities, I don't even bother visiting, because I know what I'll have to put up with if I do.

All of this is a shame, because there is a lot of value locked up in Yahoo's technology and R&D - more so than in Google. Yahoo's approach has met with financial success - which gives them no incentive to change - and brand identity often reflects something systemic - such as corporate culture - making change difficult. But for the long term health of Yahoo - and that of its users - they really should give serious thought to toning it down. Or, better still, re-think it altogether.

I know, I know. Not going to happen.

Catching Up

2005-03-03T22:40:00.000-08:00

Seems I have some to do - catching up, that is. I think when you decide to start a blog, it's sort of like starting a family: it entails a certain responsibility to others. Specifically, in this case, to readers. If posting daily is the surest way to build readership (next to, presumably, posting well), letting too much time pass without posting probably has the opposite effect.

It's true that this is my online journal, and journals are by nature irregular. But it's also true that the operative word in the world of weblogs is online; and thus there's a requirement to produce. (Journal? Who am I kidding? I feel like I'm producing a small, one-man magazine here. And I wish I had time to work on it all day, every day.)

A number of items in the news have come to my attention since Monday, when I last posted. First is the ten year anniversary of Yahoo.

I wasn't particularly fond of Yahoo eight or nine years ago, when I first went on line. The company seemed, back then, too conservative and commercially oriented. And when they bought Rocket Mail, and my Rocket Mail account became, against my wishes, a Yahoo! account - complete with exclamation point - I wasn't particularly pleased. But I kept it anyway, and used it . . . and now my Yahoo account, which I still have, is chock full of features that I use daily, including 2 GB of email storage for $20 a year - a real bargain there - supreme spam filtering, and a customized personal portal - the "My Yahoo" pages - that offers RSS feeds, virtually unlimited storage for pictures and other things, and additional useful services too numerous to mention. Despite my early reservations, Yahoo has turned out to be the most consistent, high performance, user-oriented portal on the internet. And their search engine - most notably image search - works really well, too. Lately they seem to have taken the lead in innovation, what with being the first (and, so far, only) engine to offer true video search; as well as making most Yahoo features easily usable on mobile devices, such as smartphones. (Now if only they'd improve their groups feature.)

Jonathan J. Harris has a neat little thing on his site, Number 27, that celebrates the Yahoo anniversary by recapitulating, in pictures, the history of the past ten years on the Web, and especially of Yahoo. Here it is.

My favorite gadgets weblog is probably Engadget. But Gizmodo comes up with some pithy stuff, too. In a recent "smartphone roundup", Gizmodo makes this comment: "We’ve got high hopes for Windows Mobile around here, with Palm straying far from the path, and Symbian resolute to downplay the ‘smart’ part of its smartphones." Sad to say, it's true, or seems to be. This may have its roots in the thinking of the father of Symbian, Colly Myers, as I detailed in an earlier post. Let's hope the upcoming UIQ3 devices, which promise so much and are due out toward maybe the end of this year, can put the genius back where it belongs - in Symbian Smartphone. No Windows for me.

Here in San Francisco, I think I now have the inside track on getting a Sony PSP on the day of its release, March 24. I won't say any more about it right now, but if/when I get my hands on one - assuming it's on or near that date - you can bet you'll be reading about it here in exquisite detail, and with plenty of pictures, too.

Banned Comic

2005-02-28T21:54:00.000-08:00

I was really surprized when I saw this comic in today's San Francisco Examiner. Surprized by a couple of things. First, that I was laughing out loud. I haven't laughed out loud over a comic in years. Second, that the cartoonist would have the guts to say this. Good for him.

I was surprized a third time, just a few minutes ago, when I checked out Russell Beattie's blog, only to see the cartoon featured there. Russ featured the cartoon because, apparently (and this didn't surprize me), the cartoon has been banned by three newspapers.

The PSP Launch Countdown Timer

2005-02-28T21:25:00.000-08:00

Just discovered this cool application for your desktop. The PSP launch countdown timer. Gear Live. Via Mike's List.

Leica at Deep Discount

2005-02-23T13:19:00.000-08:00

When I say "Leica at Deep Discount", just to get this out up front, I'm not talking about a camera - I'm talking about the whole bloomin' company.

I'm posting this wirelessly during a lull in my temp job. (Temp jobs are what happens when you, the freelance photographer, up and move to the big city, as I did recently.) So I'll keep it brief.

Who is going to buy Leica Camera AG? Will it be their partner in Japan, Matsushita (Panasonic)? Or another Japanese firm, perhaps? Leicas are more popular in Japan, and more appreciated, than anywhere else in the world, with the possible exception of Germany. If Matsushita doesn't do it, how about Sony? The Leica name would look better on Sony lenses - some Sony lenses, anyway - than even Sony's own name does. Hell, at the price it could be gotten for right now, even Kobayashi-san of Cosina fame could buy Leica. And probably he should.

Other Japanese photo firms, such as Nikon, or even Konica-Minolta, come to mind, as well. They might find a new Leica division to be a real boon to their own dwindling prestige.

Or will mobile device manufacturers finally wake up and smell the photo chemistry? Nokia, as I've been suggesting? Or Sony Ericsson. Samsung already owns Schneider-Kreuznach. It's only a matter of time before they put that name on the lenses of their 2, 3, 4, and five megapixel camera phones. The Leica brand is worth far more today than the company that makes the cameras.

There's a real disconnect between the camera world and that of advanced mobile device users. But not for long. Face it, if you have a camera phone and use it for taking pictures regularly, you're a photographer. Eventually you realize this. Or else you stop shooting with it.

I mention all this for two reasons. Number one, today is the start of PMA2005 - the international photo gear show put on annually by the Photo Marketing Association. And, number two, because Leica recently announced that its credit lines had been halved by its banks. The company is in hot soup, financially; and yet it still has the preeminent name in the photo world, along with a loyal, well off customer base. All it really needs is some new direction - new leadership - and an infusion of cash. At the very least, the name could be bought cheap.

I'm convinced that some company, somewhere, is going to grab up Leica and grab it soon. I hope it happens, because I would hate seeing this brand, and all it's stood for, fade away. That would amount to needless waste, of all kinds.

The Walled Garden Mobile Device

2005-02-21T21:55:00.000-08:00

Marching arm-in-arm, into the happy future.

I imagine that sometime early last year, senior Sony Ericsson executives made the long journey to Cingular Wireless headquarters for a meeting. This meeting took place, I'm thinking, inside a special compound. The compound was astroturfed and outfitted with many artificial plants. Gas vapor lights overhead were of a special kind, with a color temperature that resembles daylight. Here and there could be found cheap but shiny patio furniture - and even a barbecue grill or two. The walls and ceiling encasing the space were made of cinder block that still smelled of new construction.

"Thank you for joining us today," began the Cingular execs. "We asked you here to share with you our ideas for the future. As one of our primary partners, we hope that you, Sony Ericsson, will help us arrive at this future."

After some additional preliminaries, the Cingular execs turned to details.

"Our plan is this," they said. "We'd like to use this space - the one we're meeting in today - for containing our customers. They will have their wallets with them . . . and we can provide whatever they might need. They get this delightful environment you see, and we, well, we get a captive audience. It's win-win. And the margins we forecast - killer.

"True, we might run out of space - but that would be a good problem to have, no? We can build out. Now, here's where you come in.

"We'd like for you to make the device that will entice them to come in here, and stay after arriving. We can fill in details later if you agree. What do you think?"

"Well," the SE execs might have replied, "Have you considered that your customers might not be happy here - after having grown up in the larger world?"

"Yes, we did think of that. But only for a moment. Never overestimate your customers. First rule of business in North America."

I'm guessing this meeting took place, because Sony Ericsson has delivered the goods. To wit, the Z500a, a flip phone I picked up from Cingular Wireless, my new provider, this past Friday.

Sony Ericsson must be the Toyota of mobile device manufacturers. When you open and close the Z500a, it has the solid feel and satisfying thunk of the door on a well made car. The phone's RF is top notch, and the microphone and speaker likewise. The inside screen boasts a purported 65,000 colors (although it doesn't appear appreciably better than the (larger) screen on my dearly departed 3650) and wide use is made on the phone of Java, for everything from themes, to a couple of on board games in trial version. A VGA camera resides in the outside flip, right above a smaller outside screen. And, best of all, the phone is EDGE capable.

Imagine my surprize, then, when I got the phone home and found that it makes no provision for memory cards. The only storage is 6 MB of on board RAM. Nor does it come with any method of exchanging data with your computer - no infrared, no Bluetooth, not even a data cable in the box.
So how are you supposed to get, say, your pictures off of it? That's what I was asking. And what about a web browser? This phone comes equipped with an advanced WAP browser - but there's no way of getting out to the larger web. I mean, why put EDGE on a phone with no storage and no web browser? And why give it a camera?

Then it hit me. You're supposed to transport data through Cingular, and download games and apps from their WAP site. That's the ONLY reason for EDGE capability on this phone. And for this you can pay by the kilobyte, or, if you prefer, by the flat rate of $25 a month. Yes, my friends, this is the perfect walled garden device.

Of course, Sony gets a piece of the action, too: you can buy a proprietary data cable - costing about half as much as the phone - and move your data, some of it, anyway, via that means. And while you're at it you'll probably want to pick up a headset, too, as none is provided in the box.

I feel like a complete idiot. Well, of course, I did say, didn't I, that all I wanted was an inexpensive, well made phone with a decent mic and speaker, and good RF. This, to tide me over until I can buy a worthwhile converged device. And the Z500a does meet those minimal requirements. So I guess maybe I'll keep it. Outside of Cingular's walled garden. Kee-rist.

Technorati tags:
Z500
Sony Ericsson Z500
Cingular Wireless
Walled Garden

When Bad Things Happen to Good Phones

2005-02-20T23:20:00.000-08:00

Night before last my beloved Nokia 3650 was nicked - cast off into the world naked and alone but for its handsome purple faceplate. Well, it was time for a new phone, anyway, but I'd been holding off in hope of finding a device whose capabilities were sufficiently beyond the 3650 to justify what would no doubt be a hefty price.

I've been sorely tempted by the Sony Ericsson P910a. There's a little mobile import shop down the street from my house that offers the phone for 500 bones with service. If I had 500 to spare I might have bought it by now. But frankly I'm not sure the P910, strong as it is, offers five hundred dollars worth of additional capability over the seminal 3650. And make no mistake, the 3650 is, to Nokia's credit, a seminal device. If the P910 had greater resolution in the camera, or capacity for greater bitrate - 3G or even EDGE - then, it would be worth it to me. But it doesn't.

And there is the issue of UIQ as it currently stands. It seems obvious that a smartphone is neither smart nor a phone if it requires use of both hands for many of its major functions. Even in a smartphone that has a stylus, use of two hands should be mostly optional. Word has it, in fact, that the upcoming version of UIQ will address this very thing.

My thinking was that we could surely expect such refinements and enhancements in the next iteration of the P series, probably this year. So I was holding out for that, or something like it. Until, as I say, night before last.

