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2009 A Year in Tech
Dec 29th
Just when you thought that Fox News was content in mucking around in political opinions, I saw this article published:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/29/year-tech-review/
by Harry McCraken. Needless to say I had to read this and after doing so, there are a few inconsistencies that I’d like to point out.
Most Promising Upcoming
First of all, under the category of Most Promising Upcoming, I have to disagree with Harry’s assertion that the Palm Pre is the best fit for this category. Surely this is innovative and the device is beautiful, but I would argue that the Android platform and the wide-scale adoption of Android in smartphones across manufacturers, such as indications that there will be more than 50, that’s a 5 and a 0 Android devices by the end of 2010 (see this article for details). Whereas the Palm Pre is limited to 1 device and hasn’t had the same adoption in the marketplace as the Android devices have had.
Additionally to spur this excitement, we recently were introduced to the Droid, which on two fronts counts to me as a plus. To start with, the Droid is on the Verizon network, which Verizon has announced a partnership with Google and thus strengthening the platform as well as putting that platform with the leader in the mobile marketplace. We can see how this relationship has spurred sales of Android devices, as in the first week of releasing the Droid, over 250,000 units were sold. Next we look at Motorola’s roll in this, as the Droid is a Motorola device. Let’s look back in time, for a few years now we’ve basically written Motorola off the books in terms of creating a device that drives people towards it. The last device to do this was the Razor, but as soon as the iPhone was released, the uniqueness of the Motorola brand dropped like a brick. Enter the Droid. Since the Android platform was released, Motorola has come back with devices like the Cliq, Eris, and Droid and are looking to come back in force to the mobile marketplace. In fact I would not be surprised if we saw a Palm acquisition by Motorola. The real benefit here is the pressure that is being put on both AT&T as well as Apple for their iPhone device. While the iPhone still has it’s bells and whistles and polish that make it one of the most elegant devices in recent years, with the release of Android 2.0 and 2.1, Android is getting much closer to having the same level of spit shine that the iPhone has been fortunate to relish in, but I believe that this will soon change in 2010 as Android will become the dominate mobile platform. Needless to say the crown for Most Promising Upcomer should have gone to Android instead of Palm.
The Year of the Browser
In the category of Web Browser of the Year, certainly Chrome has dropped a monster of a rock into the proverbial pond, I would argue that this should be instead called The Year of the Browser, as we have seen more done in the Web 2.0 front this past year that we have seen in the last several years. Clearly the internet is being adopted now more than ever as a platform–whether mobile or desktop or SaaS, we are seeing the world migrate from the desktop to the web in astonishing volume and spectacle. Not only has Chrome been a good addition to the browser arena, it has spurred the other titans to get off their comfortable chairs and to engage like they have never engaged before. We have seen enhancements, improvements and continued drive from competitors like FireFox, especially with the introduction of FireFox 3.5 and the performance improvements that it draws, or Opera 10.5 and the improvements in speed that they are promising to deliver (be it in the current form the browser is quite a bit unstable!). But even giants like Microsoft reinvesting in Internet Explorer with the promises in IE9. Truly this has been the year of the browser, both on the desktop and mobile browsing, as we all feel drawn to put more of ourselves online.
Coolest Entertainment Trend
I would like to expand upon Harry’s category around Coolest Entertainment Trend, as I don’t believe that sufficient credit has been given to how important the trend to iTV is. Let me give you some realistic numbers. We use to spend about $200/monthly for Comast Triple Play with HD and HD-DVR. We enjoyed shows like the Dog Whisperer and SciFi series and certainly the benefits of the DVR to save and watch shows for later viewing. The problems I have with this solution are:
- Costly! Enough said.
- Small Hard Disk, there were so many shows being recorded, we were running out of space faster than we thought.
Enter the world of Hulu. But not just Hulu and Boxee, but services like PlayOn that allow you to stream Hulu and various other provider content through to devices like the PS3. What this has allowed us to do is manage our shows via Hulu.com, and stream them directly through to our PS3, so we can watch them on the Plasma. The importance of this is significant to the end user, as in our case, we downgraded from the Triple Play to just the internet, now costing us around $55/monthly.
Most Under Hyped Device
In this past year, we saw the rise and collapse of financial institutions, and a nation and world in economic recession. This means that all of us are looking for ways to tighten the belt and make savings. Since most of us have internet access, one of the most under hyped devices this past year has got to be Ooma. This device connects to your home network and allows you to use a standard telephone and have a home phone that sounds like it’s through your traditional telephone services. What’s even better is that you get all of this at NO MONTHLY FEE! Let me repeat that, there is no monthly fee for Ooma. The only fee’s are the upfront fee’s for the device or to port over an existing phone number, but after that, you get your basic phone services and unlimited calling for $0/monthly. Ooma should be in every broadband enabled home period. Yes you can have cellphones, but the need for a crisp clear home phone service will never go away.
