Rohdesign Weblog: Technology

Here you'll find all posts file under the Technology category.

January 31, 2010

A Twitter Vacation

There comes a time when what's brewing under the surface breaks through. For me the breakthrough is the need for a little Twitter Vacation.

I love Twitter, the friends I have on Twitter and how connected I am through it, with people in Milwaukee and around the world.

Now, I'm not going to leave Twitter forever. Rather, this will be a 3 week experiment off of the service to see how being Twitter-free effects me.

Why the Vacation?
I've sensed lately that I need to take a step back. I've caught myself constantly checking my Twitter mentions, working very hard to tweet something of value and scanning my live feed in Tweetie for something, anything interesting to read.

While that's typical Twitter user behavior, I've felt this incessant attraction to scanning random tweets and re8-2010plies at all times to be distracting my focus from more important things in my life right now.

As you may know, we've added a baby girl to the family, which is wonderful and understandably, quite time consuming.

Couple our 3 month old baby girl with a stack of personal projects and plans to be made for SXSW Interactive in March -- it all adds up to a pile of important things I must focus on.

So, as an experiment, as of February 1, 2010, I'll be leaving my Twitter feeds sit idle while I catch up on everything else in my life.

I'll come back in 3 weeks, on February 22nd and report my findings here.

Week 1 Update (Feb 8, 2010) — My first week of Twitter vacation has been an interesting experience. On more than one occasion I've wanted to share an idea or a photo, with Tweetie on the iPhone, only to stop myself.

I've missed reading tweets from friends I follow. After reading Michael Lopp's excellent post, A Story Culture, I'm understanding how much I enjoy weaving stories together from 140 character snippets of information. In some ways it's like stitching stories together while listening to the radio.

I have also noticed an increase in productivity. I'd expected this might happen however. Those little distractions add up over time, so whatever plan I set for myself after the 21st will include limits on usage.

Permalink | | Observations | add to del.icio.us

January 31, 2009

Sketchnoting SXSW Interactive 2009

Doom and gloom. Meltdown of the global economy. Real estate prices dropping, layoffs, businesses closing and more bad news bombards us daily.

2008 was a rough year and 2009 is off to a rocky start. These are challenging times.

In spite of the bad news around us, I've decided to focus on the positive. To focus on the opportunities in this new year and not let the negativity dominate my outlook or perspective.

For me, this begins with SXSW interactive in Austin, Texas, March 13-18, 2009.

SXSW Interactive Official Sketchnoter

One hugely bright spot in 2009 is the honor of being the Official Sketchnoter to SXSW Interactive. In 2008, my first ever SXSW, I used my Moleskine pocket sketchbook and G2 pen to live capture several of the panels and sessions in sketchnote form.

At the time I was capturing the event for myself and the small band of followers who enjoyed my work from SEED 1 and SEED 3 conferences and other events I'd captured in 2007 and 2008. What surprised me was how popular the SXSW 2008 sketchnotes became. Just a week after posting the sketchnotes, they appeared on 80+ sites, including Daring Fireball, R.BIRD, FrogDesign, Jason Santa Maria and Boing Boing!

I'm very excited about working in an official capacity this year. I think the toughest challenge will be which panels to attend and capture. I have a list of panels I'm looking forward to, but I also know how panels often overlap. It should be fun. :-)

Get In Touch

I'd love to meet new people at SXSW, so if you're attending and would like to talk over coffee at the event, drop me a line with SXSW in the subject line and say hello, and if you like, follow me on Twitter.

I'm attending the 2009 Avalonstar Bowling Extravaganza on Saturday, March 15th, and my co-conspirator Brian Artka and I are organizing some kind of small gathering at an Austin location during SXSW Week, we'll announce soon.

Stay Positive!

Be thankful for what you have in your life. Be ready for opportunities. Circumstances can bring you down — don't let them ruin your outlook. Stay positive!

Permalink | | Sketchnotes | add to del.icio.us

September 15, 2008

BarCampMilwaukee3 Final T-Shirt Design

After receiving not a single entry in the BarCampMilwaukee3 T-Shirt design contest, I decided late last week that I ought to come up with a design for the shirt, and quick.

Below is the final BarCampMilwaukee3 T-Shirt design for 2008:

How did I Get Here?

The deadline for ordering shirts and submitting some art was looming, and there were no submissions to the contest to speak of. It was last week Thursday when I opened my sketchbook and started to doodle. What came out in rough form was a design vaguely similar to the design above.

I wanted something a bit organic, fun and round. I remembered that Pete Prodoehl had "tagging" space on name tags at the first BarCampMilwaukee in 2006. I took his idea a step further by embedding the tagging spaces right in the shirt design.

At the Web414 meeting that evening, I saw Jordan Arentsen wearing a charcoal gray t-shirt from a recent Adobe AIR event, and loved how the shirt looked. I checked his tag (with his permission) and found it was a Gildan Ultra Cotton, the same shirt I've been using with all of my projects for the last few years. Excellent!

Design Iteration v1.0

When I got home, I was wired from the Web414 meeting, so I began working with the sketch I had, and generated a v1 design iteration. bcmke3-dkblue1.0.jpg

I quite liked the feel of this first iteration — the rounded shapes and tags, white backing color and the use of the BarCampMilwaukee icon on the back.

As I look back, James Carlson gave me some inspiration with a Wiki character he's sprayed on a large sheet of paper and showed at the Web414 meeting. It had eyes on stalks, which influenced my decision to add similar circles/eyes on stalks to the t-shirt design.

However, I wasn't sure of the dark blue color, and decided to sleep on the design until Friday.

Design Iteration v1.1

In the morning, I had the idea to try another color. bcmke3-brblue1.1.jpg

Since the BarCampMilwaukee logo takes inspiration from the Milwaukee Brewers Blue & Gold colors, why not try a retro 1980s Brewers medium blue?

That's what I did, and I really loved the feel against the white and the charcoal gray shirt material.

I also wanted to describe the idea visually to the BarCamp core team, so on the v1.1 iteration, I added some sample texts in the balloons for my name, Twitter handle and 5 tags that represented my interests.

Design Iteration v1.2: Final

Feedback from Web414 and BarCampMilwaukee people was very positive this weekend, so tonight I've finalized the EPS art for t-shirt printer, complete with the sponsor list for BarCampMilwaukee3.

Thanks to everyone who helped with this project, especially Pete! I will follow-up when the shirt goes to print with photos of the shirts hot off the presses.

Permalink | | T-Shirts | add to del.icio.us

August 2, 2008

BarCampMilwaukee3

Woohoo! We're just 2 months away from BarCampMilwaukee3, on October 4th and 5th at Bucketworks, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This morning I've updated the BarCampMilwaukee3 logo and icon designs, and am starting to ponder ideas for the t-shirt design for this year's event.

What's a BarCamp?

In a nutshell, a BarCamp is an event where technology people come together and share what they know, in a low-key environment. There are no keynotes or special speakers — anyone who attends has an opportunity to present their ideas and knowledge. There is a heavy emphasis on sharing with others at BarCamp events. It has earned the name "unconference" because it turns the conference idea on its head.

How much is it?

It's a free event, paid for by sponsors, which makes it easy for anyone who wants to come to be there. It's also a great way for sponsors to give back to the local tech community, and already we have a number of sponsors signed up. If you're interested in sponsorship, a donation of $200 to $500 gets your name on the website, t-shirt, and a sign and mention at the event. Not bad!

What will I eat & drink, where can I stay?

Food and beverages are provided for free. Sponsors provide many of the meals and snacks and several of the attendees bring along food and beverages to share if they like. If you want to save cash on a hotel room, you can crash for the night at the event, all you need is a sleeping bag and a pillow.

Where and when is it?

It's taking place at Bucketworks, the "World's First Health Club for the Brain" at 1340 N. 6th Street in Downtown Milwaukee. It's taking place October 4th and 5th, 2008, with a kick-off party happening on October 3rd (my birthday!).

BarCampMilwaukee2 Video

Here's a video by my friend David, from BarCampMilwaukee2:

Come to BarCampMilwaukee3!

You are invited you do come to Milwaukee and experience BarCampMilwaukee3. It's a great opportunity to learn, share and connect with others who love technology, the web, hardware and social media as much as you do.

Questions? See the Getting Started section of the BarCampMKE3 site, or Join the BarCampMilwaukee Yahoo mailing list. You can also leave a comment here and I'll do my best to answer your question.

Permalink | | Milwaukee | add to del.icio.us

May 2, 2008

Clay Shirky & the Power of Disposable Attention

Thanks to Derek Dysart, I was able to hear Clay Shirky's "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus" talk from the Web 2.0 Expo, embedded for your viewing pleasure:

Clay's assertion is that like gin sold from pushcarts helping Londoners cope with the sudden shift from rural farming to urban industrialization, the TV sitcom helped post-WWII society cope with a new surplus of leisure and free time:

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before — free time.

He argues that society is awakening from a focus on TV sitcoms, and is realizing that they are in a position to create the content they want. They are able to contribute to the discussion, in ways not possible before:

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

What Shirky calls a cognitive surplus, I like to call disposable attention. Some may choose to spend attention on one-way activities like TV, but this is changing with the new generation. Shirky shares this story about one young girl's reaction to TV:

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

I'm fascinated at how deeply this 4 year old has been impacted by interactivity in her life. She so wanted to have an impact on the TV show she was experiencing that she had to "find the mouse" in an effort to make an impact. Consuming was not enough for her — she wanted to interact.

There are many new opportunities available to us that were not available 10 years ago. We have the power to create. We have the power to write our own stories on blogs, tell them in podcasts and show them in videos. We can contribute to larger projects like Wikipedia or attend BarCamps.

The encouragement to me in all this is we're moving beyond the stage of simply sitting on a couch, accepting what's being presented. We're given the opportunity to create and share our own stories, finding there are others like us out there, interested in our stories and willing to share theirs with us.

Here are a few great parting quotes from Shirky's talk:

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

We're looking for the mouse. We're going to look at every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?" And I'm betting the answer is yes.

Permalink | | Observations | add to del.icio.us

March 15, 2008

The MilwaukeeDevHouse Experience

Last night, Nathan and I packed up the MacBook, Canon scanner, 27 of his "transportation" themed drawings and headed downtown.