The theft of my phone left me flat-footed. Low on cash, I needed a replacement and needed it fast. The T-Mobile device lineup in the US is pretty lackluster. The best on offer - Nokia 6600, Palm Treo 600, and a few Blackberries - is ridiculously expensive for what these devices can lay claim to. What I really needed to buy was time - time to look around, save up funds, and wait for something worthwhile to appear. Meanwhile, however, I had to have a phone.

In a big hurry this past Friday, I went for cheap and basic and picked up a Nokia 6010. Big mistake. The 6010 must be one of those phones where the manufacturer's sole criterion is "cost of goods". The RF is poor, and the sound quality likewise, sounding distinctly digitized. (I had to turn the volume to maximum in order to understand what was being said.) The microphone, meanwhile, picks up a great deal of background noise, so much so that my callers commented on it. Because of the poor quality mic, I couldn't even use T-Mobile's (otherwise dreadful) new voice response automated attendant while on the bus - the background noise discombobulated it. And, given the 6010's limited functionality, it's quite large and bulky. The phone does offer the usual menu of functions found in Nokia devices - address book, organizer, and so on; but in a form factor like this one, these are functions in name only, and an exercise in frustration.

Note to Nokia: there is a wide swath of people in North America who want or need, for whatever reason, a basic phone. A basic phone should offer the following.

decent RF
high quality mic and speaker
a place to store phone numbers
thoughtful ergonomics

And that's all it should offer. If you can't get that right - and this is the thinking of users - could you be expected to get anything right beyond that? I mean, if the 6010 were my first experience of Nokia, I'd probably never buy another of their products. Simple.

Looking on T-Mobile's website, I noticed the Sharp TM150. Offering a megapixel camera, stereo MP3 player, and use of MMC/SD cards of up to 512 MB, this flip phone appealed to me. The camera was a clear improvement over my 3650, I'd be able to use my existing MMC cards, and the price - $49.99 - made it a real bargain. Turns out, however, T-Mobile's advertised policy of honoring new customer prices for existing customers with expired contracts, is not quite real. My price for this phone, T-Mobile told me, was $100. What happened to $49.99? I wanted to know. Well, actually, they said, we have two sets of discounted prices - one for new customers, and one for those already on the hook.

After further discussion, I got this price down to $80 - which seemed fair. All I'd have to do, to get this phone at this price, was return the 6010 to the store, beg for a loaner, then wait for the TM150 to arrive via courier. Great. As good as done.

Then I started thinking how T-Mobile's service has never worked inside my house. (I moved here late last year.) There I am, Mr. Mobile Phone Enthusiast, having to step into the yard, rain or shine, to make a call. It's only due to T-Mobile's generally good customer service that I've put up with this. But enough is enough - and off to Cingular I went.

Of the phones for under $80 offered by Cingular, the Sony Ericsson Z500a stood out. A stylish, EDGE-capable flip model, this phone looks, at first blush, like just what the doctor ordered. In this case, however, the doc works for Cingular - as I'll explain in my next post.

Technorati tags:
Nokia 3650
Nokia 6010
Sony Ericsson P910
Sharp TM150

Technorati Definitely Broken

2005-02-18T10:13:00.000-08:00

If you click through my Technorati tags, you'll see that some of them are working, but most are not. This prompted me to do a search in Google, using the string "tecnorati broken", with the following results. Clearly I'm not the only one who's noticed problems with Technorati.

I've emailed the company about this, but so far haven't heard back. Until I do, there's no point in creating tags for my posts; they probably wouldn't work, anyway.

"No-Follow" Already Having Effect

2005-02-18T10:08:00.000-08:00

Just stumbled across this discussion among some apparently clueless bloggers. Looks like Google's nofollow tag is already starting to have its intended effect.

Migrating to WordPress

2005-02-17T09:27:00.000-08:00

I'm having lately way too many frustrations with Blogger: it's slow, it's limited, the default templates are boring, and I don't have enough control over comments and other things. Maybe I'm just outgrowing it. I've also noticed that, lately, my Technorati tags don't work, or only half work, and I have a hunch Blogger might have something to do with this. Lastly, I'm not all that keen on Google and its associated projects anymore, after years of being a user and somewhat reserved fan.

End result: over the next weeks I'll be migrating Mobile Eyes to WordPress. It's a bit more work, but offers the prospect of having a great deal more control. Given the WordPress Wiki, WordPress Tutorial, and other WordPress tools available on the web, the move should be quite doable. When it happens, I'll announce it here.

Photography and the Mobile

2005-02-15T01:45:00.000-08:00

Time to talk more about the eyes part of this blog. Up to now it seems like I've talked about everything but. But, I'm a photographer . . . and adding Flickr to this page has inspired me to start talking like one.

First off, a few changes. I've replaced Flicker's Daily Zeitgeist applet with a single random photo from my Flickr pages, added some photo-related links to the sidebar, and added the word "photography" to this blog's description, above. And now to the meat of the matter.

One of the things I most appreciate about digital imaging, is that it's gotten so many people interested in doing photography themselves. Especially camera phones.

In terms of my own photography, I can tell you this. At one time I had probably five or six cameras of various kinds, mostly SLRs. This is pretty much par for the course for serious photographers. But the best thing I ever did, in terms of developing my shooting skills and interest, was to buy and use a Nokia 3650.

The images I made with my 3650 are some of the best I've made period. At one third of a megapixel!

I think that's because the camera phone is more fun to use, and more spontaneous, than a conventional camera. And, because people (my preferred subject matter) are less intimidated by it.

Ultimately, the camera phone - or the converged handheld device - really changes photography in a fundamental way. Especially street photography and photojournalism. The last time photography went through such a fundamental change, was when the ur-Leica was introduced.

ur-Leica, circa 1913

Invented by Oskar Barnack and the Leitz company in 1913, the Leica revolutionized photography when it finally went into production circa 1925. (Production was delayed due to World War I and its aftermath.) For the first time, photographers, using the Leica, could proceed discreetly, taking their shots on the fly. Before this, photography generally involved large cameras, usually tripods, and was a formal, fairly expensive endeavor.

Nowadays, almost a century later, digital is even cheaper than film, and a camera phone even more discreet than a pocket camera. And, of course, you always have it with you. These facts, combined with the web, really do change everything. Now we are all photographers.

The above pics were resized and tweaked in photoshop. Here's a parting shot, straight from the phone.

Two birds with one phone :)

If you're interested in the history of Leica cameras, the history pages of Leica Camera AG are a good place to start. And if you'd like to see the rest of my 3650-made pics, you'll find them here.

Technorati tags:
Leica
Leica History
Photography
Photography History
Camera Phone
Mobile Phone Photos

More Mobile News

2005-02-14T13:33:00.000-08:00

The Nokia 6680 isn't the half of it. Engadget has several pages of news from the 3GSM World Congress, including news of a Walkman line of music-playing mobile handsets from Sony Ericsson; Nokia's licensing deal with Microsoft (primarily ActiveSync) - a move that was inevitable, and long overdue; a three megapixel cameraphone from Motorola - I guess this means we can stop envying the Japanese and Koreans; Linux-based phones for the Western market; and a whole lot more .

2005 is definitely turning out to be, as hoped, the year of the mobile in North America.

Meet the Nokia 6680 Video Phone. The Future Has Arrived.

2005-02-14T12:44:00.000-08:00

A good number of people have been awaiting this announcement from Nokia for quite awhile now, and finally they've made it. The Nokia 6680 is official.

Mobile Tech says, "Lets hope this phone is the perfect phone the Nokia 6630 promised to be" - but a quick glance at its specs reveals that, like the 6630, it will have only ten MB of RAM. And wasn't disappointment with the 6630 based largely on that same figure for RAM?

With a multitude of new phones still to come from Nokia this year, it's likely we'll see one that really blows everybody's socks off. The 6680, while a terrific looking device, is probably not quite it.

Still, a real device that allows two-way wireless video calls is right up my alley, and reason enough to be excited. Reminds me of something my son said to me a few years ago. "Dad, do you realize that we're living in the future?" Via Mobitopia.

Technorati tags:
6680
Nokia
Nokia 6680
Video Phone

FLICKR Finally Added to My Weblog

2005-02-14T01:17:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I signed up for a Flickr account. Seemed like a great idea - but one I didn't pursue because I already had my regular photos online at a photo blogging site called Fotolog, as well as here and here; had started a Blogger photoblog here, had my mobile photos here, and later added a small portfolio at Americanphotojournalist.com. Five spots on the web (later six, counting the portfolio) for my photos was already too many. Adding Flickr seemed a bit excessive. Plus, I feared Flickr might be yet another version of Fotolog and Buzznet - a great place for casual photographers interested in making friends, but not well suited to serious work.

Since then, ~~Fotolog has gone offline entirely (which is just as well, since it basically sucked)~~ [not offline - just slower and buggier than ever] while Fotopic.net (hosting two of my sites) is often slow (though free), still firmly aimed at the occasional snapshooter, limited in functionality, and more crudely commercial than ever. My Blogger photolog never went anywhere, when I realized that blogger isn't natively suited to photoblogging (though some of my images still languish there in a kind of blog purgatory). And Buzznet, meanwhile, is still boring - an exercise that has more to do with the fun of tagging than the delight of good photography. All of which led me back to Flickr.

Flickr is amazing. There's some seriously interesting work on Flickr, the features are truly innovative, and the speed and functionality first rate. Tonight I finally uploaded pictures to my account there. You can see some of them in the little Java thing I've added to this weblog. The Java applet, where I have it, seems maybe a little too obtrusive; but in a few days I'll move it to the bottom of the sidebar, where it should be fine. For now I just want to give it some visibility.

I guess it's pretty obvious I like Flickr. If you haven't tried it, I suggest you check it out.

Technorati tags:
Flickr
photos
Phototography
Photoblogging
Photoblogs

Apples in the Microsoft Carcass?

2005-02-12T01:36:00.000-08:00

Trying to catch up on my blogging here after a few days away. If you read the news yesterday, you may have noticed Michael Malone's commentary at ABC News, in which he asks a tantilizing question: "Is Microsoft dying?" Says he can smell rot in the air. (Balmer and Gates are probably having the campus fumigated as we speak.)

He might have something there. Despite Microsoft's big strategy in mobile electronics, the key component of their business is of course Windows - and Windows is taking a beating from Linux, viruses, its own licensing cost; and, most of all, from the commoditization and nano-size margins of the Wintel business. Not to mention the lateness of Longhorn. And then, of course, there is IE's sudden loss of user share, for which Microsoft has only itself to blame.