Most Endangered Device
It is true that stand-alone GPS devices are looking like a thing of the past–take the news of Google Maps Navigation resulting in a drop in the stocks of most major GPS device manufacturers. But to clarify what Harry has written, Google Maps Navigation is NOT exclusively to the Verizon Droid device, it is a function of Android and as such is available on any Android device. Heck my G1 even has it! I just used this feature for the first time over the holiday travel that we did, and I have to say while I am impressed by this free feature, it isn’t a GPS killer just yet. The main factors that seem to be holding the trigger back on stand-alone GPS devices are:
- Text to Speech, like nails on a chalkboard, certainly needs some spit and polish before prime time use.
- Interface, the interface on most stand-alone GPS devices is far better than Google Maps Navigation. Features like memory points and points of interest or waypoints, these all need to be features that are easy to use before Google Maps Navigation takes the main stage.
- Choices of travel, the stand-alone GPS that is onboard our Mazda CX-7 offers a feature to pick which type of route to take: Shortest, Quickest, Alternative. Having these options on Google Maps Navigation would certainly put it classes ahead of the competition.
Most Under-Understood Technology
I add one additional category for consideration, that is the most under-understood technology of the year. This has to go to Cloud Computing. With lingo thrown around such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud computing, grid computing, this has taken the hosting and internet communities by force, but has to be one of the most under-understood technologies of the year. These terms can mean different things to different people, so it’s no wonder why consumers are at a loss of what this all means!
Merry Christmas! From Momo the Elf!
Dec 27th
Excellent! The milk and cookies were ok. Next year I expect a sausage log and a tenderloin instead–medium rare. E-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t! My plan is falling into place. They will never expect the Christmas Elf to steal all the presents, he he he he =)!
When Government Policy, Gaming, and Parenting Collide
Dec 10th
Recently an article was published on GamePolitics.com, with a view on a new report put out by the FTC on how Virtual Worlds offer real explicit content to minors. You can view the article at this URL.
It seems to me that we are touching very closely on the thin line that separates how far government policy should go when it comes to activities that our children will be (and I use the term WILL instead of maybe) involving themselves on, and what a parent should be doing in terms of their own due diligence to monitor and police the activities that their children are involved in online.
Let’s first start with the issue, the issue is that games are being policed by government policy. This is no different than to tell an artist that they cannot paint a nude picture because a minor may see this explicit content, or a singer from not using certain tones because they are too harsh and may invoke depression or suicidal thoughts. Art is art, and as such it should have some freedoms that are part of the creative process (within limits). For instance, I am a strong proponent for the music industry having clean versions of songs and explicit versions so the purchaser of the music can determine which version they want to have based on the content. Games are no different, they should be allowed to make games as gore-filled and explicit as they want to, with the understanding that the PURCHASER will make the decision on whether the content is acceptable. Let’s look at that one more time–the PURCHASER will make the decision.
This of course would then require the game studio or distributor to adhere to some general guidelines in terms of how to rate the game and provide a high level and consistent guide for purchasers (and lets face it, most purchasers who who I’m referring to here are parents as if you are over 18, well you’re old enough to make your own decisions) to understand how gore-filled or explicit a game is and if that is acceptable to them.
But to create guidelines for parents that in my view provide common sense approaches seems to be overstepping the bounds. This is no different than the government imposing themselves by providing guidelines on how you should be eating–in my view, that is up to independent civilian organizations to provide those to consumers as then it provides choices and isn’t perceived as something that should be applied across the entire population. The same goes with games. Yes games have a tendoncy to just be all involved. People fall in love, get in love affairs, engage in less than PG behavior, and yes there are plenty of risks and exposures, but you know what, that’s life. And as a parent I make it your own responsibility to own that risk from end to end.
If your child subscribes to a game through facebook, falls in love, and something bad happens, my first questions are:
- Why does your kid have a Facebook account?
- If you knew about the Facebook account, what measures have YOU imposed to regularly monitor that account activity? (again, it’s NOT Facebook’s responsibility to protect YOUR child, it’s YOUR responsibility to do that!)
- How do you maintain an open dialog with your child to be aware of the types of games that they are engaging in, and how do you prepare yourself to be educated and informed on the content of that game, it’s inherent risks, and if need-be to block the access to that game (all while having open dialogs, as I’m certainly not advocating that you just go up and pull the Cat5–your child will hate you and figure ways around your dictatorship behavior).