We were off to take part in the first ever MilwaukeeDevHouse at Bucketworks — an opportunity to hang out with a bunch of local Milwaukee tech geeks, doing stuff together.

When we arrived, Bucketworks was already hopping! I counted 30 people, and I may have missed some attendees wandering around Bucketworks (not to mention those who came after we left at 9pm).

We found a spot at one of the tables and setup the MacBook and scanner, then Nathan and I worked together as a team to scan, tune and upload his drawings on Transportation to Flickr.

Today I asked Nathan his thoughts on the event, and he said:

"I liked the people and the noise and the food. I liked pushing the buttons to scan my drawings. I liked everything there!"

This was an excellent experience for us both on many levels:

We shared quality father and son time in a fun, shared environment
I was able to encourage Nathan in his creative work by scanning his art
Nathan met a variety of Web414 pals and learned how to interact with others
We were able to build a memorable experience with tangible results

What's MilwaukeeDevHouse?
In a nutshell, a DevHouse is a space where people can work on serious or fun projects, either by themselves or in a team. Here's the official description:

MilwaukeeDevHouse aims to be the premier regularly scheduled hackathon event that combines serious and not-so-serious productivity with a fun and exciting party atmosphere.
If you’re a coder, designer, or just someone who enjoys software and technology development, MilwaukeeDevHouse was made for you...

MilwaukeeDevHouse is intended for passionate and creative technical people that want to have some fun, learn new things, and meet new people.

If you have the chance to check out a DevHouse locally, do it! Our experience was wonderful. Even better, start a local DevHouse in your area.

Special thanks to Pete Prodoehl, one of the leaders of MilwaukeeDevHouse.

We're already looking forward to MilwaukeeDevHouse2! :-)

Related Links
MilwaukeeDevHouse1 Photos on Flickr
Nathan's Transportation Drawings:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Permalink | | Milwaukee | add to del.icio.us

March 12, 2008

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes

Welcome BoingBoing readers! Be sure to check out my follow-up post called Lessons Learned from my SXSW Sketchnotes too!

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes are up!
I've just completed scanning, tuning and uploading 34 pages of sketchnotes I captured in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook at SXSW Interactive earlier this week.

I think the sketchnotes turned out well, and it was no problem for me to continuously create them for nearly every session I attended. I certainly went through ink in my G2 mini pens — I'm glad I brought several along.

With the SEED Conference sketchnotes being pretty popular, I'm curious to see how these SXSW sketchnotes are received. While sketchnotes capture concentrated concepts for each session well, I think they're even better at awakening ideas stored in the minds of session attendees.

Speakers Featured
Here are the speakers featured in the SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes: Naz Hamid, Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Ryan King, Glenda Bautista, Ariel Waldman, John Gruber, Michael Lopp, Jim Coudal, Dan Rubin, Didier Hilhorst, Eris Stassi, Lea Alcantara (sorry for the Leah misspell in the notes!), Ben Brown and Frank Warren.

Finally, here's the FlickrSlidr Slideshow set:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did creating them! :-)

Stats on Flickr — Wow!

Check out Shaun Swick's very cool SXSW Sketchnotes 08 Flickr Set for another perspective.

Dave Gray does his style of sketchnotes on 3x5 notecards, check out his set from VizThink08.

Permalink | | Sketchnotes | add to del.icio.us

March 11, 2008

Rohdesign Podcast 05 - SXSW Roundtable Discussion

I've now recorded and posted Rohdesign Podcast Episode 05 in Austin, a little longer 16 minute roundtable discussion on the patio at SXSW interactive. It's posted as an MP3 and as a web-based flash player:

In the fifth episode of the Rohdesign Podcast, I talk with Ashe Dryden, David Overbeck and Carlos Ortega about their impressions of SXSW Interactive, favorite sessions and why you should consider attending SXSW 2009.

Permalink | | Podcasts | add to del.icio.us

March 9, 2008

Rohdesign Podcast 04 - SXSW Interactive Edition

I've now recorded and posted Rohdesign Podcast Episode 04 in Austin, after 2 days at SXSW interactive. It's posted as an MP3 and as a web-based flash player:

In the fourth episode of the Rohdesign Podcast, I talk about networking at SXSW, excellent design sessions I was able to attend, sketchnotes progress and plans for Sunday's activities.

Permalink | | Podcasts | add to del.icio.us

February 27, 2008

DVD Recorders & Over The Air Digital TV

After Christmas, I made the decision to buy to a DVD Recorder and digital tuner, which is one of the best TV gear purchases I've ever made.

My plans for a new DVD recorder was to capture favorite TV shows (Heroes, The Office and Numb3rs) and convert DV tapes of Nathan and our VHS wedding video to DVD discs.

Choosing a Device
After my research, I chose the Panasonic DMREZ27K, a DVD player/recorder with a built-in ATSC digital and analog TV tuner. It plays DVDs, records DVDs, reads SD cards and receives both analog and digital TV signals from local stations. It also has S-Video, and Firewire ports which are critical for converting our DV tapes to DVD.

When looking at these types of devices it can be difficult to compare, because features are often inconsistent across brands. For instance, many DVD Recorders don't come with an ATSC digital tuner, while others do. To deal with this, I focused on what features I most needed and chose the best device within my price range.

DVD Player & Recorder
The recorder and player were pretty easy to get used to, being very similar to our old DVD player and VCR recorder. You can record immediately or on a timed program, from digital TV signal, RCA jacks, S-Video port, or the Firewire port.

It can record 4 hours of video on a single disc in LP mode at decent quality, or 6-8 hours at lower quality. I'm still experimenting with settings, but have recorded from digital TV, through S-Video and Firewire from the DV camera and through RCA jacks from VHS tape with pretty good results.

Once a DVD is recorded, I can toss the DVD disc into my Mac and view the video, or convert the video files into a format optimized for the iPod touch. Nice!

Commercial DVDs look pretty good when played, though I should mention — we don't have an HDTV yet. The Panasonic up-samples DVDs to decent quality 1080i resolution video via an HDMI port, so we'll be able to enjoy old DVDs when we do get an HDTV screen, at least until Blu-Ray Recorders are reasonably priced.

One feature I've not tested yet — recording with DVD-RAM discs. Apparently the Panasonic recorder can treat DVD-RAM discs like hard drives, pausing live TV while the program is still recording. I'll update this article once I try it out.

Digital TV Tuner
The surprise feature of the Panasonic DMREZ27K was the ATSC digital TV tuner. We had subscribed to bare bones cable for years, but when we moved last summer, our basic cable got fewer channels and went from $12/month to $20/month. Ouch!

After researching Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV) I decided to take a chance, replacing our cable with over the air digital TV, saving $20/month.

I found a variety of helpful resources on the web: the Engadget article OTA HD demystified, HDTV Magazine's DTV reference, DTV.gov, HDTV Antenna Guide, and TitanTV providing customized, web-based, local digital TV programming schedules.

Once I had the digital tuner setup, I was amazed at the picture quality and the variety of local channels! We had all of our local Milwaukee stations in digital, a 24 hour weather channel, 9 different public TV stations and several more to boot.

We love the two kids stations we receive: a PBS station with Sesame Street, Curious George, Clifford and the other, Qubo, with a variety of quirky, fun programs like Postman Pat, Theodore Tugboat and Pecola, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

When analog TV shuts down on February 17, 2009, we'll still receive the digital broadcasts we see now, and may even gain a few by then.

Conclusion
In this transitional period between analog and digital TV, regular and HDTV, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, it's nice to find a device that does a lot for a reasonable price.

I've been very pleased with the Panasonic DMREZ27K. I've converted VHS and short DV tapes to DVD, recorded TV shows in digital quality over the air, and have two fun, educational stations for our son, all while saving $20 a month on cable.

Not bad for $200 bucks!

Permalink | | Technology | add to del.icio.us

February 7, 2008

Attending SXSW Interactive 2008!

For the past few years, I've been very intentional about attending thought-provoking conferences and events, to learn, grow and meet new people.

In 2007, I attended BarCampMadison, UX Intensive, SOBCon07, BarCampMilwaukee2 the SEED Conference and excellent monthly Web414 meetings through the year.

For several years I've heard great things about SXSW (South by Southwest) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Many of the people I admire attend yearly, I've enjoyed podcasts from the event, but it's never worked out for me to attend.

That will change in 2008. On March 7th, I'll be heading down to Austin, with fellow Web414 members Ashe Dryden and David Overbeck. We're all excited to see first-hand, just what all the SXSW buzz is about.

Thanks MakaluMedia!
I've been given the opportunity to attend SXSW as art director and designer from MakaluMedia. I'm very thankful for this opportunity, and I plan to make the most of my time in Austin. I'll attend multiple sessions, take notes and capture sketchnotes similar to the ones I did at the SEED Conference and UX Intensive.

Advise the Newbie
Since this is my first time to SXSW Interactive, I welcome tips and ideas from seasoned veterans. I'm also open to Austin tips and suggestions from any Austin dwellers out there who would like to share. Just leave a comment below. :-)

Contact Me SXSW-Goers
I also want to meet old friends and new people while I'm at at SXSW. If you're attending SXSW Interactive 2008 and would like to meet for a coffee in Austin, drop me a line with the subject SXSW. I'd love to connect before I head down to Austin.

Resources
As I prepare for SXSW Interactive, I've compiled a selection of resources to share with other SXSW attendees, and those interested in the event:

SXSW Interactive 2008 — The official site.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Time) — SXSW Panels, time schedule.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Day) — SXSW Panels, by day.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Category) — SXSW Panels, by category.
SXSW Registrant's Guide — Registrant's guide.
SXSW Registrant's Mobile Guide — Mobile registrant's guide.
SXSW '08 Insider's Guide — Information and forums on Ning.com.
SXSW Baby — Un-official Weblog and forums for SXSW.
Ze Frank Explains SXSW Interactive In Under a Minute — Classic Ze Frank humor!
SXSW Core Conversations — Directory for informal conversations.
SXSW Past, Present, and Future — Great podcast interview with Hugh Forrest, Director of Events for SXSW Interactive on the history, culture and future of the event.
SXSW Geeks Love Bowling — Bowling with SXSWers, Sunday, March 9th.
Airbag: Hampton — Greg Storey's Guide to SXSW Newbies.
John Phillips — Beginner's Guide to SXSW.

Have a resource to share? Email me and let me know!