If you've seen the tech news yesterday or today, then you've also probably read something else that's surprising - or will be if it happens. Steve Jobs mentions that he has been approached by three major manufacturers (reportedly Sony, HP, and, maybe, IBM - though this last is hard to see, given that Lenovo is now the IBM PC ) about licensing OSX. Now that would be a shock, wouldn't it? Mr. Own-the-Whole-Widget himself, allowing his OS to be run on PCs. But wouldn't it be a brilliant move on Apple's part? And at just the right time? If Jobs did this, Apple's OS market share would suddenly zoom ahead - from whatever it is now (3-5%?), to - who knows - maybe 35%? If I were Jobs, I'd practically give it away - pull a trick from Gates' own lair - at least until market share is in double digits. It - Mac OSX - is exactly what PC makers need - stable, virus free, and, most importantly, sexy and sought after - everything, in other words, Windows isn't, and something that would differentiate these makers' boxes from everyone else's.

It's way too soon to write off Microsoft, obviously. The company hasn't changed its hyper-aggressive, clever spots; they have vast resources; and they still own the desktop. In this latter regard, however - owning the desktop - licensing OSX could represent a sudden, profound breach in the wall, a breach that could begin changing Microsoft's fortunes overnight.

Real competition. Now that would be exciting.

Technorati tags:
OS X
Windows
Apple
Microsoft
Mac
Macintosh
OS X on X86

Stalking the Wild Handtop

2005-02-11T23:07:00.000-08:00

We're still a few years away, at best, from my ideal device - which would be something about the size and shape of the Sony Ericsson P910, but with the power and capability of a good notebook - with functionality as a camera, mobile phone, mobile media center, and GPS unit, thrown in. While I'm awaiting this magical converged device, I need a smallish computer to tide me over.

I keep hoping to hear news of the FlipStart (pictured above) from Vulcan Ventures, but things might not be looking good there - a quick check of the company's site indicates that there hasn't been any press coverage since the middle of last year. And no press releases, either. Probably, they've gone back to the drawing board to update their specs, which by now are out of date.

I've considered the OQO and Sony's Vaio U computers (U70/U750P). But after looking at the specs of each, compared, not to mention their price (two grand each), the phrase that comes to mind is "not ready for prime time". And I'm a little put off by Windows XP, too, which, of course, is what all these devices (will) ship with. I'd pay someone not to use XP.

All things considered - specs, price, operating system - the device that holds the greatest interest for me is still the Sony PSP. Granted, it isn't a full blown computer by any stretch - doesn't have (or need) an operating system; but the price is reported to be right (circa $300), the functionality is exciting, and it'll be here next month.

Who knows, though, maybe by this time next year I'll be posting here, wirelessly, from my new FlipStart - or something better - and you'll be reading it on one.

I guess this post was just a roundabout way of saying there isn't really that much to say yet, when it comes to real, usable handtops. Which makes it kind of tough for sites like ultranote.com and handtops.com - not that this stops me from reading them.

Technorati tags:
OQO
FlipStart
Vaio U
U70
U750P
PSP
Handtops

Cracked Apps and Broken Groups

2005-02-09T18:59:00.000-08:00

For years I've seen Yahoo's groups feature as something with immense possibilities. For Yahoo, there is the promise of building and driving a huge, loyal user base. And for users, of course, the groups' interface is potentially a powerful thing. Offering a mailing list, photo and file storage, a chat interface, calendar, links area, and more, Yahoo groups tools seem tailor made for finding and working with like-minded people worldwide. (Though it's true the tools are in great need of updating, but I'll get to that below.)

That's why I could never understand why Yahoo doesn't take it more seriously. The groups feature seems to have been put in place and mostly forgotten about. And until recently I didn't get why users don't seem to really use the features offered. In most of the groups I've seen - and I've seen several hundred - the discussion area is run over with spam and long since abandoned, and the links page likewise.

It seems as though serious groupings - such as, for instance, the official Symbian and N-Gage folks, as well as those groups devoted to people such as avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, all of which were Yahoo groups at one time; it seems as though such groupings try Yahoo groups and then move on - in the above examples, respectively, to their own webzine, to Google groups, and to an independent server.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I couldn't understand why all this potential - these neat group tools - should go so mysteriously underutilized, so I decided to start my own groups. And I did, back in June. Both groups were dedicated to Nokia devices, one to my beloved 3650, the other to the (then) just announced 6630. Glad I thought to make screen shots of them.

My 3650 group in its younger days

I went to no end of time and effort creating and maintaining these groups - creating files of various kinds, tweaking this and that, facilitating discussion, recruiting new participants, and so on. The effort was ongoing and, as of yesterday, had met with considerable success. Developers, engineers, mobile execs, journalists - and enthusiastic mobile users - from Europe, Asia, North America, and elsewhere, were part of each group. What I liked most about this was that we were all there with a common purpose, and equal in that. That was yesterday.

6630 group, 1500 strong and adding 250 users each week

Today I got a curt email - strictly boilerplate - from Yahoo. According, it said, to a complaint received, I'd violated Yahoo's terms of service. No indication as to which term of service, though. The email warned that if another complaint was received, they'd terminate my account. Of course, I immediately went to check my groups - only to find that the more popular of the two - the group dedicated to the 6630, with about 1500 participants - had been deleted. My response to this was to delete the other group, as well, followed by my own Yahoo account.

I'm frankly ambivalent about so-called cracked applications. And that - cracked applications - very likely figures into this. There was a cracked app or two in the 6630 group, and I suspect one of the more recent joiners - probably a developer - complained about it. Of course, it could have been someone else. It could have been one of the innumerable spammers I chased off, or someone from a self-styled rival group. It might have been that fellow who kept sending announcements about his new forum. I told him we were glad to hear of it and wished him luck - but that any more than one announcement in a week's time was SPAM - then deleted the last two he'd sent. Hell, group messages were available to the public, even via RSS, so it could have been anyone at all.

But the point is, Yahoo's strictness about their "Terms of Service" is a JOKE, and not a very good one at that. If you do a search of their mobile-related groups - using such strings as "symbian", "nokia", "sony ericsson", as well as the model numbers of various devices, you turn up well over a thousand groups - at least. Each of these groups, almost without exception, is nothing more than a repository for cracked applications. And spam. Try it. There really isn't any group quality to these groups at all. But you can find, gratis, any application or game you ever thought about maybe wanting, and a great deal more besides.

Nor am I telling tales out of school here. Everybody in the mobile world, from the executive to the developer to the most casual user, knows about this - if they've bothered to do any looking at all. And it isn't just Yahoo groups. There's a plethora of forums and sites offering up the same material, in the same way. All it takes to find them is a simple search engine query. And never mind IRC, which is a haven for such things, so I'm told.

Clearly, this is an implicit part of the business model for companies like Nokia. And you can see why - it drives enthusiasm for, and sales of, their products. I'm not so sure that, in the aggregate, it's bad for developers, either, as it does the same for them. That's why I'm ambivalent about it. In my own case, the use of a few cracked applications has led to my purchase of software. I never mind paying for software, if it seems worthwhile. But back to Yahoo groups.

I think people don't use all the tools in the groups because of the jangling, jarring advertising encountered there. This is especially true today, when they have the Google model to compare it too. Sad, because Google's group interface, while pleasantly devoid of overbearing advertising, is noticably deficient in features. The obnoxious advertising in Yahoo groups is the reason I've heard most people give for wanting to go elsewhere. I was willing to put up with it, but it certainly didn't facilitate spending time in the group pages, and led to a nagging sense that I was thought stupid by Yahoo. When you couple this sense with Yahoo's ham-handed way of dealing with complaints and "enforcing" its terms of service, you're left with the very real feeling that Yahoo groups isn't the place for any kind of serious work, but rather a place for adolescents and those who are developmentally arrested. Which probably accounts for why, when the going gets serious in a Yahoo group, the serious group gets going elsewhere. If it isn't deleted first, that is.

Some obvious things Yahoo could do to reinvigorate its groups: Turn the email list in the groups into a PHP-like forum, or maybe a group blog; add tagging, so that various groups could more easily link to each other; communicate with group owners - I'd have been happy to delete anything that was objectionable, had it been brought to my attention; change the advertising to something a little more subtle. If Yahoo did some of these things, they might find the overall caliber of the groups improves considerably, along with the company's relationship with its users.

As it stands, everything at Yahoo groups, after a time, shouts AMATEUR HOUR. And I've thought this for a long time now, not just since this morning. Yahoo really needs to devote some effort to FIXING it. Or else delete it altogether, because right now, it turns off more people than not. And this from one who tried to make some part of it worthwhile.

Technorati tags:
Yahoo
Yahoo Groups
3650
6630

One Digit Short of a Googol: The Brief Blogging Life of Mark Jen

2005-02-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Just saw the news that ex-Microsoft employee Mark Jen, briefly famous for ninetyninezeros, his weblog at Google, has been fired - less than a month after joining Google. Now this is interesting for several reasons.

I've been following Jen's blog off and on since it started, and I have to say I'm not surprised. Anyone who thinks that having a personal weblog gives them license to be totally frank - even partially frank - when they work for a high profile company, is in for a "Jen" awakening.

Weblogging changes nothing. A corporate career can mean, of course, a lot of money - or at the least material comforts. But it's always come at a price and still does.

The rule of corporate life yesterday remains the rule now. If you can't say something that avoids putting your employer in a less than favorable light, say nothing. This is the same iron dictate senior execs follow (which is why so few of them have blogs - and when they do have them, they generally say nothing of substance).

Jen's firing does reveal something about Google, though, if it needed revealing yet again. For all its pretentions otherwise, Google is a company like any other. At best.

The real danger in blogging is that few companies have in place any policies about it. Bloggers often make the mistake of thinking that no rules means they can say whatever they like. But unwritten rules are even more constraining than written ones.

Take a lesson from Mark Jen. He is unemployed today so you don't have to be.

Technorati tags:
Google
Mark Jen
Ninetyninezeros

The Pentagon's New Model Kit

2005-02-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

Speaking of model airplanes (see previous entry). Picture this: you're invited to participate in a super secret experiment that involves going into hibernation for twenty years. You want to see the future now, so you accept. Soon the day comes for the experiment to begin. After arriving early at the test center, you say goodbye to loved ones, change into your jammies, then lay down for the big sleep. You close your eyes, and a short time later open them again, wondering when they're going to put you under. You look around the room for the doctors who were just there, but the room is empty and dark. After a short while, a gentle disembodied voice says, "Good morning. Welcome to 2025."

After breakfast, a shower, and a bit of briefing on recent changes in society, you get dressed and go out to greet your new world. Upon seeing it, the first words that pop into mind are, "Christ, looks like a Blade Runner / Terminator mashup. Wonder if it's too late to go back?"

The scenario is fiction - as far as I know. But the future it describes is fast becoming fact.

Meet one of the Pentagon's more recent efforts, a fully automated, robotic death jet. According to an article in Technology Review, the X-45, above, is one of two prototypes (the other being the Navy's X-47) for the device that will replace the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, which the magazine says is "widely regarded as the last manned fighter jet".