- How do you monitor dialog your child has with others via social mediums, email, twitter, facebook, myspace, MMORPG, etc.
This seems like an aweful lot of responsibility, but the truth of the matter is that if something bad happens, it’s not anyone else’s fault than the parents, as you should have made time to have open dialogs with your child and be an aware and involved parent. It is NOT up to the vendor or the provider to police your child’s activities, and it certainly is not up to the US Federal Government to be setting guidelines telling you what as a parent you should be doing. Go figure it out. Ask questions, talk to people, go online and do a bit of research. If there is one benefit from college that everyone should have as a take away is that knowledge requires research and leg-work. You can’t rely on the credibility of research that others have done and you have to go through your own process of validation.
Parenting in the 21st century is tough, there is no question about it. And I will be the first to say that I have no idea what that is entirely like not being a parent myself! But just from the periphery, you cannot as a parent throw up your hands and say that it’s up to someone else. That just is not an option. Just like a parent should be involved with your child’s activities in school, and at home or with the friends and places they go to, online activity is just another facet to that relationship and is ultimately the responsibility of the parent to get that under control.
And again I’m not advocating control in the totalitarian view, as your children are smart–probably smarter than all of us who are reading this, and will figure out ways to get around you (if for no other reason than to do it out of spite). You need to have a good enough relationship where your children feel comfortable in telling you about what they are doing, heck you should be participating with them–if they love World of Warcraft get an account and play along side with them. This is what I would call Bonding Time! You can have fun, and at the same time see how your child interacts with the virtual world, the people that they meet and to help shape and guide their behaviors so they know how to react or engage to situations appropriately. Ultimately this is what a parent does is to shape and guide their child through life’s challenges taking from your own experiences and intuition and passing that onto the next generation to build upon.
I do believe that there is a gap emerging in all of this as technology is moving at such a fast pace that as a parent it can be very difficult to keep pace with things. You cannot let that deter you and you need to be ontop of the emerging technologies. Let your children teach you and together you can work through acceptable use policies and guidelines. This should be a family effort, instead of parents looking at a technology and saying “Well I don’t understand it therefore until I do stay away”. This way of thinking will get you nowhere and ultimately encourage the child to defy you based on your own ignorance.
It does mean that tools need to be made available in clear language that provides parents with high level important tidbits of a game or technology that they can evaluate and say yes this is something that I would accept or no thanks we’ll wait a few more years. And when in doubt, try it out yourself! For goodness sake! It’s like a movie, am I going to allow my child to see something based on the rating, or am I first going to go see it myself, or at last watch trailers, read reviews, read synopses of the movie–you’d do all of the above and more. This is just part of the due diligence that I am referring to above, and the responsibility that parents ultimately have as gatekeepers to the brave new world that we are facing in this generation and generations to come. You can stand back and try to hold back the raging waters, but in the end it will be a futile effort and it’s best just to take the bull by the horns and trundle through this as best we can.
Finish Your Dinner!
Nov 19th
As we look into history, certainly I can see this from my own past, dinner time should always be a place where family gets together. Not for just the consumption of food, but to be a place where customs, manners, insight, and personality traits are passed from one generation to another.
But when we look closer at this social gathering, it occurs to me that dinner for American’s at least it seems, has become a place where we should learn to respect food and to enjoy the meal. I would understand it if the dinner table was a feeding trough where we all gathered around and the certain volume of food was expected to be consumed, period. But in fact this is not the case. Each person feels differently when it comes to how much food they want to consume. And this should be an ok choice that we all make. How many times I remember growing up and a plate of food was in front of me and it was expectation to finish it. I’m certainly not looking back in anger, but to gain perspective on how American culture nurtures the belief that proportions should be doled out as if one size fits all. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why American’s are as obese as we currently are, we don’t respect the body’s natural desire to eat until it is full, instead of eat until the plate is clean. It seems that Americans do regard the “clean plate club” as sort of badge of honor, and I would ask that we all take a step back and consider for a moment what this means.
Biologically there is a natural desire to consume food where we can then store any excess away for later use. A million years ago perhaps this was necessary as the hunter/gatherer in all of us did not have the know-how or understanding and certainly the conveniences that we all have come accustom to in this day and age. If Neanderthal had a mega-mart down the hill, they too would have changed their biological need to store away food in quantities that ensured survival in periods where food was not bountiful.