Permalink | | Creativity | add to del.icio.us

November 20, 2007

What Happens When Web Services Fail Us?

As Web 2.0 gets into full swing and mainstream "average joes" start using and relying on web services, what will they do when those services eventually fail them?

A few stories have brought me to this line of thinking:

TinyURL went down Sunday and Monday for several hours. TinyURL conveniently shrinks long web links into tiny web links and handles redirection to the long link's site. When TinyURL failed, so did all of the web links I and thousands of others have created to help our friends, family and colleagues.
Pete Prodoehl mentioned the plight of Phil Wilson, who had all of the web services he used on Google fail in a different way — account suspension. Without any warning, his email, documents, and other data was denied him for over a week, as of his last posting.
Google penalizes hundreds of blogs who offer text-link advertising on their websites, by dropping PageRank, a number from 1 to 10, assigned to sites based on Google's secret algorithm and other criteria. In a single day, many who relied on Google (too much I'd contend) saw their PageRank and AdSense revenue drop at the whim of Google.

I see these stories as a warning: be aware that the web services I'm using can fail at any time. Be aware that I could be denied services, without notice. Be aware that I could face a lack of access to my account and data, at the whim of the service I use. Be aware that the company who provides advertising income and my search results could change its mind about the value and importance of my site.

I'm not against web services — I use them all the time. However, I keep mission critical data like email on my Macs and my own servers. Maybe it's a generational thing to want my data local, and to be a little leery of giving away too much information to web services.

What web services do you depend on? Could you survive if they folded tomorrow?

Have you considered what you would do if your services went down for a day, a week... forever?

What if those services simply denied access for a terms of service violation you can't prove because the service doesn't respond to your emails?

How would you handle denial from years of your email for 1 week, 2 weeks, a month?

Something to think about.

Permalink | | Technology | add to del.icio.us

October 30, 2007

SEED Conference Thoughts & Sketchnotes

Whew! I'm back from Monday's excellent SEED Conference in Chicago.

What a great event! The Illinois Institute of Technology and Rem Koolhaas' Tribune Student Center building, was an incredibly cool venue. Funky lines and the architectural space provided a unique backdrop for the sessions of the day.

Carlos Segura
All of the sessions were very good, though the most interesting for me as a designer was hearing Carlos Segura speak. He talked about taking risks and thinking deeper for clients and going beyond only what they ask to figuring out what they really need.

I was especially inspired by the Corbis Stock Photo case study, where Carlos' team changed the stock agency's overall approach to consider their clients (designers) and in doing so, changed an entire industry.

Segura also stressed keeping small, working on projects and with clients you really want to work with. Good work comes from these situations, and by staying small you aren't constantly taking jobs you dislike just to keep everyone busy. In fact, this turned into a thread that connected all of the talks of the day.

Jason Fried
Jason spoke very briefly, so he could open the floor for lots of Q&A time. He recommended these 5 items:

Watch out for red flags
Keep your team small
Make sure your staff has alone time
Keep meetings short and focused
Make tiny decisions instead of massive ones

Jason also recommended a small team size, though his perspective focused a little more on communication issues with small vs. large teams and scaling projects to fit your team size rather than scaling your team to fit scope.

I resonated most with Jason's call for alone time. I work remotely, but even though I work alone, there is always a temptation towards IM, email or phone calls, and I find that blocking out chunks of alone time makes a difference. I know this may be a tough one for the multi-tasking generation, but I think it really can help your focus.

Jim Coudal
I loved Jim Coudal's candor and relaxed approach, and especially his openness in sharing his firm's successes and failures. He shared several stories and films, and drew ideas from them. My take away:

Be curious
Choose people on their taste
Don't be afraid to fail

Jim talked about his curiosity and how many of the things he's been curious about have turned into business ideas. Curiosity helps with client work, since you can get to speed quickly and often see a problem from a different perspective than the client.

He also talked about identifying people and hiring them on taste over technical talent. Not untalented people with taste, but rather if you had to choose between two people and one had good taste, go with taste over talent.

Coudal suggested that failures are OK. They're learning experiences which often create opportunities that might never have happened otherwise. You have to learn to identify and capitalize on unexpected opportunities that often grow out of failures.

Discussion Session: Segura, Fried & Coudal
The most interesting of the sessions was the final hour or so of open discussion time with Carlos, Jason and Jim at the front of the room. They fielded all sorts of questions from attendees about their ideas. Questions about small teams, marketing, simplicity, community, building products while still managing client work, questions about creating apps that rely solely on other platorms (Facebook), and more.

Of all the sessions, this was the one I and the 4 other guys I met, thought was the best of all. Why? Because they had a chance to respond immediately and candidly to random questions. I also enjoyed hearing them discuss and explore ideas in depth that hadn't come out in their talks. Finally, it was interesting to hear their similarity of thought and subtle differences of approach and opinion on the same questions.

Sketchnotes
As mentioned last week, I took my pocket Moleskine sketchbook along and captured 17 pages of sketchnotes, from the entire day's talks and discussions, including Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, Edward Lifson and Jim Coudal.

I didn't try to capture everything said during yeterday's event, since others were probably doing that.

Instead, I took time to listen and analyze the talks, distilling and capturing the main ideas I was hearing. By doing a bit of on-the-fly processing, it forced me to boil down what was being said, then express it in ink on the page in a way that would be meaningful to me and to others who might read my sketchnotes later.

To make the notes interesting, I played with typography and images with the sketchnotes, to provide a little texture and depth beyond pages of gray text.

SEED Sketchnotes on Coudal Partners
Seems my notes have struck a chord. Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners emailed about my sketchnotes on Flickr and made mention in their Fresh Signals feed. Thanks Jim!

SEED Sketchnotes on Signal vs. Noise
Awesome! 37signals noticed them too: Mike Rohde's SEED Conference 2007 sketchbook notes. Thanks Matt!

Pretty cool to have speakers and sponsors mention notes taken during the event. :-)

Overall, SEED Conference was well worth the time and price to attend.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Permalink | | Design | add to del.icio.us

October 15, 2007

BarCampMilwaukee2 Was a Success!

Another BarCampMilwaukee has been successfully pulled off!

In my wanderings and speaking with people in attendance tis weekend, BarCamp was a success.

I repeatedly received positive comments such as "what a great event!" or "wow, people here are so helpful and friendly!" and "this was very well planned and managed" from attendees.

Those who have been involved in putting on a conference will know it's a different view from the inside. We certainly had our glitches, but I was always impressed with the team of organizers and random attendees stepping up to help.

It was very encouraging to see the group do it for themselves, giving of themselves and sharing what they had to make BarCampMilwaukee2 happen for everyone.

As an example, I was set to handle registration and t-shirt handout with several helpers. All was well until I found that the spreadsheet I was using was somehow un-searchable in NeoOffice, two co-organizers moved the file to another machine, while several others started taking names and shirt sizes on good 'ol paper and pencil. Several fresh registrants stepped up to help distribute shirts to other registrants.

Things like this happened repeatedly throughout the weekend, problems being identified and helpers stepping up to solve them. It was a great experience seeing that sort of ad-hoc willingness pop up again and again.

Great Sessions
Sessions were varied and interesting, ranging from personal branding, portable apps, web and graphic design and analog tool capture, to hacking elevators, the Flickrverse, social networking history and more. In each of the sessions I attended, fascinating discussions got going, and kept right through to the end of each hour.

Photowalk
I went on the BarCamp Photowalk and had a great time shooting a few images and getting to know several campers better. Check out photos from the event on Flickr. We wandered Schlitz Park, and we then invited into the building of an attendee to snap images inside. We rode in a creaky freight elevator in a old warehouse building, to explore a room full of busted piano parts.

But I think I most enjoyed meeting new people. People like Marcus and Jen and Tracy. There were many more and everyone had a story, an interest, a passion. And those I met seemed to be having a great time, just like me.

Thank You
Thank you to Pete and all of the organizers! I'm very proud to be counted as a small part of the BarCamp organization team, handling t-shirt design, production and printing as well as various other tasks. It was a true honor to be part of this group, watching it move from planning, to preparation to fruition.

Thanks go to our sponsors, who made this event possible. On a several occasions I had attendees ask who was paying for food or shirts — it was a great feeling to tell them that everything was covered by sponsors and individual donations. I'm very proud that the company I work for, MakaluMedia, was a sponsor of this event.

If you're curious about the event, check out the batch of photos generated at the event on Flickr, or check out other postings on Technorati.

Attend or Organize a BarCamp!
If you learn of a BarCamp in your area — go! It's a blast and you won't regret it. If there isn't one in your area, start one! You'll find fellow BarCampers very helpful, and full if ideas and information.

Lord of Chaos T-Shirt
You can see the story behind the Lord of Chaos T-Shirt I designed for Pete Prodoehl, and if you like itm pick up your own directly from GoodStorm:

Technorati Tags: barcampmilwaukee2, milwaukee

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October 5, 2007

iPod Touch: My New PDA

I've been Palm PDA-less for about a year and a half now, successfully switching to a hacked Moleskine Planner system for my personal calendar, tasks and notes.

In fact, the Moleskine has worked well in combination with my iPod nano, which provided access to my contacts in nearly unreadable 4pt text.

When the iPhone launched, I was quite interested, even though an iPhone doesn't suit my needs or budget. I was more interested in the iPhone as a mobile data device, with Safari, Mail and other features it offers.

Enter iPod touch
When Steve Jobs announced the iPod touch, my ears perked up. Now here was a device I could make use of, without a 2 year contract. It had the features I'd actually use: music and podcasts, contact info in a font I could actually read, WiFi and a mobile version of Safari, video play, and access to iCal calendars on the go.

So, this week, for my birthday I got an iPod touch, and so far I'm very impressed.

First Observations
Here are my first observations after having the touch a bit over 24 hours:

The size and thinness are amazing, compared to the Palm devices I used to carry round. it's a little disconcerting carrying a $400 iPod with a full glass screen in my pocket, so I'm working on a case and clear screen/body protectors.

Mobile Safari and WiFi are quite nice. I'm investigating mobile-specific sites for the iPhone and iPod touch, like PocketTweets and Mobile NY Times, picked up from Janet Tokerud's update on her iPhone. If you have sites to share, please share the links.

I've already been able to play audio at IT Conversations, and video from Google Video, so the browser is pretty handy and flexible for my needs.