The essential part of this program isn't this or that robotic jet; the essential part is development of an atmospheric internet that is sufficiently efficient for command and control over the jets - while developing, at the same time, A.I. in the jets sufficient to provide them with some autonomy. As the article in TR has it,

. . .the unmanned planes will require new ways for information to change communication pathways on the fly — literally. 'We will not always have perfect communication and, in fact, will always have some form of latency,” says Paul Waugh, a DARPA deputy director of the X-47 program. 'Thus, the system, in all its parts, demands some level of autonomy, which means we will need smart platforms, smart sensors, and smart data processing.' The plane needs to think for itself, at least during the gaps. 'We recognize that we have entered perhaps the richest, deepest part of the information revolution that deals with mobile, wireless computing,' Waugh says.

The first of these robotic fighters is set to go online in ten years time. Part of a grand strategy called Future Combat Systems, the idea is to link robotic aircraft with other robotic devices such as artillery, ships, land vehicles, soldiers, and even actual humans in the field.

'The long-range vision is that the president will wake up some day and decide he doesn’t like the cut of someone’s jib and send thither infinite numbers of myrmidons — robotic warriors — and that we could wage a war in which we wouldn’t put at risk our precious skins' is how John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a leading defense policy website, puts it.

Coming soon to a planet near you. And, yes, it probably is too late to go back.

Technorati tags:
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X47
F35
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DRM Thinking Strikes Again: Model Kit Industry R.I.P.

2005-02-05T05:16:00.000-08:00

Remember those model airplane kits you put together as a child? Thanks to the legal thinking that flows from (or as) Digital Rights Management, they are now, it seems, a thing of the past.

For over half a century, kits have been sold that enable military history buffs to assemble scale models of military ships, aircraft and vehicles. But that era is coming to an end, as the manufacturers of the original equipment, especially aircraft, are demanding high royalties (up to $40 per kit) from the kit makers. Since most of these kits sell in small quantities (10-20,000) and are priced at $15-30 (for plastic kits, wooden ones are about twice as much), tacking on the royalty just prices the kit out of the market. Popular land vehicles, which would sell a lot of kits, are missing as well. The new U.S. Army Stryker armored vehicles are not available because of royalty requirements. Even World War II aircraft kits are being hit with royalty demands.

These royalty demands grew out of the idea that corporations should maximize 'intellectual property' income. Models of a companys products are considered the intellectual property of the owner of a vehicle design. Some intellectual property lawyers have pointed out that many of these demands are on weak legal ground, but the kit manufacturers are often small companies that cannot afford years of litigation to settle this contention. In the past, the model kits were considered free advertising, and good public relations, by the defense firms. The kit manufacturers comprise a small industry, and the aircraft manufacturers will probably not even notice if they put many of the model vendors out of business. Some model companies will survive by only selling models of older (like World War I), or otherwise “no royalty” items (Nazi German aircraft) and ships. But the aircraft were always the bulk of sales, and their loss will cripple many of the kit makers. Some of the vehicle manufacturers have noted the problem, and have lowered their demands to a more reasonable level (a few percent of the wholesale price of the kits). Link. Via Overlawyered.

Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that such increasingly narrow assertion of "intellectual property rights" could threaten the web itself? Here's what I mean:
The linking policies carried by many corporate sites - wherein one must secure permission before linking to a company's site - have some intent and some meaning. The intent is to establish that such requirements are legitimate, and stronger than any claim to fair use. The meaning, if these companies are successful in their efforts, could very well be that the substance of fair use doctrine is effectively gutted. The web depends for its webness on linking - something that often involves fair use of trade names; and such linking could be construed as somehow incorporating protected material into one's own site. I know that may sound strange - and of course the case at hand (commercial model kits) has nothing to do with fair use; but, these days, "strange" seems often to be no barrier to implementation.

In any event, this is a disturbing trend, and not good news for anyone, not even corporations - who at this point clearly have too much lawyer, not enough brains.^TM

Technorati Tags:
DRM
Model Kits
Intellectual Property

N-Gage NEO

2005-02-04T20:26:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Guess I was a little slow on the uptake with this one. Engadget points out here that this is a fake. Though a hopeful one. Thanks to Peter Rojas for pointing this out to me. I'll second Engadget's recommendation to Nokia: Find the person who did this. Hire him as a consultant.

i-Symbian has an exciting piece on a possible new N-Gage. Called N-Gage Neo, it has, interestingly, the very features I've been calling for, for months - though I'm quite sure no one at Nokia read any of my posts here, or my comments in other blogs, or cared, if they did. The features of the purported new N-Gage are just common sense fixes for widely discussed deficiencies in the previous two N-Gages, and the way the thing should have looked when it first loped out of the gate.

To wit, a bigger, landscape-aspect 262k TFT screen, and these other features:

1.3MP Camera (1280x960) with built-in flash
USB 2.0 port
Extra 2 user-customizable shortcut keys
Enhanced stereo speaker
Built in NEO Media Player
Native support for streaming video and audio
Full-screen video playback

No mention of radio, or whether it will be Edge or 3G capable.

i-Symbian got this info from a Chinese site, here, and presents the N-Gage Neo as a rumor. However, we know that Nokia has repeatedly commited to maintaining the platform in the long term. And it's pretty clear that in a world of Sony PSPs, the N-Gage QD is just not on the QT. It's also obvious that such detailed images as we have here aren't likely created on someone's PC at home, just because they have a little time to kill. So I'm betting (hoping) that this is for real.

The i-Symbian site shows this other, entirely different N-Gage concept (left), one that looks much like an elongated Gameboy, but with the phone keypad obviously on the obverse side of the screen, a la Communicator. I've seen this N-Gage concept picture elsewhere, and to me it looks like an orphan idea. The pics above are of a device that shows its lineage, and look, conceptually, much more mature.

Technorati tags:
N-Gage
N-Gage Neo
Nokia
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Hide Your iPod, Here Comes Bill

2005-02-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

"About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod." This according to an anonymous Microsoft executive, says Wired, in an article called, "Hide your iPod, here comes Bill". It seems that Microsoft employees want to be cool, too. Or, at the very least, to own well designed products that work.

Management is apparently up in arms about this. I guess you can understand that, given we're talking about Microsoft. It would be so much cooler if they just acknowledged that the iPod is a desirable, best in class product. But of course they can't do that.

Technorati Tags:
iPod
Apple
Microsoft

The Bell System - Coming to a Wireless World Near You

2005-02-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

I joined AT&T shortly after the breakup of the Bell System. The interesting thing about this - one of them - was that I got to see a great deal of the culture, attributes, and people of the century old monopoly, while watching this same company turn itself into a competitor.

Most of the people inside the vast apparatus called AT&T, from linesmen in the Bell Operating Companies, to execs in New Jersey, regarded the company as something of a public trust. This thinking continued for a time even after the breakup. The idea was that the company had certain responsibilities to the public. The main responsibility, one which was never forgotten, but, believe it or not, also never quite achieved - was called universal service - the idea that every household in the U.S. should have a working telephone. Beyond this main goal were quality of service, fair pricing, and innovation. In fact, in this latter regard it could easily be argued that Bell Laboratories was responsible for much of what we know as the twentieth century (except for the war and bloodshed part). The whole history of the Bell System gives the lie to the claim that competition is always better. If properly funded and then left alone, AT&T could have - and probably would have - had us all using wireless video telephony by the 1970s, if not before.

There are lots of reasons why it didn't happen this way, and they all add up to complexity. But the main reason isn't complex at all: the company was hamstrung by its ongoing battles against being broken up. And in the end cut the process short by doing the job itself.

After the breakup, the thrust quickly turned from one of being a public trust to that of creating shareholder value. In this, AT&T was continually carving off parts of itself to unlock the share value that could supposedly be found in its so-called core business - long distance. Needless to say, this value was never uncovered, much less unlocked, and now one of its spinoffs - a Baby Bell - has bought the diminished parent.

Butchering itself was only part of AT&T's service to short-term results. In her recent book, Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom, author Lisa Endlich blames the fall of Lucent on its failure to take the culture of AT&T with it, when it was spun off. But in fact, having worked in sales for the part of AT&T that later became Lucent, I can tell you this is exactly wrong. Lucent's problems lay precisely in the fact that it did take AT&T culture - the newly inculcated culture of aggressive price cutting, inflated sales figures, and accounting slight-of-hand. AT&T execs began imbuing the company with these concepts shortly after the original breakup was announced. Lucent came by it honestly. They thought they could pull it off, perhaps, because they had an asset unique in the industry - Bell Labs. But even that brilliant institution couldn't save the company from having to worship at the same alter as Wall Street.

Some idiots - or the misinformed - will make the argument that telephony as we have it today - including wireless networks, the internet, and video calls - is the result of "competition unleashed"; but in fact, of course, these technologies and more are the product of Bell Labs, which pioneered them long before the breakup. Far less true innovation has taken place since then; competition has proved to be a brake on development and not an accelerator of it. One wonders where we might be today, if the juggernaut that was Bell Labs hadn't come under the spector of the quick and dirty bottom line.

In any event, I've had my eye on Ed Whitacre and his SBC for many years. In my view Whitacre is the best CEO AT&T never had, and something of an unsung hero. I wonder if his next step will be to buy Lucent Technologies? If he does, he will have succeeded in doing what most thought couldn't be done: putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Of course, it won't be the same Humpty Dumpty, but a smaller and maybe wiser one. I hope this time it doesn't jump off the wall.

If you're interested in the history of the Bell System, I found a great web site while writing this entry: Link. I'm sure it's only one of many.

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Bell System
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Ed Whitacre

Sony Media Downloads for PSP

2005-01-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

The Register says, via Gizmodo, that Sony will launch a media download service in March, coinciding with the introduction here of its Playstation Portable. Gizmodo opines that the PSP is the true "Sony iPod", and the company's best chance of catching up with Apple in terms of popularity and so on. I agree.

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PSP
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Not Only for Fans of Apple

2005-01-27T01:09:00.000-08:00

I was just perusing the Unofficial Apple Weblog when I came across a pointer to the video archive of Gary Grey, Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State. Professor Grey has put together what from all appearances is every Apple commercial ever aired, including an enhanced version of Scott Ridley's famous 1984 piece, which was shown only once, during the 1984 Super Bowl.

Among the other cool ads was one featuring a young Bill Gates heaping praise on the Mac.

The most interesting video of all, however, isn't a commercial. It's the only surviving footage of a boyish, beaming Steve Jobs, introducing the world to the Mac, in January, 1984. As you watch, keep in mind that this is the first time most anyone had seen a personal computer, much less one with a graphical interface - much less one that could talk. This video is really a significant find. Here it is. (It's a big file, so be patient.)

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Apple
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Macintosh Debut
Apple 1984 Commercial

The Three Screens Problem

2005-01-26T11:52:00.000-08:00

Om Malik has an interesting piece on his weblog, about the "three screens" - TV, computer, handheld - and how and whether they might merge.

"Walk into any Silicon Valley gathering and all you’ll hear is one person after another pontificating on 'the three screens that dominate our digital lives.' The three screens, of course, are television, the personal computer, and the cell phone, which these same people then posit will merge. One cannot blame the chattering classes for thinking along these lines. After all, phones can display webpages, crusty cable companies are beaming more of their stuff digitally, and affordable HDTV plasma screens display it all with great acuity. There’s only one problem: Companies are thinking about it all backward."