To many, we still regard mealtime in the same survival ways, eat until we feel full. We then pass this message to our children to eat in the ways that we ourselves were taught how to eat, instead of yielding to common sense and new philosophies and allow our next generation to eat more sensibly and with other methods than what we may have been use to, or have done ourselves in the past. Instead of eating until your plate is clean, why not eat until you are 80% full? Part of me thinks that the reason we don’t do this is that we would regard children as being picky eaters, where they don’t take mealtime seriously and will then want food later on in the day when others are not hungry. But I argue that while this may be the case, isn’t it a better habit that they get into to eat in smaller portions, but more frequently in the day? I’ll caveat that by saying that this also assumes that children are not being filled with the foods that don’t fit into OKL.
Dinner time should be a time when ideas are shared and emotions are felt and experiences are exchanged. Food is a by-product of that interaction, but is instead a side-course instead of the main-course. If the meal takes you an hour, that should be preferable to a quick meal and then everyone goes off to do separate things. We all need to get away from the adage that the size of the plate is the portion that is suitable and look to what our own biology is telling us throughout the meal and listen to the Japanese saying Hara hachi bunme (eat until you are 80% full). Since we no longer have to worry about where the next meal is coming, it would seem that this is one instance where we fight the biological drivers to consume to store, and consume to be satisfied with new energy when we have depleted our existing energy stores. Remember if you eat more than you use, your body will either excrete it or store it–for most of us, the storing is the unpleasant bit and causes us long term issues.
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra Review
Nov 7th
G.I. Joe, it seems that all the movie studio’s are on a break from creating the original content. We see this in most of the movies put out by the action genre with such titles like X-Men, Transformers, Iron Man, The Hulk, pretty much anything that was an icon of our childhood memory they are going ahead and remaking.
Now this by itself isn’t a bad thing, when you look at the advances in animation and computer graphics, truly one can see how the remakes really do bring you closer to the action in ways that before were just not possible.
Now having never really seen the old G.I. Joe franchise, I hold a unique view compared to my wife who grew up with those cartoon’s. For me, the movie was visually stunning. The cinematography was amazing, the graphics were pushing the boundaries instead of just doing the same old, and the martial arts sequences were well thought out (two kids going at it in ways that you wouldn’t think 9 year olds would, just amazing!). The movie felt like it was appropriate in length, and there wasn’t much in terms of a focus on romance that we have found in other remake movies (or sequels, cough, Transformers 2, cough) that cloud the actual point of the movie. That isn’t to say that there wasn’t chemistry or sexual appeal, but I think it was proportioned appropriately for the content of the movie.
In terms of the downside, I did think it was unclear in terms of identifying with each character, as names and such were getting all jumbled up (at least for me). It seemed that my wife was more able to keep up with things than I was, so perhaps that part was geared for people who were familiar with the franchise verses newbie’s like myself who weren’t familiar with each of the characters and their back-story and relationships with each other.
There definitely was room for a part 2, and to be honest, that might be just what the franchise needs. This film was really an entrance onto the movie community that certainly paves the way for new developments to come. I would like to see that the creators and directors put their collective thinking caps on, and try to come up with new ideas and formats that do separate the movies from the cartoons and comics–similar to the separation that we see in Smallville from the movie or the previous TV series and comics, but still hold true to several guiding principles that will keep the die-hard fans from revolting against the writers!
Happy Halloween!
Oct 30th
Happy Halloween!
Momo the Great Pumpkin hopes that you will be happy and safe, and not eat too much of that not-so-good-for-you-candies!
The Useless Email Thread
Oct 30th
How many times have you been caught in this situation? Somehow through the string of bad luck, you get added to an email thread by someone, and for the life of that thread (sometimes someone will be kind and remove you from the email thread when it’s clear you have nothing more to be aware of or contribute) you receive pointless email garbage that wastes your time, clutters your inbox, and otherwise gives you stress because you feel bombarded by volumes of emails–but this is all for not because at the end of the day you don’t have anything to do on the email and you don’t need to be aware of the email contents/discussion. Ok, raise your hand if you’d have this happen or been the one to cause this to happen–everyone’s hand should be up!
This is a systemic problem with email, one of the most frustrating things to encounter. But there could be a silver lining in all of this. There needs to be two abilities:
- The ability as a recipient to indicate that you do not want to receive further updates on the thread
- The ability as the sender to remove someone from the thread
Now these may seem simple enough, but let’s think about this. For the first, you’ll need to have an email client that will understand the email client saying “I don’t want to see any more updates to this thread” and subsequently when you receive further emails, you are no longer notified of them. But then what if you do this by accident? The sender has to have the ability to then FORCE an update to go through. So similar to marking a message as important, by marking the message as forced delivery, it will send a message through on the thread to all recipients on the message regardless of whether or not they’ve elected to continue receiving updates on the thread.