I love the Contacts app, with super-readable text. I like that it syncs from my Address Book on the Mac. I like that I can add new contacts on the go. This was one of the most-missed feature of my Palm PDA.

It's handy to have my work and family calendars synced from the Mac as well. We've just setup a common family calendar with iCal on our Macs, Google Calendar on the web and SpanningSync to connect everything together. Having a mobile view of our shared calendars adds a nice access point. I wish I could add events, and hope this feature is added in a future software update.

Widescreen video is wonderful. I've moved a few videos over with iSquint and have been pleased with the results. Since my nano had no video capabilities, this is an interesting new option to explore. Now I can watch The IT Crowd wherever I want! :-)

Audio is great, though I'm having to re-orient myself a little to to the touch way of navigating through my music and podcasts. I think it's more a matter of me adapting to the new features the touch offers.

One thing I miss from the nano is the scroll wheel. I listen to podcasts and music when I drive, so having a physical wheel there for jumping tracks or adjusting or pausing the sound has been useful. Now I need to eyeball the iPod touch to make these changes. I've heard from friends there may be headphones or docks with this feature, so I need to do some research. If you have tips on this, let me know.

I'm trying to secure some things to review for the iPod touch in coming months. As I get hold of those and try them, look for reviews, to help out other touch owners.

Battery life seems OK, not extensive as my nano though. But hey, this device has a huge screen and WiFi, so I have to be realistic about my expectations coming from an iPod nano.

It's nowhere near as featured as a Palm PDA, and doesn't have near the tools that are available on the Palm OS, However, it has the items I need it to have. Over the years I've found that the right features in a tool or device are better for me than every possible feature, especially if I never use 80% of the features offered.

After 24 hours I'm impressed. We'll see what quirks arise after a few weeks. I'l be sure to post again after a month or so and let you all know how things are going in iPod touch land. :-)

September 22, 2007

BarCamp Milwaukee 2 T-Shirt Mockup

Yesterday I visited MJM Ventures, the company who is printing our BarCamp Milwaukee 2 T-Shirts. They kindly got a sample of a Gildan Sand colored shirt, so I could see the color and create a mockup.

Wow! What a perfect color! It's neutral with a hint of warmth and light enough to work with out dark gold and navy blue colors.

Today I created a quick ink-jet iron-on mockup of the BarCamp shirt, to figure out the correct size of the imprint and to make sure the colors would look good on the shirt's surface. I'e done many ink-jet iron ons before and they are a great way to envision shirt designs or make custom shirts.

I think the emblem is going to be enlarged a tad, and then I need to find a good Pantone gold that's not too greenish. For whatever reason, the dark gold we had been using has a tendency to go toward the green, when I want it to stay warm and rich.

Next week, the art gets finalized along with the sponsor list.

To secure one of the t-shirts, you must register to attend BarCamp Milwaukee 2 before Wednesday the 26th, when the art goes to the printer!

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September 17, 2007

iPhone in Europe!

Saul Hansell suggests that the iPhone is headed to Europe. If true, that's good news for my European friends who have been waiting to get their hands on an iPhone.

Carrier choice is unconfirmed, though reports suggest O2 in the UK, T-Mobile in Germany and Orange in France.

When I saw this quote from the Guardian article, I had to chuckle:

Throughout discussions over marketing the iPhone in Europe, Apple has played off the UK’s four main networks - O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone - against each other. All of them, at one stage, believed they had an exclusive deal for the British market.
As a result, many mobile phone company executives are unimpressed with the way the Californian computer group has conducted businesses this side of the Atlantic, although similar tactics were used in the US.

I find it hard to believe that the network execs would be surprised by a "play them against each other" tactic, especially since the same approach was used in the US — before the iPhone's launch and wild success.

Isn't this negotiation strategy 101?

And what does "believed" mean here? Are they suggesting Apple tricked them? Or some operators "believed" they had the deal locked up and didn't count on a more aggressive operator like O2 going even farther to win the deal?

I'm curious to see how the iPhone is received in Europe, where SMS and texting are more common. Will the touch screen be a liability, or will Europeans adapt to it?

Should be very interesting to watch! :-)

Update 2007-09-18
It's official: Apple chooses O2 for exclusive carrier in the UK:

iPhone is scheduled to go on sale on November 9 and will be sold exclusively in the UK through Apple’s retail and online stores, O2 and The Carphone Warehouse's retail and online stores.
iPhone will be available in an 8GB model for £269 (inc VAT) and will work with either a PC or Mac. Three new great value iPhone tariffs will be available from O2 starting at £35, which all include unlimited anytime, anywhere mobile data usage and, in a market first, free unlimited use of the UK’s largest single public Wi-Fi network, covering over 7,500 cafes, restaurants, airport lounges, pubs and other locations across the UK.

Nice touch to offer the WiFi coverage. Wonder how long until the software developers manage to unlock the phone for other UK carriers?

(via Daring Fireball)

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September 14, 2007

BarCamp Milwaukee 2

It's coming! BarCamp Milwaukee was so much fun in 2006, we're doing it again!

BarCamp Milwaukee 2 is set to happen on Saturday, October 13 and Sunday the 14th, 2007, at Schlitz Park Center. BarCamp is an "unconference" in that the people who attend are also the presenters who share expertise and passion with others.

BarCamps usually focus on technology, though at the Milwaukee event we want to encourage the discussion of creative culture and how to integrate new technologies to foster further growth.

We plan to have discussions on Creative Commons, which so often can seem hard to grasp. I look forward to hearing about this, so I can be better about applying CC licenses appropriately, and share my work with others who are interested.

I'm also giving a talk on Iterative Design at BarCamp, sharing some examples and getting a discussion going on how to practically apply principles of iteration to various forms of work, whether creative or otherwise.

So, come on down and read the Get Started page, so you can sign up and donate! Check out the Sessions, and Participants pages. If you're a press person or blogger, the Press Kit is a good place to get concise info on BarCamp Milwaukee.

If you sign up before September 26th, you get this cool T-Shirt, with beautiful illustration work by Jen Anne and design work by myself:

Get in on the fun and join us at BarCamp Milwaukee 2! :-)

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September 4, 2007

Palm Foleo is Dead

My buddy Michael Ashby shared the news with me that the Foleo is dead:

In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts.
To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market.

Maybe the iPhone launch and success had an impact? Maybe the adrenaline rush from an impending death has imparted a wonderful focus?

I was worried about Palm and the Foleo when it launched, so I'm happy to hear this news. But apparently not everyone is happy about the decision:

I know there will be disappointed folks who were looking forward to carrying a Foleo for all their mobile computing needs. I am certainly one of them.

Dissapointment for the few people who would actually purchase an oddball sorta-kinda-laptop-handheld-thingamabob, running an odd operating system, that is.

But never fear faithful few! The Foleo is not completely dead, just sleeping! There are already dreams to revive the Foleo, running the new platform from Palm:

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category.

I'm glad to see Palm has regained some much needed focus on their rapidly shrinking smartphone business. I hope they can shed excess distractions and come up with something new to delight their customers.

I really hope they can do it before Apple releases iPhone v2, v3, v4, v5...

Related Links
Foleo, we hardly knew ye (Michael Mace)

Permalink | | Palm | add to del.icio.us

August 29, 2007

Infomania

Today I came across an interesting paper on Infomania — the deadly combination of email overload and constant interruptions. It's a challenging piece, which really got me thinking about Infomania's impact in my work and personal life.

Written by Nathan Zeldes, David Sward and Sigal Louchheim, the paper describes the severe effects of Infomania on productivity and quality of life for knowledge workers, as well as its impact on businesses:

In this work, we show that this phenomenon places knowledge workers and managers worldwide in a chronic state of mental overload. It exacts a massive toll on employee productivity and causes significant personal harm, while organizations ultimately pay the price with extensive financial loss.

Lately, I've been much more aware of interruptions and how they work against my productivity. I've spent about a month setting up my new home office, trying to establish a regular work pattern after the move — It's been difficult. In this in-between state I can see how damaging interruptions can be.

Fortunately, my office and work patterns have now stabilized, and I'm eliminating interruptions and distractions. Even so, there are always temptations to allow interruptions to steal my focus.

Solving this problem would have a positive and immediate impact on organizational results, while restoring computer–based communications technology to its rightful role as promoter of personal and organizational effectiveness.

I have more recently felt the need to physically avoid my office on weekends and evenings. I just want to be somewhere else, so I can recharge for the next day's work.

It's not for a lack of loving what I do — design work, my clients, and the company I work for — there is something deep within me that yearns for separation.

Time away from the computer during the workday is refreshing. I'm fortunate that a large portion of my work is research, thinking and sketching with pencil and paper.

What about your situation?
Do you feel the pressure of Infomania at work, at home? Do you have established times away from technology for refreshment? Have a journal you can write, sketch and get away from technology in?

I recommend Reading the paper and pondering the evidence.

Thanks to Dave Gray for the Infomania link!

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June 30, 2007

iPhone Thoughts & Observations

The iPhone has landed.

Looks like a winner so far, even with its limitations and flaws. Let's be real, it's a v1.0 product so there will be limitations and flaws.

Overall, I think the iPhone is well balanced for a smartphone aimed at the mass market — I and that's important because I believe Apple isn't targeting only geeks with this device.

Personally I'm not getting an iPhone just yet, mostly because it's impractical for my lifestyle. I'm not mobile enough to make effective use of the thing, no matter how cool it is. :-)

I saw a CNet story about the iPhone's effect on Palm already:

Palm reports profit drop, expects iPhone effect

In that story (which doesn't bode well for Palm or the Treo) I had to chuckle at this quote from Palm Chief Executive Ed Colligan:

"They will have 30 days to return (iPhone) so we hope we'll benefit from that, if that happens" — Ed Colligan, Palm CEO

Riiiiiight! We'll benefit IF they return their iPhones?

That's all you've got Ed?

In the words of Jayne Cobb of Firefly, "I'm smelling a lot of IF coming off this plan!"

I think Palm is in trouble. Not that the Treo isn't good for what it is — but they were caught flat-footed. What do they have in response? Another Treo, this time in other pretty colors?

Or maybe a crippled pseudo-laptop thingamabob?

Yeah, I think Palm better get cracking quick on something revolutionary that customers will actually buy in this new iPhone influenced market, and not another re-hash of an the same-old solution from 1999.