The rest of Om's article can be found here.

The problem as Om poses it, is that the three screens are so very different from each other in size and in purpose, that they pretty much exclude having a shared use. The solution he proposes is to develop a media content model expressly suited for mobile - something that will fit nicely on a small, low-res screen that you don't have very much time (or inclination) to look at. My response (which I posted in slightly different form on his blog) follows.

That title, "The Three Screen Problem" - sounds like an ancient Taoist riddle. :) But I disagree with the problem as you pose it. And the solution you propose - a parallel content model expressly for mobile - I also respectfully disagree with. It was just such a model - and the same presumption of static paradigms - that led to the dead end that is WAP.

To see the three screens as being discrete assumes that their form and their content offerings are also discrete and unchanging - three separate paradigms forever resigned to remaining so. But in fact the whole point is to see how the developing technology might allow the paradigms to shift and merge. And the way that might happen is this:

A larger screen on the wall at home implies considerable leisure time and potential group use. Its very nature excludes mobility.

A somewhat smaller screen on your desk at the office implies time spent there doing serious work, and also excludes mobility.

A portable screen, on your handheld and/or as an adjunct to the handheld, is obviously intended for use while on the go.

Now suppose your handheld has some sort of TiVo-like capability - a kind of RSS feed for video. In that case, you can select what you watch according to what is appropriate at a given time. Probably you're not going to start watching 2001: A Space Oddysey on your mobile while standing in line to buy movie tickets. Instead, you might call up the news or a music vid. During a longer wait, though, you might very well start watching that film.

Say you're at the beach, on a plane, or sitting on a train during a long commute. In those cases you might naturally pull out the roll-up or fold-away OLED screen (maybe it measures 5 X 7) and watch an entire movie, or a TV episode. You might even dispense with the larger screen altogether and just use the regular screen.

And the reason why you might feel comfortable doing this is that the resolution and sound quality of the device as I envision it is quite high. And as those things improve, along with the content available for them, the paradigm of film and video changes, from a primarily communal activity, to one that is primarily individual, like reading a book is now.

When that happens, you will still have your screen on the wall at home and the screen on the desk at work, because these are best suited for their environments. But the content will be shared between the three screens, depending on where you are. That's how I see all this happening.

I can even see how, at home, you might find you're not in the mood for the large wall screen, and instead choose to curl up in a corner, to watch something on your handheld.

Technorati Tags:
Om Malik
Mobile Media
Three Screens Problem

Aubrey de Grey and the Science of Living

2005-01-26T01:39:00.000-08:00

It's late and this is probably not the time to start what I know will be a lengthy rant and rave - but I want to post something here every day, or close to it - and it's already past midnight, so yesterday was missed. Anyway, this past Monday I finally got around to reading the cover story in February's Technology Review - and I've been thinking about it ever since.

Technology Review ("The oldest technology magazine in the world") is usually among the better popular science publications and one of the few magazines I often read. It's publisher - and hence the magazine - is owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The cover story this month, called, "Do You Want to Live Forever?", by one Sherwin Nuland, is about Cambridge scientist Aubrey de Grey, and his work on extending the human life span.

I was shocked by this article, and by the editor's introduction of it. Shocked and disappointed. For what has been written here clearly has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with a philistine hatchet job. And from MIT, no less.

Anyway, now that I have that off my chest, I'm going to get some shuteye and return to this tomorrow to back it up. In the meanwhile, I just found the article on de Grey online here. You read it, and decide for yourself if it isn't mean-spirited and narrow. Also, though I haven't read it yet, I found de Grey's reply here.

I've half a mind not to read it until I post my own reply, just to see how close mine is to de Grey's. He'll probably be more gracious than I.

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SENS
Aubrey de Grey
Technology Review

iPod Shuffle Sad; SanDisk Audio Player Glad

2005-01-24T22:37:00.000-08:00

iPod Shuffle issues: the main one being that we hear too much about it. But sometimes it can't be helped.

If Enjoy Uncertainty is something more than a marketing slogan to you, then you're probably not too keen on iPod Shuffle's DRM restrictions. And maybe, like me, you're not very happy about the prospect of throwing your flash player away, when the battery dies in a year's time. It's true, Life is Random, but good design shouldn't be.

SanDisk, the favorite memory card maker of every photographer I know (yours truly included) has recently released a trio of flash players that should have the iPod Shuffle shuffling on down the block.

SanDisk Digital Audio Player: 1 GB Capacity $139.99Besides the 1 GB player pictured above, there are also 512 MB and 256 MB versions available. All these devices feature the following:

Support for multiple formats: MP3, WMA, and WMA DRM
FM tuner w/ 20 station presets
Voice recording
15 hours continuous playback on one AAA battery
USB 2.0 port and cable
Indigo backlit LCD display
Graphic Equalizer, on board
Button-Joystick combination similar to that found on Nokia mobile phones (eg., 3650), for easy navigation
Earphones, carrying case, armband.
Weight: 1.4 oz w/ battery.

And, of course, you can use these as mass storage devices, too. If you (the photographer) are out in the field and find yourself running short on memory, you can dump the tunes and upload some images to the device. So here we have a device that is elegant and simple to operate, like the iPod Shuffle, yet far more fully featured and lower in price.

Remember when you were a kid and you wanted something that was really cool, you thought, but your dad made you buy something practical instead? In this case, anyway, your dad is right. And that may be the coolest thing of all.

The image is swiped, as you may have noticed, from B&H Photo (they also sell audio), along with the pricing. Their MP3 players, including the one above, can be found here. I have no connection with B&H, other than as a long term customer. I always buy my photo gear from them, and they do a great job.

DISCLAIMER (1/27/05): I found this device, and reached these (obvious) conclusions, all on my own - only to find, much to my chagrin, that Dave Ciccone, at Dave's iPaq, had done exactly the same thing . . . only, two days earlier. Grrrr . . . .

Technorati Tags:
iPod Shuffle
Flash Players
SanDisk
SanDisk Digital Audio Player

Sony PSP Link Fest

2005-01-23T21:32:00.000-08:00

PSP with Digital Camera Attachment

Had so much fun with my previous PSP post, thought I'd do a little more digging. Can't wait to get my hands on one of these things. Meanwhile, here are some PSP links.

PSP Forum

PSP Player

PSP Rumors

PSINEXT

PSPwiki (in Japanese)

GameSpy: PSP - Everything We Know

ExtremeTECH: PSP Specs slideshow captures

PortaGame: PSP Pictures

PSP News from GameWinners.com

And while this may come as old news to some (the following post was made on Jan. 8), according to Gaming Horizon, you'll soon be able to watch TV on your PSP.

Last, but certainly not least, Ryan McGrory's excellent PSP Centre at Yahoo Groups.

Technorati Tags:
PSP
Sony
Sony PSP
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Playstation Portable

Side Talkin' Sony PSP

2005-01-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

Actually, I doubt it'll be side talkin'. Russell Beattie has an entry on his weblog about the Sony PSP. This is a device that has fascinated me (along with the rest of the world) ever since I first heard about it. Anyway, the piece discusses the PSP as a mobile computing platform.

I did a little digging after reading this and found out, through a site called Joystiq, that Sony has just confirmed the PSP will be mobile phone capable - apparently through an adjunct attachment of some sort. Also, it will have a web browser built in.

Sony is still noncommital about a keyboard for the PSP. But recent rumors about a word processing beta - as well as, possibly, this mockup - indicate that one might be in the offing.

So, let's see, what do we have here? Games, both single-player and, thanks to on board Wi-Fi, multi-player; movies; music; internet; telephony. You can easily imagine other software apps being written, such as photo storage and viewing, and chat. Clearly, then, we have in the PSP a converged handheld device that will be more powerful than anything else available, at anywhere near the price (reportedly $150-200 when it hits the U.S. in March).

Play-asia.com has some great pics of the PSP and its accessories, as well as tons of PSP videos, here. And if you live in North America and just can't wait, you can buy one now, from eXpansys, at a slight premium :)- Japanese version only.

Do you think Sony will do the logical, wise, ambitious thing, and offer Sony owned media preformated onto PSP disks? I'm thinking Sony Pictures, Columbia, TriStar - and whatever else they own.

Thanks, Russ, for inspiring me to talk about my favorite device upcoming.

Final PSP Links:

Kotaku talks about expensive ($250) bags for the PSP, being offered on Sony's Playstation Japan site. (The metrosexual styling, high price - and little rainbow tag - should make these pretty popular here in San Francisco. Personally, I'd rather have a second PSP.)

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Sony
PSP
Sony PSP
Playstation Portable

Chair sells you a license to sit, deploys spikes on expiry

2005-01-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

I see Boing Boing is discussing a new beta concept. A chair that offers you an opportunity to sit. Don't want to pay? Stand up, it's a free country!

What do you think? I think it'll be huge, especially in the public space. This idea will bring entrepreneurial energy and funding to the formerly socialist sphere of civic life. This equals more and better facilities for responsible citizens. Freeloaders take note! Link.

DRM. Bringing you bright ideas for a better future.^TM

Technorati Tag:
DRM
Chair
License to Sit

2005-01-20T08:25:00.000-08:00

Haven't posted here in a couple of days - preoccupied with personal business. And in any case, I think I need a more wide ranging blog concept, if I'm going to post every day. I love tech, but finding something worthwhile to discuss each day takes too much time.

Maybe that's why I woke up with the idea of starting a new blog. I was going to call it Kanoodle - but that name is apparently already used by some would be rival to Google.

So I have to come up with another name. Something whimsical, that could pertain to a broader interest weblog.

iPod Shuffle Dissection

2005-01-18T03:55:00.000-08:00

Tired of hearing about the iPod Shuffle yet? If not - or, maybe, especially if you are - applematters.com has taken matters in hand with a piece by piece dissection of the simple little beast. It's bloody, and you can see it here. Via MobileWhack.

Nokia Eviscerates Multimedia R&D

2005-01-16T01:12:00.000-08:00

"Nokia is reining in R&D, with the axe falling hardest on its 3,000-strong multimedia division founded a year ago," reports Andrew Orlowski in The Register. "In a statement, Nokia's multimedia chief Anssi Vanjoki said that while imaging was doing well, 'games, music and media are still in a more early development phase'. The division is responsible for the N-Gage games console."

Responsible for the N-Gage? Well, I guess that explains things, doesn't it?

I mean, really, how utterly idiotic can a company be? At the very time Microsoft is forming a beachhead in handheld media - announcing its incipient flat-rate media download service for handheld devices - Nokia is cutting back on multimedia R&D.

Rrecently I read an interview, given to the Register this past July, with Colly Myers, former CEO of Symbian and the primary creator of the OS. This interview was actually quite revealing, in that it showed the kind of thinking that lay behind the Symbian smartphone. Thinking that discounts any real possibility of the converged device being anything more than a wrong-headed effort, or maybe a marketing gimmick.