Second the sender needs to be able to be in a situation where if they recognize that there are individuals on the email thread that should no longer be on the thread, to select to remove them, but the act of removing them is not just simply to prevent them from appearing on future threads. By removing them through this “remove from thread” feature, that should:
- Send a brief message to the person being removed, that they were removed from the thread, and an option to add themselves back into the thread.
- Add a bit of meta information to the email thread, that will notify others that someone has been removed so they are aware not to address something to that individual
I think these features, if they could come true, would be the best thing that businesses could implement. Too much time is spent dealing with emails that come through, and each useless email is a distraction among other things. By giving control to people to make smart choices, it means that the right people can put their two cents in, but withdraw from the overall thread when their input is no longer required. Rarely is it the case that you are added mid-stream to an email thread, and you have to stay current with that thread through the life of the thread.
Top Must Have AIR Applications
Oct 25th
Adobe AIR is perhaps one of the most exciting new web 2.0 technologies out there. It basically allows you to create web-based applications that act independently of a browser–so essentially a Windows application that is web-enabled. Very cool!
There are a few AIR applications that are must have!
- Pandora, this is a NO BRAINER! Upgrade yourself to Pandora One, it’s only $36/yearly and you get a great Adobe AIR app that sits pretty on your desktop all day long!
- Klok, for those who have to keep track of time based on projects or activities, this is a MUST HAVE application! Professional Services, Project Management, whatever the case may be, it has universal applications and very easy to use.
- Twhirl, for the Twitter addict, this nice Adobe AIR app makes it easy to rant and rave and post otherwise (and sometimes meaningless) updates about little snippets of your life. Think about it, that could have been a phone call!
- DoIt, this one just came out and has much promise in terms of following David Allen’s GTD methodology.
- Google Voice, of course I love Google Voice (I’ve had it since it was Grand Central!), so this app comes naturally to the top of the list. One less browser window to keep open!
If you come across new and exciting Adobe AIR apps, post them for others to share!
Next great thing for Conference Calls and Virtual Team Meetings
Sep 25th
In my professional career, getting on conference calls has unfortunately become one of those constants in my day. Whether it be conference calls with clients, or internally, this has become a business de facto standard for getting people together to discuss a topic or coordinating efforts synchronously verses an asynchronous process such as emails or online chat.
There are tools to help with the virtual team meetings, such as GoToMeeting and Dimdim, that can help with visual tools to help move a meeting forward–the ability to share a screen, share a powerpoint or whiteboard, and certainly those things have helped evolve conference calls and make them more useful for team collaboration.
But one of the fundamental challenges that I see in conference calls has been what I would call the personal touch. When we meet in a large group setting in say a conference room, we take visual queues from individuals in terms of letting them know when we want to interject with a comment, or even more basically putting a name to a voice to know who is speaking at that time. Also conversation collisions are less likely because we can see who wants to talk or talk next and prioritize our own comments based on when we think it will most appropriately fit. These are all issues that I think most people face when they have conference calls, and in my estimation is what drive people to say, “it’s worth me getting on a plane to travel to the location to avoid these pitfalls”–thus undermining the whole value of remote conference calls as a more efficient, time friendly, and certainly greener approach to facilitating this very basic and very necessary business function.
I propose that the next evolution of conference calls will bring the web into the fold but to facilitate a different medium. When you dial into a conference, you can simultanously log into a website that is unique for your conference instance. That web instance would be directly linked to your bridge, so just like most people have static bridges, the webpage would also have a static URL. Once the conference bridge is open, the webpage will allow you to log in.
When the user dials into the bridge, they will identify themselves and voice recognition will take a sample of their voice and store it. Once logged into the bridge, the user can load the webpage and user’s can name themselves, and similar to say an online poker session, you’d have a picture of a conference table with each of the participants listed. As someone speaks, the voice recognition that originally was taken will recognize the person speaking, and relate them to the person on the webpage. This way all the participants who are in the conference can know who is speaking at any given time. Also there should be functionality so a person can “raise their hand” on the webpage to let others know that they have a question–if multiple people have a comment, they can weight their requests based on real-time interactions with each other, so they can yield to another person, or ask to go first.
My thinking is that this is perhaps the next evolution for conferences that will solve the age old issues that we all go through on conference calls. Who knows, it may happen!
Explore Badlands
Tempest Keep
Twilight Duo (10 player)