The iPhone is not perfect, but it is re-shaping the entire wireless phone world, even if it's pushing competitors to respond to it.

iPhone Web Apps
I have a gut feeling that web-based iPhone apps are going to be huge. On par with the Palm app eco-system. Sure, the iPhone doesn't have a native API and may never have, but I think the next progression of Web 2.0 applications are bwoser apps for mobile devices (e.g. Safari).

Already we're seeing apps for the iPhone appear, like OneTrip and Quip and more are going to come. There's even iPhoney, an OS X-based app to test your iPhone apps.

Web developers and designers — this is your opportunity!

Related Links
Daring Fireball: Jon Gruber's Fist Impressions of the iPhone
iPhone User Guide (via Daring Fireball)
iPhone Dissasembled (via Daring Fireball)
The Talk Show Podcast: Dan Bejamin & Jon Gruber Talk iPhone (34 min)
Fake Steve Jobs Blog: Crack you up humor from a pseudo Steve. (Rated R language)
The Morning After - Scobelizer
Tech Ronin: First Person Report on my new iPhone
Derek Punsalan: A look at the iPhone, after all the ritz and glamor
37signals: Ta-Da List for iPhone
Geek With Laptop: Palm Pushes OS-II to 2008 (via Phil)

Permalink | | Palm | add to del.icio.us

June 22, 2007

My Podcast Interview on The Micro ISV Show

A few weeks ago, I was invited by author, micro-business owner and new MakaluMedia logo design client Bob Walsh, to be interviewed on Microsoft's The MicroISV Show (a podcast for software developers) with co-host Michael Lehman:

It's a brave new world for MicroISVs in which it's no longer enough to drag some controls onto a form and simply make sure they're lined up and the tab order is right. The mantra "form follows function" is becoming more and more important for developers as advent of Windows Vista, WPF and Silverlight once again change the expectations of how customers perceive software. You've got to "put your best face forward" and think about design of the user experience right from the beginning.
In this episode, Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh talk to Mike Rohde, designer and art director for MakaluMedia, about the changing role of design in software development and how and why MicroISVs must incorporate design thinking into their development process.

Listen to The Micro ISV Show #22 podcast:

• Putting your best face forward - The growing importance of design for MicroISVs
• Direct Podcast MP3 Link (Size: 36MB, Runtime: 40:13)

We had a great time! I had an opportunity to talk a bit about my views on design being more than window-dressing on applications, the importance of starting early with a designer, how to choose a designer, vector-based development tools and how they may effect developers and designers, and more.

Bob worked in questions about my creative process, asked how I generate so many sketch ideas, and even slipped in a mention of my Moleskine Planner Hack project.

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

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June 15, 2007

Friday Tidbits: Pudding, Journler & Northern Room

Here are a few Friday tidbits to share:

Ataraxis Pudding Launches
Pudding, a tool crearted by Michael Sica, launched last Friday. It's a web-based tool for sharing creative work with others. Pudding allows you to post images of your work in a private account, for clients and colleagues, to view and comment on. It comes in many flavors depending on your needs, free 30 day trial and a tour to see what Pudding can do.

Journler Gets 4.5 Mice from Macworld!
My friend Phil Dow's wornderful mac application Journler just received 4.5 mice from Macworld, in an August 2007 review. I've talked about the icon I designed and how I love the application — so it's very nice to see a great guy like Phil, seeing success and critical acclaim for the hard work he's invested in Journler.

Good Tunes: Northern Room
A few weeks ago I came across the local Milwaukee band Northern Room, via my good friend Joe Phillips. They have a great sound, which I quite like. I'd categorize their sound as similar to Snow Patrol, U2, Coldplay, and O.K. Go. Check out Northern Room on iTunes, Purevolume and SonicBids.

That's all — have a great weekend everyone!

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June 1, 2007

Panoramio (and logo) are acquired by Google

Congratulations to my friends Eduardo, Joaquín and José of Panoramio, in the recent Google acquisition of their startup!

From the Panoramio blog post on May 31st:

The integration of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth has been so successful since John Hanke suggested it that we see the acquisition of Panoramio as a natural consequence. We have tightened our relationship with Google Earth more and more in recent months, and at the end we decided to walk one step further. After so much work together, honestly, we couldn’t imagine a better scenario than selling Panoramio to Google.

I was honored to work with "the boyz" back in October 2005, when we created the Panoramio identity (along with two other identities after it, including Cursoo).

I'm very excited for the Panoramio team, and just as excited that the identity work for the project had a small part in helping the team get to the next level.

Congratulations guys! :-)

Permalink | | Logos | add to del.icio.us

May 30, 2007

Palm Foleo: Hit or Doomed Thingamabob?

Just saw today that Palm has released the Foleo, apparently that "other device category" Jeff Hawkins has been talking about for a few years now.

The Foleo (which is at this point an unreleased prototype) is a kind of pseudo sub-notebook thingamabob that enhances a Palm Treo.

Based on what scant technical info offered on the Palm site, the $499 Foleo has a 10" color screen and full-sized keyboard, which syncs via Bluetooth with a Treo for data (email, photos, files, etc.) and piggybacks off of the Treo's wireless connection for web surfing, or can do 802.11b WiFi. It's a full sized "companion" to a Treo and not much more — something like a prosthetic screen and keyboard. :-)

Some of my first questions about this device are:

• Does it operate without the Treo or other handheld? Can I do anything useful on this device without a Treo to get my net connection or to sync mail or photos?

• Who will buy this for $499? Notebooks and the iPhone are available or soon to be available for the same price. As far as I can tell, the Foleo can't stand alone — you must also have a Treo or other handheld device to make it fully useful.

My friend Hal reminded me that 3com produced a short-lived, co-dependent device called the Audrey. This stunted, home-focused thin client lasted all of 8 months before 3com pulled the plug. Is the Foleo the Audrey rehashed for a tiny niche of mobile device users?

If you already have a notebook computer, why would you need this pseudo-subnote-thingamabob? Are there really that many people who would do business travel with only a Treo and a Foleo?

I think the Foleo is going to be another short-lived niche of a niche product.

What do you think?

Michael Mace, a friend and a guy I highly respect, has weighed in on the Palm Foleo, and suggests it is a stealth mobile PC:

But I don't think the Foleo really is a "mobile companion." Back when I started to work at Palm (before the turn of the century) one of the old veterans of the company pulled me aside and passed along a little wisdom. "Michael," he told me, "Ya gotta think in terms of real estate. If you're in another device's real estate, you're competing with that device. Palm lives in your pocket; it competes with other things that go in your pocket. If you get bigger than the pocket, you're living in the briefcase, and you're competing with the notebook computer."
Foleo lives in the briefcase. It's displacing the notebook computer from your bag. I don't care what they call it, I don't care if Palm fully realizes it yet, but the fact is that Foleo's a notebook computer.

More to the point, Foleo is the most significant new consumer PC platform introduced in the US since the Macintosh. All you Linux heads who have been asking for a true consumer Linux PC, you finally got your wish.

I think if Foleo is truly a lightweight notebook that's open to developers, it has a chance. A chance. I'm still not sure if there is a place for a new device between a notebook and smartphone that feels like a stunted, limited, overpriced notebook. Feels like a 3rd wheel to me. But we'll see.

I wish Palm had spent all the time, money and effort refining the Treo or working on the next generation Treo, right now it seems to me they've squandered resources to release a device that's very 1999.

Permalink | | Palm | add to del.icio.us

March 1, 2007

BarCamp Madison 2007 + Followup

This Saturday, March 3rd, I'm heading one hour west to attend BarCamp Madison, in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. I had such a great time last fall at BarCamp Milwaukee 2006, going to this un-conference made sense.

What's BarCamp Madison?

BarCampMadison 2007 is an ad-hoc gathering of high-tech enthusiasts born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Participants work together and try to create something exciting by being in close proximity to lots of smart people. Each person contributes in some way by leading discussions, demos, asking a question, or volunteering. Read about the first BarCamp in WIRED or news.com.com

You can read about my BarCamp Milwaukee 2006 experience to get a feel for what the event is like. It's a relaxed, friendly people-oriented environment, where techies, artists, hackers and plain ol' people hang out to share and discuss ideas.

Fellow members of Web414 (Milwaukee's Web Community) will be there, including über-hacker Pete Prodoehl. Of course half the fun of BarCamp is meeting and talking to new people. :-)

If you're attending BarCamp Madison, drop me a line and let's meet.

Followup Notes: March 9, 2007
Had a great time at BarCamp Madison, meeting several new friends and learning new things. I had lunch with Tim Bailen at a local Nepali restaurant (yum), hung out with Pete Prodoehl and Ashley Dryden, did a Flat World session with Kevin Ciesielski and met Matthew Pickard with whom I discussed print and web design.

Most inspiring was Sean Johnson's How Not to Burn Your Business to the Ground session, sharing his rules for good business. Even the drive there and back was good for some podcast listening, so it was all good.

Permalink | | Technology | add to del.icio.us

February 26, 2007

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days Review

A few weeks ago I received a nice surprise from Apress books: a review copy of Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston.

This 456 page book is a collection of in-depth interviews with the founders of many high-tech startups, like Apple, PayPal, Adobe, Flickr, Six Apart, Blogger, Craigslist, Fog Creek Software, ArsDigita, 37signals and more.

I'm a little over halfway through the book, and have already thoroughly enjoyed the interviews I've read. Especially interesting to me were interviews with Mena Trott of Six Apart, and Evan Williams of Blogger, Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us, Steve Wozniak of Apple, and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, since I've used products they've created.

Jessica asked good, open-ended questions, then let the founders speak freely, for very in-depth, detailed replies. I loved reading Steve Wozniak's interview, which is available in its entirety at the Founders at Work site, along with the full interview of Fog Creek Software's Joel Spolsky. This is a good way to see the depth and style of the interviews featured in the book.

Importance of Flexibility
As I read through the interviews, a common thread emerged — that each of the founders benefitted by remaining flexible and open to change. In many cases, the products which became blockbusters for these startups were internal tools, like Blogger, Basecamp, FogBugz, and Flickr.

With Blogger, Evan Williams and his team had a "real" application in Pyra, when their internal note capturing tool, Blogger, exploded in popularity and forced the team to shift. In Flickr's case, Caterina Fake's team was developing an online game, when they found their social photo tool Flickr was taking off. They reluctantly switched to Flickr, saw it grow and eventually sold it to Yahoo. In each these cases, shifting away from the original product proved quite difficult, though in the end, the choice to shift paid off tremendously for each of the founders.