On putting a web browser on the phone, Myers had this to say:

You could have a 640 by 480 screen and have the same content available even if you messed about with it but it's still not the right metaphor for a phone. You want a lot of things you can get on the Internet on your phone translated as a service, piece by piece.

And on the smartphone concept, this:

You know, I used to think you could convert a lot of things to work well on the phone, but I'm older and wiser, I think. For example, making a phone a browser and an mp3 player. Each of those things are a lesser thing and you end up with what we call a 'spork' - you end up with a spoon and a fork. It's no good as a spoon and no good as a fork, but it's got both things.

The reality is that trying to push everything into everything just doesn't make sense. We'll see an unfolding of more things like the iPod - focused at a particular consumer solution.

So much for the smartphone. From the father of Symbian.

Sometimes companies do well and dominate a market because they are full of bright, creative people and are well run (IBM, for example); sometimes, companies do well and dominate a market because they're aggressive and clever about business (Microsoft). Every once in awhile, a company comes along that grabs the lion's share of market and appears to be destined for great things - solely on account of having gotten there before anyone else. Competitors play catch up, and, having caught up, leave the pioneer in the dust. This, I think, will be the case with Symbian. And maybe with Nokia, as well, since Symbian is such a big part of who they are.

I always hate it when someone or some company snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

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Nokia
Symbian
Microsoft
Mobile Media

Goodbye Geekiness, Hello Hip

2005-01-15T23:41:00.000-08:00

"Apple has an absolute monopoly on the asset that is the most difficult for competitors to copy: cool," points out the New York Times, via Taipei Times.

Apple has US$6.4 billion in cash, a seemingly small sum next to Microsoft's $64 billion. But it is Microsoft, the poor little rich kid, who must be envious of Apple. All of the billions in its corporate treasury, all of the personal billions of the co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, all of the money in the world, cannot buy the ability to fathom the metaphysical mystery of cool.

It's a neat trick, to make money hand over fist and still be hip. To run a successful company (two, actually) and still be, for many people, the avatar of cool. To force your customers to send in their iPod units for battery replacement - and gain 70%+ market share. To sue your fan sites and be forgiven it. To market products as social station signifiers and not be called an asshole.

Still, I have to hand it to him - Steve and the Mac are cool. No irony intended.

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Apple
Steve Jobs

Searching for a New Search Engine

2005-01-15T11:46:00.000-08:00

I just discovered Icerocket. Icerocket is a new search engine ("Where every search is a direct hit!") that has some nice, innovative features. One I like in particular is that your search results include a thumbnail of each website on the list (you can turn this off if you want), and also a "quickpeek" feature. When you click on "Quickpeek" a little Java window opens on the search page, allowing you to peruse the contents of a site right in the search results list, without having to open the site. Pretty neat.

The search page has links for various kinds of searches: Web, Blogs, Phone Pics (search among pics people have put on line from their phones), News, and Find a Friend (searches among dating/matching sites). Another feature: a scrolling scan, in real time, of search terms people are using in Icerocket. Enlightening.

I've been looking at new search engines recently. (See my earlier post about the interesting engine called "Clusty".) For years I've relied on Google. But Google just keeps getting scarier. Especially since they launched their Desktop Search feature.

Think about this. With the Desktop Search, combined with Gmail, Google now has the capability to add to its database everything you've ever put on your hard drive (such as, potentially, passwords, banking info, purchases you've made on the web, credit card and bank account numbers, social security number, drivers license, etc.), your search history over an indefinite period, as well as your name, address, phone number, and the contents of your email. All that personal data seems like a high price to pay for search.

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Icerocket
Google
New Search Engines

Future Fone - Part II. Basic Questions and Killer Apps

2005-01-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

I think the most basic question we have to ask regarding this future fone is what kind of operating system it will use. Remember that we're only talking five to ten years out.

For a platform that will serve as your main general computer - with the processing power, RAM, and storage of, at the very least, today's desktops - is something like the Symbian OS a viable possibility? Symbian has great utility for small, flash based devices of relatively low power. That's the whole point of this OS. But it's obvious that, when it comes to devices with the specs and functionality of today's PC, Symbian is not the OS best suited.

As the PC transitions into this new form, it seems pretty clear that it will take with it, in some way, one or all of its three current operating systems: Windows, Linux, and, maybe, Mac. So my first prediction is that Nokia will abandon Symbian and the consortium will dissolve. Maybe not in five years but definitely in less than ten.

The thing that will drive the development of this technology is obviously applications. Among them, increased internet usage from the mobile, including the development of Virtual Private Networks, first for companies, then for the home. Also, video and TV. Maybe the device will have functionality similar to the TiVo.

And then there is GPS. Right now you can use your smartphone for GPS - in conjunction with a GPS receiver. Is there any reason why, in the very near future, that receiver couldn't be built right into the fone?

The truly killer app, though, may be this: Eventually I think we'll see carriers getting into the credit business, or partnering with credit card companies. In South Korea they're already doing something like this, and it adds a whole new profit center to the carrier's portfolios.

In other words, your fone will become your wallet, maybe even your pocket change. How difficult would it be, I wonder, to put this technology in place? You step on to a bus and run your fone across a scanner, which then issues a receipt. At grocery and clothing stores, at restaurants and theaters - pretty much at the entire retail level - this could be made to happen, and quickly. (Those who are old enough might remember when IBM's barcode scanning technology appeared, in the space of a few weeks, at most retail outlets.) Doing this will necessitate entire industries getting on the bandwagon for it. But IBM has already shown it can be done.

As for the word "fone"? This is what I propose as a generic name for these devices. Is that lame? Just as with today's smart mobile handhelds - even more so - its use as a "phone" will be only a small part of what it does (even though most of its functions will depend on telephony) - and yet, as they do now, people will persist in calling it that. Why fight it? Since it really isn't a phone anymore - but people will say it is - let's call it "fone" - to differentiate it from yesterday's phone - and be done with it. You heard it here first.

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5G
4G
Symbian
Concept Phones

Future Fone

2005-01-14T02:34:00.000-08:00

In their May 2004 issue, Popular Science published a series of short articles that speculated on the state of various technologies ten years hence. One of these articles, by Mark Frauenfelder, caught my eye because its subject was the mobile phone (See This PDA is a Real Pocket PC.) and it addressed everything I'd been thinking about at the time. (There was a terrific concept drawing on the cover, but it doesn't seem to be present on the web. The image above is from somewhere else.) The thrust of the piece was that, ten years out, your mobile will be a do-anything device, and a strong compliment to your PC.

In fact I'd go further and say that, ten years out, your mobile will be your PC. And I for one can't wait.

The other day we were talking about something related to this, on Russell Beattie's weblog. The question at hand was, what application or capability could be added to a smartphone that would transform it from your mobile device, to your use-all-the-time device? In other words, what would it take to make your phone the first device you go to in most situations, whether out and about, at home, or at work? The following is based on what I came up with in the discussion.

I think the way to arrive at a phone that isn't context dependent, is to make it a device that serves well in all contexts. You walk into your house, phone in pocket, and it automatically connects, through some sort of Bluetooth connection, with the waiting monitor, keyboard, mouse, and optical drive. Maybe it connects with your audio system, too, in case you want music. Call coming in? No problem. The volume level of the music goes down and you answer, using a Bluetooth device nestled discreetly behind your ear.

Next morning, you leave for work. In the car your calls are handled hands-free, and your audio is sourced out of the device, also via Bluetooth. If you're taking the train and have some time, you catch up on the news, browse the internet, or watch a movie short. Afterwards maybe you make some notes, using it like a PDA. If you need to get some real work done, out comes the larger fold-away OLED screen, and, input device - a keyboard, maybe.

When you arrive at work, as you step into the office your device links up with the network, and maybe also with the phone system, if there still needs to be one. You sit down at your desk which has its own monitor and so on.

Voila, context free. Simple! And the best part about this scenario, is that you never have to think about any of this stuff, it just works when you need it to.

How far away are we from the scenario I describe above? Closer than some might think.

To arrive at full functionality on the device will require, as implied above, widespread implimentation of Virtual Private Networks. It makes sense that you'd have one for work and one for home and toggle between the two in order to keep them discrete.

And while you could envision a device that has voluminous storage capacity, I'm not sure such a thing would be necessary given sufficient bandwidth. In an ultra-broadband world it might make more sense to have your data reside elsewhere and interact with it when needed. You'd need some storage on the device, for those times when your connection is down (such as in a tunnel), but not more than a few gigs.

So I think, based on this, that we could see such devices (and such bandwidth) beginning to appear in five years or so. Certainly less than ten. Then give it another five years for additional development, buildout, and adoption, and there you are.

You can do something close to this now. Really, much of it is a question of habit and motivation level. If you *want* to acquire an advanced mobile device and use it for as much as possible - and if your work doesn't *depend* on carrying a notebook - you can actually get quite a lot done with it, all day long. Things like Vulcan Ventures' upcoming FlipStart should make it even easier.

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5G
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Concept Phones

A "Just One More Thing" CEO for Symbian?

2005-01-12T15:44:00.000-08:00

In an article over at All About Symbian that addresses the upcoming desparture of the OS consortium's CEO, David Levin, Ewan Spence looks at Macworld and says, in part

Irrespective of Apple's volume of sales, or number of users, the amount of buzz generated yet again showed Apple punching with the big boys. But not the biggest. With only 14 million OSX users, they're outnumbered almost 2 to 1 by Symbian OS devices. So why can't Symbian generate the same sort of excitement? Cutting edge phones, wi-fi, music devices, every ingredient to make the gadget-hounds salivate is in the OS.

Fairly or unfairly, I'm going to put this down to the CEO. David Levin (and to a certain extent Colly Myers before him) have done a good job taking what was a division of Psion (Psion Software) and grown it to the size it is today. That's a lot of management, guidance and care. But Symbian is past the forming stage, and needs to start storming. Symbian needs passion, needs energy and needs all that to be projected outside of the walls of Symbian and into the general public, the tech heads, and every electronics company this side of Redmond.

We need some dynamic, entertaining, captivating personality that people want to follow and be inspired by. The Board and The Managers (and to a certain extent the senior staff) of Symbian know exactly what is needed code wise. It's time to choose someone who complements these skills, not duplicates them.

My Take On It

The Steve Jobs "just one more thing" act reminds me of James Brown - you know, where at the end of his show his muscians try repeatedly to pull him off stage and he keeps returning to the microphone for more. It was great showbiz when Brown did it in his day, and it's great showbiz now, when Jobs does it.

But let's face it, you're not going to pull a Jobs-like personna out of thin air to head up Symbian. It's not going to happen. Steve Jobs is something of a unique character, and his relationship to Apple, and how he got back there, is unique. The whole Jobs phenomenon is grown organically out of Apple and inseparable from it.