There were some personal projects, created to fulfill the founders' needs, which turned into popular blockbusters, such as Steve Wozniak's Apple I, Craig Newmark's Craigslist and Joshua Schacter's del.icio.us. In these stories, the products were created because of a passion and a need to fulfill the creator's vision for a tool or service, which in the end became very profitable products.

In other cases the blockbuster products were quite different than the founder's original business plans. For PayPal, the company began as a PDA-centric money exchange utility, which shifted to a web-based money exchange utility when eBay users begged for the service. For Adobe's founders, they intended on creating a complete hardware/software system for publishing, until two potential customers begged for the software which became Adobe Postscript.

Present in each of the stories is that thread of flexibility — to not be too tied to your idea of what will work when the signs are leading elsewhere. I found this fascinating, because so often I've had the idea that every great product was planned that way from the start. Many times this approach seemed to be the exception not the rule.

Sharing Hard Times
In the interviews, I appreciated hearing about the "hard times" from each of the founders. it's natural to think that successful people just breeze through without a scratch — when in reality each of these founders faced tough choices, challenges and in some cases, very hard times. Phillip Greenspun's account of the demise of his company ArsDigita was an eye-opener, as was Evan William's revelation of the tough times he went through founding Blogger.

I'm enjoying Founders at Work, and I know it's a great book, because I can't wait to read the next interview. Reading these founders' stories is encouraging in a way that a step-by-step "1-2-3" book isn't. In the hearing of others' stories, I can relate to my own story and apply lessons these founders can share in my own life.

If you have an interest in tech startups, fascinating stories from many interesting people, Founders at Work is a great read. Who knows, maybe the stories shared in this book will help ignite the passion of technology's next founders.

Thanks to Pete and the kind folks at Apress for the opportunity to read, review and share my thoughts on this excellent book.

Permalink | | Books | add to del.icio.us

January 9, 2007

iPhone Rockin' the World

I'm right now spending my lunch break watching the live Macworld Keynote blogging at Engadget, chatting with my good pal Michael Ashby about the iPhone. We are both in shock (in a good way).

The iPhone is a smartphone running some version of Mac OS X, complete with a full web browser (Safari) what look like Widgets, and apps on the device far beyond any mobile phone apps out there.

Watching the Steve Jobs keynote unfold, we both agree that this announcement of the iPhone is big — really big. So big that it could impact nearly every aspect the tech world — mobile phones, smartphones, phone service carriers, PDAs, MP3 players, computers, Mac software developers, and web-based software developers... and probably others I haven't thought of.

From the Engadget live blog:

We've been pushing the state of the art in every facet of this design. We've got the multi-touch screen, miniaturization, OS X in a mobile device, precision enclosures, three advanced sensors, desktop class applications, and the widescreen video iPod. We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them."

This is the kind of device I would be compelled to carry, and I've more or less stepped off the PDA bandwagon last year. It's looking that cool and useful.

This is going to be very, very big.

Amazing! Conan O'Brien gives us a sneak peek of everything the iPhone can do! :-)

Related Links:
The Ultimate iPhone FAQ (David Pogue, NYT)
Cingular's iPhone Signup Page
Apple Unveils iPhone (Macworld)
iPhone a 'wake-up call' for the industry (Macworld)
Does the iPhone hit the spot? (CNET)
Investors dump RIM as Apple launches iPhone (Washington Post)
First iPhone Pics (engadget)
Raw commentary on the iPhone announcement (Michael Mace)
Apple's iPhone: That isn't a phone, it's a PDA done right (Michael Mace)
Impact of the Apple iPhone (Michael Mace)
Apple aims to shake up cell phone industry (San Jose Mercury News)
Top 5 Worst Things About The iPhone (Wired Gadget Lab)
iPhone: The Newton's Revenge (Wired Cult of Mac)
The Apple iPhone (Kottke.org)
Apple's New Calling: The iPhone (Time)
iPhone: The Most Revolutionary Device Since 1984 (JeffCroft.com)
iPhone Not Touchy Feely (37signals)
iPhone and the End of PC Era (Om Malik)
The iWipe
You could call iPhone perfect (Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times)

Image via Apple.

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October 21, 2006

Scrybe: Emerging Online Organizer

Just saw this tool mentioned by Robert Scoble, and had to share it — it's called Scrybe and it looks like a pretty amazing web-based organization tool. It's too hard to easily describe, so instead, check out the video:

I've already signed up to be a beta tester for the October 2006 launch. You can do the same at the link at the base of the Scrybe page.

Check out the Flickr Photo page, which features a Hipster PDA-like printout of your latest data, called PocketSync.

Wonder if they will offer sync to mobile devices?

Very interesting stuff.

Permalink | | Technology | add to del.icio.us

October 3, 2006

The BarCamp Milwaukee Experience

On Saturday, I headed dowtown to BucketWorks for BarCamp Milwaukee, not knowing what to expect. The sessions on the website looked great, but pixels and reality can often be quite different.

I was not disappointed. In fact, I was very impressed with the entire event, enjoying the BucketWorks space, meeting new and interesting people, enjoying challenging discussions, sharing my passions and learning new things.

Settling In
I arrived at BucketWorks around 2pm, and was welcomed by organizer Bob Waldron at the door. He checked me in and directed me to the schedule and main meeting area. BucketWorks occupies one floor in an old printing warehouse, with wide open spaces, heavy duty beams and old wooden floors.

The space has a warm, lived-in, industrial feel which I liked very much. BucketWorks has a nice mix of both large meeting areas and small, intimate rooms, perfect for the mix of sessions on tap for the day.

Sessions were already running when I arrived, so after orientation to the space and a glance at the low-tech schedule board, I dropped into a gadget roundtable with Pete Prodoehl, Jordan Arentsen and abut 8 other guys. Pete had an impressive collection of gadgets, I brought my Dana Wireless and blew several guys away when they realized it could run a browser, email client, a terminal app, IRC client and IM client.

The Flat World Roundtable Session
My first session of the day was a roundtable on the topic of Flat World, and its impact on society, business and culture. At first I was a little concerned as only Jordan and John December, my cohorts in the session, were in the conference room. Campers slowly filtered in, taking their seats around the long oval table. When the session started, there were roughly 15 campers participating the session.

I shared My Unusual Work Life to kick off the session, then discussion ranged across many aspects of the flat world and Thomas L. Friedman's book, The World is Flat. Some highlights of the discussion: the benefits and drawbacks of working remotely for global clients, and how integral place, people and our preferred culture determine where we decide to live. I thought it was interesting that now some workers can choose the place they want to live and work, while having connections to other distant people and places.

We also touched on the impact of English on the flattening world, whether machine translation would be realistic in 50 years time, debating network access as a utility, the digital divide being spawned by the flat world, how 3rd world countries might enter into the flat world, and whether flattening was good or bad.

Of all the sessions I most enjoyed this one, because of the large group, varied ideas and positions from very smart people in attendance. I was reminded how fun it is to get a good thought-provoking discussion going with a group of passionate people.

Moleskine Custom Planner Hack Demo
While this session was small, with Jordan and Dave Bost attending. A few others mentioned being interested up unavailable to attend (now I need to schedule some one-on-one demos!). it was a nice opportunity to have a more intimate discussion with Dave, who has adopted Getting Things Done and was looking for an alternative approach to managing things in his life.

I showed Dave what a Moleskine was, explained how I moved from a Palm to a custom-made weekly Moleskine planner and discussed the system and how it was working out for me.

Afterwards, Jordan and I had a chance to learn more about Dave's move from developer to evangelist for Microsoft, and discuss the new XAML and Windows Presentation Foundation. It was a nice time to share and discuss ideas away from the crowds.

Logo Design Process Presentation
Immediately after my Moleskine demo, I was up in the meeting room again for the my Logo Design Process presentation. Jordan and I had to locate a DVI to VGA adapter from Scott Reynen, then fiddle with an old projector before I could begin.

I shared my collaborative, sketch-based process with 7 campers, and had a nice Q&A and discussion time following the presentation. All of the guys had interesting questions for me about the process, and through them I came to realize how fortunate I've been to have such great logo clients.

Again, a few people I knew were unable to attend, so I gave Phil Gerbyshak a personal demo beforehand, and will likely present again at the next Milwaukee Web Designer's Meetup in October. I was very encouraged by the interest in my process, and I quite enjoyed sharing my passion for logo design.

For those interested, I've posted my PDF presentation online for download:

Mike Rohde's Logo Design Process (9.2MB Acrobat PDF).

RSS Feed Uses & Future Ideas
When my session was complete, Jeremie Miller of Jabber fame took over, heading the discussion into RSS and Atom feed territory. He asked our opinions of secured and signed RSS ffeds for viewing sensitive documents (like bank statements), we discussed current interesting RSS feed uses and how many feeds we each followed. Like good geeks, we veered into other territory at the end: del.icio.us vs. other social bookmark tools and various semi-related topics. :-)

Mini-Mash Pit
My final session of the night was Pete Prodoehl's mini-mash pit session, talking about interesting mashups of various services with open APIs. By this time I was starting to loose steam, even though the discussion was quite interesting. At 12:20 the guys were ready to start coding a mashup, so I packed up my gear and headed home for some sleep. :-)

Meeting Cool Campers
I appreciated the opportunity to re-connect with people I knew: Pete Prodoehl, Phil Gerbyshak, Jordan Arentsen, Chad Lawson, Ashley Dryden and Juan Valencia. I also enjoyed meeting new, interesting people like Pehr Anderson, Todd Clausen, Kevin Ciesielski, Dave Bost, Ken Meltsner, Jeremie Miller, Scott Reynen, Tegan Dowling, Clint Laskowski, and Jason Tertadian (to name a few).

I think this aspect of BarCamp was my favorite part: seeing other people interested in gathering and sharing ideas on technology and life. Since I'm a pretty social person, meeting others who share similar passions or are keen on hearing about mine always gets me stoked up.

Constructive Criticism
Of course, there were a few things I felt could be improved for the next round:

1. Reduce amount of sessions happening at the same time. I felt torn in several cases over which event to follow, and heard from several people who wanted to be in my logo design presentation but had chosen another session. I don't know if fewer sessions, fewer tracks or spreading them out over the full span is a solution for this.

2. Setup a public address system. I think it would have been helpful to have some way for organizers to announce things in all of the session areas so everyone could be on the same page.

3. Better WiFi support. The network was pretty flaky and I do know it was being hammered pretty hard — but for some of the demos a network connection was critical.

4. Coffee as well as sodas and water for the evening sessions. At one point in the mashup session I smelled brewing coffee and it drove me crazy to not locate it. I may bring my own espresso machine and brewing gear next year to help those who choose coffee over sodas for caffeine. :-)

5. Consider a Friday night through Saturday Midnight timeframe. I would have loved to start on a Friday night with a dinner together somewhere and the chance to get a few sessions in afterwards, then go the full day Saturday with more sessions.

Hopefully these ideas are helpful for BarCampMilwaukee 2.0.

Final Notes
I think BarCampMilwaukee was a great success, thanks to the tireless efforts of guys like Pete Prodoehl, Bob & Luke Waldron, the BucketWorks people and many others. Thanks to you all for putting on a great un-conference for Milwaukee — I can't wait for BarCampMilwaukee 2.0!

Related Links:
BarCampMilwaukee on Flickr

Technorati Tags: barcampmilwaukee mikerohde, rohdesign

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September 29, 2006

BarCamp Milwaukee 2006 is Tomorrow!

I can't believe the weekend is actually here — BarCampMilwaukee kicks off Saturday September 30th through Sunday October 1st, 2006, at Bucketworks 1319 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

I'm looking forward to meeting many other interesting Milwaukee people, since much of this event is geared around creating a local community and sharing ideas with each other. I'm very excited about sharing on my logo design process, demoing how to create a custom Moleskine planner and facilitating a round table on working remotely with global clients and colleagues.

There are many other sessions being presented, ranging from videoblogging, sharing gadgets and self-publishing, to Drupal, Linux and Thermonuclear Fusion!

If you're near the Milwaukee area and are looking for a way to connect with other technical people, sign up at the Barcamp Milwaukee's Camper page, find a way to get involved and come on down! It's not too late! :-)

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September 13, 2006

Blogging Demystified: Simply Digital Podcast Episode 5

If you enjoy reading blogs but aren't sure you have the skills to create, write or manage one? Think again!

Michael Ashby and Analog Dave of the Simply Digital Podcast focus on Weblogs in episode 5 of their podcast on technology for regular people.

Mike and Dave describe what blogs are, why you might want to start one and some of the easiest and cheapest places to get into blogging.

Check it out: Simply Digital Episode 5: Weblogs (28:57)

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June 29, 2006

Thoughts on Continuous Partial Attention

This week I came across the podcast Attention: The *Real* Aphrodisiac which challenged me about the Continuous Partial Attention in my own life.

The talk, from the 2006 Emerging Technology Conference, was given by Linda Stone, formerly of Apple and Microsoft. She begins the talk asking questions of the audience about their experiences in an Anywhere, Anytime, Anyplace, Always-On lifestyle:

1. When people talk to me I really pay attention.
2. When people talk to me I pay partial attention so I can be aware of other things coming up (my phone, blackberry, other people, etc.)

3. The way I currently use computer and communications technology improves my quality of life.

4. My quality of life is often compromised by technology.

5. Technology sets me free.

6. Technology enslaves me.

Pretty interesting questions for anyone living with technology.

Linda coined the phrase Continuous Partial Attention back in the 90s, as she saw this new type of lifestyle emerging in the high tech sector.

Continuous Partial Attention is different than multi-tasking, where the motivation is productivity: giving equal attention to many activities.

Continuous Partial Attention's motivation: being a live node on the network, gaining meaning from the network, being ready for new opportunities at any moment.

But there is a problem. In Linda's experience, people of various ages living this way, share with her a desire for strategies to deal with an always on lifestyle. They want ways to deal with the flood, overload, and over-stimulation of being a live node on the network. I love this quote:

"But this always on, anytime, anywhere, anyplace era has has created an artificial sense of constant crisis. The adrenalized fight or flight mechanism kicks in.
It's great when we're being chased by tigers. How many of those 500 emails a day is a tiger? Or are they mostly mice?

Is everything really such an emergency?

Our way of using the current set of technologies would have us believe it is."

24/7 lifestyles are great, until you can't turn off the fire-hose. We need limits, natural cycles and downtime, to deal with ever-increasing demands and noise we need to continuously filter.

Rather than a continuous barrage of information, input and connections, we need time to focus, to find purpose, to understand the meaning and wisdom from the constant noise all around us.

Check out Attention: The *Real* Aphrodisiac — It's well worth the 24 minutes.

Related Links:
The Power Of Focus by Michael Ashby

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November 8, 2005

Stas Kovalenko: IT Guy

stas My good friend Stas Kovalenko, a visitor in the US from Kyrgyzstan, mentioned last week he's hunting for an IT job. I thought it'd be interesting and fun to mention Stas on my blog, along with his resumé.

Stas is a really great guy — funny and fun-loving, curious about technology and just a really nice guy to hang with. He's interested in all sorts of technology, particularly Linux and Unix and has a great perspective visitor from Kyrgyzstan, hoping to stay here and make a life for himself in the US.

Stas just earned his Associate degree at Waukesha County Technical College as an IT Network Specialist, and worked for 5 months at WCTC as a lab assistant, doing troubleshooting, anti-virus updates and networked printer support. He's also had experience doing a computer network support internship at the college, doing all sorts of IT tasks (check out his resumé 64k PDF).

If you happen to have a position or project work for Stas, I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. Stas can be reached directly at skovalenko@sbcglobal.net if you're interested in saying hello.

Technorati Tags: IT, job, linux, milwuakee, resume, technology, unix

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September 15, 2005

Analog vs. Digital PDA Thoughts

Hipster-Cover Ever since coming across the original HipsterPDA idea several months ago, I've been experimenting with integration of analog and digital methods of idea capture, task management and information storage. While I've not quite settled all of the details of the system, I thought it might be interesting to record my thoughts and share details — in case it might be helpful to others.

Moleskines
I still use and love my Moleskines, mainly for capturing sketches and more permanent, thought-through ideas. I use a pocket sketchbook for sketches, pocket grid book for recording fleshed out ideas, and a pocket lined book for book notes.

For a few weeks I even played with a pocket 2005 daily diary, but the combination of size (it's 3/4“ thick) and worries about data loss of personal and work info leaned me back toward my Palm Zire. However, I am again pondering a pocket 2006 weekly diary just for managing my personal appointments, which are really quite simple.

HispterPDA
Hipster-Spread As for 3x5 cards and the HipsterPDA, I've been slowly using this method for personal use and am enjoying the experience immensely. I find myself capturing more ideas and tasks with pen and cards than ever with the Palm — maybe this is due to my long history with pen and paper before integrating a PalmPilot into my life.

I happened across an old Day-Timer pocket leather case that fits 3x5 cards perfectly, and have taken to carrying 2 3x5 stacks and a G2 pen inside of it (see the detailed pics below). I keep a stack of blank cards on the right, for capturing ideas and my ordered stack of cards on the left (to-dos, notes, etc.). The tiny pen holder fits the clip of a G2 perfectly!

While this setup works for personal info, I do occasionally capture ideas for work — those are integrated into the Mac-based system I have going which uses OmniOutliner Pro for tasks and iCal for tracking my billable time.

Palm Zire 72
What about the Palm? Well, I still use and like my Zire 72 — but it has become much less of a critical tool lately. The main uses of my Zire are as an contact list, mobile secured info manager (SplashID) e-book, iSilo-ed website and Bible reading, a little WiFi surfing and email, MP3 music playing, recipe storage and occasional photo and movie captures. For these tasks it works well, but as these are not critical, it's sometimes left at home in favor of the HipsterPDA or even just my pre-pay phone.

I've found that I rarely managed work data with the Palm, because I can do so directly on the Mac (which I am at 98% of the time). I've even reduced my personal PIM use of the Zire to the address book and keeping a few recipes handy. Most of my other Palm uses are reading, listening, reference or photo/movie capture activities.

Obviously paper and pen can't replace many of these features, so I do intend to keep using the Palm — just not as fully as I once had. I'm just finding the maintenance of the sync and backup more of a burden than they are worth for personal use... hence my thought to move to a Moleskine weekly journal for my basic activity management.

General Thoughts
I've not fully adapted the system just yet — it's still in flux as I figure it out. I'm not giving up digital tools — just being realistic about the places where analog and digital options fit best. If I come to a more settled point I may post about that and share additional ideas that I've noted along the way.

What I am finding is a craving for simplicity, and the Palm has lost a little of this for me. I can write pretty quickly in Graffiti classic, but it's still no match for pen on paper. There is just the slightest mental drag involved in Palm data entry, which I don't feel with pen and paper. Maybe that's the reason for my decreased use of the Palm for data entry.

Whatever it is, I can look back and see a definite reduction in my use and interest in digital PDAs. I do still like these devices, and use them, but am coming to the point where their required care and feeding seems more a burden than ever before.

If you have suggestions, ideas, thoughts or want to share your own experiences blending analog and digital tools into your own life, please leave a comment. It's always great to learn from the readers and visitors to this blog. :-)

Technorati Tags: hipsterpda, moleskine, palm, simplicity

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November 25, 2004

Future of Newspapers & Magazines

Will newspapers die off with the current batch of newspaper readers? That seems to be the suggestion Newspapers Should Really Worry at Wired News. Polling of younger news consumers revealed that while they're well-read and informed, they don't look to single monolithic sources, like a newspapers or a magazine for news and information as the previous generation did. Further, they don't even rely on the paper editions of the newspapers they do read bits and pieces from.

Young people just aren't interested in reading newspapers and print magazines. In fact, according to Washington City Paper, The Washington Post organized a series of six focus groups in September to determine why the paper was having so much trouble attracting younger readers. You see, daily circulation, which had been holding firm at 770,000 subscribers for the last few years, fell more than 6 percent to about 720,100 by June 2004, with the paper losing 4,000 paying subscribers every month.
Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn't accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I'm not making this up): They didn't like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses.

I thought the comment about newspapers stacking up was enlightening, because I see it every week at our house — and we only get the Sunday paper!