Gil Amelio, former CEO of Apple and the man who brought Jobs back, has never, in my view, received the credit he deserves. Knowing how terribly territorial, image conscious, and ego driven senior executives by nature are, it took real vision and guts for Amelio to do this; the equivilent of throwing yourself on a live hand grenade in order to save the company. Bringing Jobs back was the right and only thing to do - but most CEOs would take the ship down into the briny dark rather than willingly step off the plank to save it.

Vision and Courage. Or, at the Least, Marketing Skills

This is why it's going to be difficult to pull off success for Symbian. As a consortium, Symbian requires not only that its leader have vision and courage, but also that those who lead its member companies have similar courage - and similar vision. At the very least, Symbian requires a leader who can sell whatever vision he has to the heads of these member companies. And him (or her), I think, Symbian has some reasonable prospect of finding.

As Apple amply demonstrates, branding really is everything, or almost everything. Making a quality product is important, but without deep brand awareness it means nothing. A company like Apple can sail along on its brand equity for a good long time. The hoopla and excitement generated by a stripped down computer and a flash player without a screen is a perfect example of this. They'll sell millions of them.

Nokia. Powered by Symbian OS

The synergy created by, for example, "Nokia, Powered by Symbian OS", could be amazing. The real question - assuming you have a leader who can pull it off - is how to get there.

Apple leveraged its deserved popularity among creative types - designers, architects, artists, and others - to give itself the halo of rightousness it has today. Similarly, Symbian could conceivably take stock of its own strengths as an OS to generate cache among users and prospective users.

It seems to me that two of Symbian's major strengths are its efficiency at utilizing resources, and the ease of writing applications for it. These strengths would seem to point to IT managers, who respect such things. Why not select a group of high profile IT managers and give them handsets to play with? This could generate some buzz in the IT world.

Business People and Artists?

Since Symbian has virtually written the book on convergence - been a pioneer there - it could also have great appeal as a brand - greater than it has today - to non-tech users, such as business people and even artists.

I'm actually a professional photographer, and I find the ability to use a handheld device for multiple functions very useful and interesting. It means a lot to me to have a device - one always with me - that I can use as a camera.

Some Ideas and the Bottom Line

For some time now I've been thinking that it would be great to take, say, a Nokia 6630 or Sony Ericsson S700, on a year long, round the world photo shoot. Symbian and one of its licensees could give serious thought to sponsering something like this among several photographers or travelers. Maybe co-sponser it with someone like Lonely Planet, and feature the results, as they happen, on a website. Such a project could create lots of excitement at very little cost.

Another possibility is to give handsets to interested, high-profile artists - maybe produce a magazine and/or art shows, demonstrating what they've produced using the devices.

These are just a few, maybe naive, ideas. In any event, they put the details way ahead of the broad-brush need for branding and a leader with the vision to see it and make it happen. In an increasingly Microsoft world - and that's the one we live in, like it or not - this is what it's going to take. It's all or nothing. Link.

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Symbian
Steve Jobs
Smartphones

First there was Firefox, and now: Clusty

2005-01-12T01:05:00.000-08:00

As more people are finding out, Mozilla Firefox is a fine replacement for Windows Explorer. Great functionality, and no more worries - or fewer, at least - about security holes. Well, what Firefox has done for browsing, Clusty is about to do for search.

For some time now I've been concerned, off and on, about Google regarding privacy - you know, data mining, long term profiling, that 2038 cookie of theirs, and so on. Andrew Orlowski's Register article, and the links there, just brought all this back to me. I started thinking that maybe it's time to find a new search engine.

Fortunately there was a good one at hand. Daniel Brandt mentions Clusty on his site Google Watch, as a better alternative to Google. (Of course, Brandt thinks *anything* is an alternative to Google, but the key here is *better*, so I thought I'd try it.)

Gusty posts search results in clusters off to the left of the screen. If you don't like the main results you're given, you can check out one or more of these clusters.

Another feature - one I really like - is that you can create customized tabs. I've already created mine: News, Images, Encyclopedia, Blogs, and Mega Search. This last tab I called Mega Search because Clusty lets you choose your own search engines for some of the custom tabs, and since they all looked good I chose all of them.

Clusty is in beta right now. It's maybe not as fast as Google, but it's plenty fast enough. It seems to utilize good search algorithms and has some neat features. What I like best about it, though, is that I don't have the Google Big Brother eyeball staring back at me. Not through my PC screen, anyway. Clusty is already set as my homepage.

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Clusty
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The Apple iProduct

2005-01-11T22:50:00.000-08:00

Half the world is experiencing its annual fit of Apple hysteria due to Macworld. And the other half is playing along - in the effort, maybe, to win friends and draw blog traffic. I don't want to spoil anyone's fun or wreck the game - but I just don't see anything that exciting here. Look at the Mac Mini.

A slow, stripped down CPU - no screen, no keyboard, no mouse - and proprietary RAM that costs several dear body parts. I don't think so.

The flash player - what's it called? - iPod Shuffle - isn't this flash player idea a little long in the tooth already? For a company like Apple, I mean?

Life is random. So is innovation, apparently.

Anyone who owns a stereo capable smartphone can put a 512 MB card in it - or even 1 GB. And within a year more and more people will be doing that.

Lots of people - especially Mac fans - forgive Apple all sins. I think that's because the company staved off the Microsoft monster even as everyone assumed it couldn't. Apple should be dead now. That it isn't dead is attributable only to Steve Jobs. People know that and like him for it. Me, too. But Jobs and his company are also admired for the outstanding, innovative products they make from time to time. That's what we look to Apple for.

Now that they're no longer "poor", it's time to stand up and deliver. They have billions. Apple gets, essentially, a free ride from Microsoft because the latter needs, needs desperately, to maintain a semblance of competition - and a niche player like Apple is perfect for that.

It's a disappointment when a company like Apple announces nothing innovative amid lots of hoopla. This is what's called trading on brand equity. Let's hope they don't trade on it too long. Link.

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Apple
iPod Shuffle
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Mini Mac

The Serpent's Wall

2005-01-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

Here is a site that turns the so called "grand sweep of history" directly into the personal and poignant. Authored by Elena, Serpent's Wall is the story of a fortification first built to protect her hometown, Kiev, from Mongel invaders. More than that, though, it's a chronicle of the place where some of the most ferocious, titanic battles in history were fought, some sixty years ago, in World War II; of the people who fought them; and, less directly, of those who live there today.

It seems that, since the war, it's become common habit among young people to go exploring in the wall and surrounding war ruins, digging up everything from Mongel jewelry to German schnapps still sealed in the bottle. These young Kievers seem to have a keen sense of history, and of the significance of their surroundings. While a few of their finds are sold, most become part of the private museums that each of them maintains: spontaneous shrines to the foolishness and heroism of a generation, on both sides, stopped in its tracks. The skeletons they find - and they find plenty - they take care to bury or cover with dirt.

Beneath this image, in broken English, Elena writes,

"Soldiers there too, under leaves, bones, skulls, jaw-bones... teeth mostly good of young people. In Soviet army of those who were born in 1922 only 3 out of 100 came home from war, the rest 97 on those hills.

"I believe, for German army statistic must be similar as young people the same everywhere, do not know the value of life, have no fear and for their regimes it was easier to fool young." Link.

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Serpent's Wall
World War II

Bill Gates: A Portentous Sign?

2005-01-08T20:16:00.000-08:00

In a world of political equilibrium, Bill Gates' recent equation of free culture advocates and communists would be laughable - and only the laughable would take it seriously. It should be clear, though, that we no longer live in a world of political equilibrium. Rather, we are in a world that requires us, every day, to take the laughable seriously.

Weblogs and forums, most of them, have failed to do this with Gates' statement. Instead they are treating it as a case of "open mouth, insert foot", by someone who ought to be (and probably is) better informed. In this they risk missing its significance.

If the Gates comment wasn't a malapropism, what was it? I think it's fair to suggest that it was an attempt - one of many - to ineluctably link the fate of Microsoft with corporate and state interests. (You're saying they're not linked? I hear you asking. But Microsoft surely hasn't forgotten its antitrust difficulties with the U.S. Justice Department, to say nothing of its current problems in Europe. Nor, for that matter, its desire to win over wholly Hollywood and the recording industry.) If that is the case - and this is more to the point - then it was also an effort to position advocates of open source, creative commons thinkers, and the like, as onerous threats to those interests. My enemies are your enemies. This seems to be Gates' message to his major customers, past, present, future - the governments of the world, the major corporations, and, by extension, the "monied interests".

Given the rightward lurch of the West, Gates' suggestion, if he succeeds in getting it across, could eventually cast increased suspicion on the ideas of so called free culture. Possibly it could lead to Microsoft getting even more of a free hand in its dealings with competitors (and certain European governments). And even a witchhunt of free culture proponents isn't excluded.

I'm not saying, of course, that all this will flow from a single fleeting comment. What I am saying is that this public statement may reveal Microsoft's strategy for dealing with certain of its opponents, one that it pursues privately for the most part.

So, while it may have only been a stupid statement; judging on the basis of who benefits, it might have been something else indeed. Something that needs to be taken seriously.

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Bill Gates
Microsoft
DRM
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Nokia, are you listening? I mean watching?

2005-01-07T22:15:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is. Microsoft has announced that it will provide an online video download service for handhelds running Windows software, including Portable Media Center devices, Pocket PCs and Smartphones. From Geekzone via Smartphone Thoughts.

Looks like they're going to offer both free and paid content. The paid content will reportedly be a flat rate of $20.00 a year. According to Geekzone, the content is to include "children's programming, music videos, independent films and comedy shows", as well as sports and news. They're developing, also, something involving MTV channels. Nokia, are you listening? I mean watching?

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Nokia
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Yet Another Person's Concept of the Apple iPhone

2005-01-06T22:09:00.000-08:00

Also via Gizmodo: This 4.1 megapixel iPhone concept from John Pszeniczny at xnodesign.com. Somehow I doubt Steve would go for that keypad. Now, Nokia, that's another matter . . . .

We're seeing more and more of these dreamy iPhones - this one sports a 20 gig hard drive. I wonder if we'll ever see an iPhone actually manufactured? I'm guessing we will. With the increasing convergence of handheld devices - and music capable handsets already on the market, I don't think Apple has any choice. Link.

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Apple iPhone

Samsung Concept Phones

2005-01-06T21:51:00.000-08:00

Some interesting concept phones from Samsung. According to Gizmodo, this is only one of the entire line of Samsung offerings for 2005. Code named Thor, it features a 3 GB hard drive and native MP3 capability. Link.

Thor

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Samsung
Concept Phones

Your Friend and Mine, Bill Gates

2005-01-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

I read a little comment today from . . . what's his name? . . . oh, yeah, Bill Gates. The comment was made in the same interview where he called open source advocates "Communists". Bill was asked about Apple, and its success with the iPod, and what he said was . . . well, here, I'll let you read it:

Interviewer: What do you think of Apple's success so far? I mean, they clearly have had a hit with the iPod.

Gates: Absolutely. They had a hit with the Apple II, they had a hit with the Macintosh, and they have a hit with the iPod, so this is a company that's had three hits, and that's very impressive. There are a lot of companies that don't have three hits. And in the same way that Macintosh helped get people exposed to the graphical user interface, the iPod is doing a great job getting people to think about digital music.

Now here we have, apparently, a little glimmer of the real Bill Gates. He essentially says "Apple is nothing, their success is meaningless, and we're going to grab the market they're developing for us." At least, that's how I read it. It's also apparent that both the question and Apple's success get under his skin.

The whole thing made me think seriously for the first time about buying a Mac. At least Steve Jobs isn't afraid to have a Weblog.

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Bill Gates: Free Culture Adovocates = Commies

2005-01-05T23:27:00.000-08:00

The new banner image for my weblog?

According to an entry in BoingBoing, Bill Gates has decided that advocates of free information are "some new, modern day sort of communists." He goes on to say, "Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future."

Interesting sentiments, from a man whose motto seems to have always been

Only buy what you can't steal.

Link.

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Bill Gates
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An Open Source Google

2005-01-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

"With the hope of returning at least one corner of the web to its non-commercial roots, Google watcher Daniel Brandt, who curates the NameBase archive, has released the source code to a Google scraper. Brandt has been making an ad-free proxy available for two years using Google's little known minimal 'ie' interface. By using this proxy, users bypass both Google's notorious '2038' cookie (that's when it expires) and the text ads."

I knew that Google is blocking the web pages of Chinese dissidents in China. What I didn't know is that they are also blocking the Abu Ghraib torture pictures. Search Google for "Abu Ghraib" and you see this. Yahoo, hides nothing. These pictures are part of a major story. They're searchable by the other major search engines and referenced in all the world's media - it's not like they're some big secret; far from it. So what gives, I wonder? Link.

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Concept Mobile Phones Competition at Slashphone

2005-01-03T22:57:00.000-08:00

Now this is really cool. This is the kind of thing we need to keep things fresh in the world of wireless. And I have to hand it to Sony Ericsson for sponsering such a thing. They are fast becoming my favorite mobile phone manufacturer. More later. Link.

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Mobile Phone Concepts
Sony Ericsson

Start-Up Beams TV to Your Hand

2005-01-03T22:12:00.000-08:00

Mobile Media

2005-01-03T11:34:00.000-08:00

In a recent post, Russell Beattie laments the fact that his new Nokia 6630 doesn't do music well: no larger memory card available for it, doesn't sync well with a PC (much less a dedicated home audio device), no standard audio jack, and no Digital Rights Management. Sad, ain't it?

We are still at the point where you have to brew your own for these devices. Which, of course, is often more work than it's worth, once the novelty wears off. You can make (or convert, rather) your own music and videos for your handset (I've been doing that for a year for my 3650), but who has time? And why should we have to, in 2005?

Imagine, if there were a site you could go to, to download music, videos, TV episodes, movies, audio books, and ebooks, for, say, your 6630. Kind of like a grand version of iTunes for mobile.

Individual files could be cheap, so that they become almost ephemeral - something you download, watch, listen to, or read, and delete. I'm surprised no one's done this yet. Certainly the Sony half of Sony Ericsson is in better position to do it than anyone else.

This would really drive demand for the devices, and would be essentially taking a lesson from the iPod/iTunes pairing that has brought so much cache and success to Apple.

A standard audio jack would be nice, too. Imagine plugging your Grados into your 6630. If only there were something to listen to.

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Mobile Media
Russell Beattie

Paging Netscape

2005-01-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

Enough with the long posts. For now. I have it on good authority that no one reads them. (Though I have to say, at this point in my blogging career - a few days into it - there isn't anyone reading, anyway.)

Just some second thoughts on my last post: I can see how offering up a multitude of designs and colors in basic "consumer" phones makes sense for a company like Nokia. But in my view this is just treading water. It won't mean anything when the Microsoft cigarette boat comes roaring through. And come roaring it will.

Nokia is in the same boat - or, rather, the same water (I'm not sure they really have a boat) - as Google (and, to a lesser extent, Sony) vis a vis Microsoft: extremely vulnerable. Would you be surprized to find, in five or six years, that Nokia phones are running Windows for mobile? I wouldn't. Not because Microsoft makes a better product. Not even because Microsoft has the muscle to dominate with mediocre product. No, it'll be because competing with Microsoft requires extraordinary awareness, long term vision, and real daring. And I just don't see those qualities among any of its rivals (with the possible exception of Google - too soon to say; and Apple, maybe - too late, alas). Paging Netscape. Oops, not around anymore, are they?

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Nokia: Build It, and They Will Come

2004-12-29T22:14:00.000-08:00

Nokia, as we all know, dominates the market in Europe and Asia, but has had less success in the U.S., home of its up and coming rivals, Microsoft and Palm. The key to market penetration in North America, we often read, is achieving greater uptake in the enterprise space. Or, to put it in something like English: get big business to use your gear, and everything else will fall into place.

In this respect Nokia has its work cut out for it here. Palm is right now widely popular largely because of the Treo 600 (and 650) - there is a huge amount of software written for it, and it syncs well, so I'm told, with Outlook. At the same time, Microsoft is sure to leverage the predominance of its server OS, by tightly integrating to it its handset offerings. (We all know that, if necessary, Microsoft wouldn't be beyond giving away handsets, and/or the handset operating system, to its "corporate enterprise" customers, in order to gain massive market share and lock it down. The fact that they haven't done this might have more to do with their recent delicate dealings with Europe, than with willingness or ability.) Linux for mobile, meanwhile, threatens to sweep in out of China and take everyone by surprize.

What can Nokia do? Clearly they need to do something, and "business as usual" isn't it. In my view the only course of action for Nokia is to take a lesson from the Japanese auto manufacturers.

Remember when the so called Big Three had the U.S. market locked up tight? This market dominance led to such sterling examples of engineering as a Pinto (I believe it was) that had no coolant going to the transmission, and a Cadillac that you had to pull the engine from in order to change spark plugs. It led, in general, to "planned obsolescence", so that every American was assured of never being without a car payment (because your car's life was over about the time you finished paying for it).

The Japanese ended this disgraceful state of affairs by doing what now seems obvious: they made good cars. In fact, though, they didn't stop there. They made vehicles better and better with each year, built them to last as long as possible, and innovated features that were really useful to people and companies. I'm sure that Detroit's lunch was American food Toyota and Honda didn't mind eating.

If Nokia were to concentrate its efforts on just four or five models of handset, engineering each to be as highly functioning and long lasting as possible, it would go a long way toward dominating the market in the U.S., and maintaining its dominance in the rest of the world.

Two or three 3G models and a couple of 2.5 G models, all tightly integrated with the most popular enterprise applications, as well as a couple of basic "consumer" handsets, would be a great start.

Whatever form they take, the non-basic models should offer plentiful RAM, and sound ergonomics. Convergence and ease of use should be stressed.

If it were me, I would build, first, a flagship enterprise/advanced user phone, looking very much like the Sony Ericsson P series. It would feature an updated UIQ version of the Symbian OS, and be intended as a totally converged 3G-capable device, replacing my laptop when I'm out and about, and also functioning as my entertainment center.

I'd give it

the 220 MHz ARM 5 processor currently found in the 6630
at least 64 MB of RAM (like the SE P910)
two card slots; one for hot-swapable SD/MMC, the other for Compact Flash, each of up to one gigabite capacity
a megapixel camera, with built-in flash, and the best imaging software I could wring out of the Canon engineers I'd just hired
A DSP chip dedicated to imaging
a QWERTY keypad
Bluetooth
Infrared
Wi-Fi (especially important, even if it means leaving out something else)
a stylus, of course
an external keyboard option
a built-in camera for video calls
one or two USB 2.0 ports

Wi-Fi capability calls into question another requirement, battery life, but I think people could accept that their battery life is going to be less if they're using Wi-Fi. Carrying a spare battery or two isn't that big a deal.

I'd fill my device with applications out of the box, including a good web browser, something for MS Office and Outlook, a messenger application, a scaled down version of Photoshop Elements, and a blogging application.

On the remaining 3G and 2.5G handsets, I'd offer similar capabilities, but go with Series 60 and forego the stylus. And on the basic models, I'd simply stress ergonomics, build quality, and sound quality.

Of course, Nokia is known for its innovative, interesting, sometimes wild designs. I'd continue that with all models, but not at the expense of ergonomics or ease of use (as is sometimes the case today).

As a corporation I'd step up my entry into the photography market by linking myself to a prestigious photography name: I'd buy Leica Camera AG and put that name on the lenses of my camera phones.

I'd link up with a major movie studio and offer content downloadable for viewing on the phone. I'd take immediate steps toward making a phone capable of receiving TV broadcasts, as well.

I'd present the carriers with a daring and well thought out plan for market growth, getting their buy-in, and offer my handsets to them at significant margin.

Those are some of the things I'd be doing, if I were Nokia. And they may already be doing some of them. Let's hope so.

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Nokia Acquires Leica Camera AG

2004-12-18T09:06:00.000-08:00

How does that sound? It's enough to bring the word "synergy" back into play.

Of course, the headline springs straight from my RF fried brain. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. The question is, why should it? And who'd benefit?

As a business, Leica Camera AG is nowadays in dire straits. Not quite kaput, but getting there. Failure to stay apace of digital developments in photography has led to lower sales and zero earnings. Recently the company has had to lay off a good number of its highly specialized work force, as it tries to cut costs while playing catch up with the technology of competitors. There has been speculation that the Leica, its stock depressed, is ripe for takeover.

As a brand, however, the Leica name is still unparalleled for the prestige attached to it. For many photographers, if not most, and for much of the general public as well, Leica is synonymous with top-notch optics and serious photography - synonymous, in fact, with photography itself.

So my question is, what would happen if a mobile phone manufacturer - Nokia, say - were to acquire Leica? In my view such a development would state clearly that the mobile maker intends to stay out front of its competitors - and that its imaging phones are intended to be used as real photographic tools.

Imagine the Leica name on the lens of every Nokia cameraphone. Want a toy? Buy some other brand. But if you want a real camera, built into your phone, your only choice is Nokia. That would be the message.

And it wouldn't be long, then, before other manufacturers followed suit - the Schneider-Krueznach name on Samsung phones, Carl Zeiss, scrawled in script on Sony Ericsson products, and so on. Judging from camera phone sales figures, mobile manufacturers are already major players in the photography field. Branding moves such as I am suggesting are all but inevitable.

Given this, it seems reasonable to ask if Nokia will be first to make the move. And to suggest that they should be. The match up between Nokia and Leica seems a natural, given the geographic and cultural proximity of the two companies. This would set the pace for the mobile industry (not to mention the photographic one), reinvigorate both brands, and be good news for consumers, who'd benefit by further convergence. If Nokia doesn't do it, someone else very well might. There isn't that much distance - as we've already seen - between Europe and Japan.

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