I don't fall into the age range of 18-34, but I do feel I agree with the general sentiment of the age group who were polled. I now rely on NetNewsWire to grab all sorts of web-based RSS sources I've discovered over the past year, especially now that it has a web browser built in. Occasionally I'll visit a few websites in Safari directly, but I find myself moving to NetNewsWire more and more.

In addition to using my Mac for reading, I convert several favorite news and weblogs via iSiloX each day, which are installed to my Tungsten E for late evening reading. This allows me to read my favorite news and commentary sources away from my home office. Whether that's the living room, bedroom or the cafe, I like having this portable source of news because after spending the day on my Powerbook, it's nice to step away and yet keep up on the latest at the same time.

As for newspapers — We do happen to receive Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Sunday edition, mainly for the coupons. I'll occasionally read bits and pieces, or scan the main and Metro sections, but by no means do I read the Sunday paper from cover to cover. Interestingly enough, I sync the mobile edition of the Journal-Sentinel to my Tungsten E, which features top local stories.

The only exception for me is Wired Magazine. While I can wait for articles to be released slowly online for free, I actually enjoy the paper edition of Wired. I nearly let my subscription lapse earlier in the year, but now I'm very glad I hadn't, because I do enjoy the articles and the physical magazine for reading away from the Mac or my Palm.

There are certainly advantages to reading electronic text, however having the physical book can be useful too. It's a bit like the paperless office concept — great in theory, but in reality, it's slow in coming, because people still need paper now and then. I believe paper forms of news and information do have a place, though I see it becoming more of a niche as the electronic generation grows up.

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on reading of news and articles. Do you still enjoy the paper with your morning coffee? Are you a hard-core e-reader? Or, do you prefer a mix of both paper and electronic information like me?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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October 25, 2004

Treo 650 Thoughts

Now that the PalmOne Treo 650 is official, I wanted to share a few thoughts.

I should start out with the disclaimer that I don't own a "smartphone" device and probably will not buy the Treo 650, though as a PDA and mobile phone user, I certainly have opinions about converged devices.

That's not to say I would never consider a Treo 650. It's just that since I spend most of my time at home, working or relaxing, I've no urgent need for a converged device. If I worked away from home and spent more time in a mobile state, a combo device might be more attractive.

Form Factor
First off, I think PalmOne has a good handle on the size of the device and screen. I see that the Treo 650 retains the 600's form factor, which is a plus. Personally, I prefer a phone that's small enough to be unobtrusive, but large enough that it's proportional to my head for talking. It should also have a readable screen. While ultra-tiny phones do have their fans and uses, I'm a small-to-regular-phone kinda guy.

Screen
I think the screen resolution is a plus, though probably a requirement now, more than an option for PalmOne. I'm a firm believer in hi-res, especially after spending time this weekend reading Quicksilver on my Tungsten E. I can't believe how pleasant it is to read ebooks on a high-res device.

Thumbboard
From what I hear, the Treo 600 thumb-board was a winner. The Treo 650 builds on this success with a curved layout. I don't know if PalmOne's deal with Blackberry has anything to do with the curvyness, though it visually looks more organic and useful. I still recall my initial resistance to the thumbboard on a Treo 180 I tried briefly, and how by the end of my month-long test, I missed the thumboard. Not everyone likes the thumboard, but, for most it's a nice option, once they adapt.

Battery
Finally a device with a removable battery! I feel this should be de-facto on PalmOne devices, though I do believe low-end devices will not see this option, simply because it requires more engineering time and manufacturing quality control. But I can hope. I don't know how well the 650's battery life will compare to the 600, but it better at least match the 600 if not improve upon it. We'll have to wait and see.

Bluetooth
Bluetooth, finally! I'm glad to see Bluetooth in the 650. I think this will continue in popularity, as long as clueless, controlling carriers don't switch it off. Bluetooth should help the Treo in Europe, where it is very popular, and here in the States, where it's gaining a following.

WiFi (or lack therof)
I am, however, very bummed about the lack of built in WiFi. I suspect it to do with the launch deadline, and the carriers, who see WiFi as a threat to their own wireless services. But it's even worse, since PalmOne's own WiFi card will not work in the Treo 650. On top of that, I suspect PalmOne has no impetus to make it work, because of carrier pressure to the contrary. Hopefully PalmOne's users will goad them into offering a driver patch so the WiFi card will work.

This is a real shame, because WiFi, in combination with other wireless technologies is a happening technology. I think PalmOne has missed a big opportunity here. I'll just say this — when one of your chief competitors (cough, Microsoft) is adding WiFi as a basic feature to most all their devices, you should take notice. Enuf said.

Camera
Too bad about the low-res camera. I hear it can take a better quality photos, even so, the 650 is already trailing far behind dumbphones with 1.3 MP onboard cameras. Guess that's being saved for the Treo 700, but by then common dumbphones will have 3.0 MP cameras onboard. Let's go here, PalmOne!

RAM
The 32MB RAM onboard seems pretty paltry, especially on the heels of the very well stocked Tungsten T5. I think a smartphone user needs as much RAM as a T5 user, if not more. If you figure that Treo owners are on the road constantly, lots-o-RAM would like a useful feature, no? RAM is quite cheap now, so c'mon PalmOne, give us more RAM!

Overall
In general, I think the Treo 650 is a positive evolutionary step up from the Treo 600, which was already a nice device. PalmOne's old Handspring folk have been at this smartphone thing for a long time, and even as far back as the Treo 180s, "get it" about integration of the PDA and phone functions.

Too bad about the misses on lack of WiFi, wimpy RAM and the cheesy camera. Unfortunately, the Treo 650 doesn't live in a vacuum, and these flaws will count against it. How much they will count against the 650? We'll see.

Part of the equation lies in the hands of buyers, but most lies in the hands of carriers, who value money and control. If the 650 can continue build on the success of the 600 and become popular, it could build a lead against Microsoft and Symbian/Nokia. But I think it is an uphill battle.

PalmOne's dream scenario: users making the Treo 650 popular in the same way the Apple iPod has its gained dedicated fans. With enough user-directed momentum, maybe the Treo can gather steam and hold off its competitors long enough for the next revision. Or maybe not.

As is the case with things hi-tech, we'll have to wait and see. The smartphone world is a complex and not always logical place, so it ought to be fun to watch. ;-)

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October 6, 2004

The Long Tail

I've been rewarded with excellent articles in Wired magazine, after nearly letting my subscription lapse earlier this year. That one year subscription is looking better every month!

This month's excellent Wired article is called The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson. The gist of the article is this: niche entertainment can now compete with mainstream hits, because there already is, or will be, no difference in costs to store or deliver either niche, or hit entertainment.

Here's a quote from the heart of the article:

To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.
Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a "power law" demand curve that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.

The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail.

If you're at all interested in alternative, niche products becoming more and more accessible, I highly recommend reading The Long Tail.

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September 17, 2004

Desire for the "New Thing"

Over at PDA 24/7, I've been following some excellent articles by Neil Brown about PDAs and technology. Yesterday, I read his article, entitled Is it time for a change? I found it interesting to read Neil's comments about Palm OS and being nearly enticed away by Pocket PC.

Now, most of you know that I prefer Palm OS, but PPC devices certainly do have nice features. As always it really comes down to what you want to do and what you truly need in a device. However, this bit in the article caught my eye:

It's weird; I have an incredibly nice PDA, a good range of useful software, and I make use of it every day. And yet something inside me wants to talk a walk into the abyss, to find and utilise something new. And probably get used to it crashing.

It's interesting because Neil nails something I've seen in myself from time to time — a desire for the "New Thing". By that I mean I have this insatiable desire to try new things all the time, particularly Mac software and gadgets. However, over time I've been learning to resist this desire more and more.

Why? Well, I'm learning that I need to be much more selective about what I choose to explore in new software and hardware. What I've found is, new software, while often cool, takes more time to learn and fiddle with than tried and true software I'm already using. I try instead to evaluate the new features against "fiddle factor" before I install a flashy new app or run an upgrade.

As for hardware, it's similar. I now have a Tungsten E, and don't much mess with new software anymore — I've spent enough time gathering solid apps like Wordsmith, iSilo, DocumentsToGo, e*Mail and many others, and see no huge need to explore at the moment. I probably don't even have the latest versions, because what I have in place works so well. And, I don't crash.

I still remember years ago, when I used Mac OS 8. Back then, I'd encounter frequent crashes (multiple times daily) and problems with my Mac. I became so frustrated, that I imposed a ban on installing any new or upgraded software, unless it was critical. A few days in, I was surprised to find crashes had lessened greatly. In fact, I'm still careful about software on my Mac.

Now, I don't mean to say that I'm uninterested in new software — quite the contrary! If something compelling comes along, I will still be interested. It's in my nature to be interested in new software or hardware. However, I'll certainly apply the of features vs. fiddle formula in the decision.

I think the antidote to the "new Thing" bug is to put new things into perspective. Be real about the advantages measured against the true value you'll get in return. Most of all, be real about the disruption the new thing will have on your life and normal processes.

Hey, have a great weekend everyone!

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September 16, 2004

Hipster PDAs, Work Diary Observations & a To Do Concept

Today, I came across an interesting post at 43 Folders, about the Hipster PDA, a high tech PDA replacement made from 3x5 note cards. The Hipster PDA is a bunch of cards are held together with binder clips. Now, I've made use of note cards for speeches in the past, but have never considered them for a PDA replacement — interesting idea. I especially love the idea of "beaming" 3x5 cards to other Hispter PDA users! ;-)

My only problem with the system is the same one I have with any paper-based system: how do make a backup? I suppose note cards are easy enough to flop on a photocopier, but in reality, because making photocopies is a hassle, it would rarely (if ever) happen. So, If you lose one or the whole stack of your note cards, you're sunk. This is the single reason why I prefer a Mac or Palm based system for my project notes, schedule and contacts.

Work Diary Update
This issue was also at the very center of my work diary concept. I had considered a paper-based system, but felt that backup and searching capabilities of computer-based notes were more reliable and useful. In fact, for the past few weeks I've been using an RTF document to capture my work-related thoughts and ideas. My work diary also syncs to the Palm (for backup and occasional remote reading and editing).

I'm pleased to report that my work diary is functioning very well — even better than expected. I'm capturing many ideas that would have normally been lost, and and am writing out thoughts which have often turned into very useful project notes or emails.

One useful diary feature I hadn't envisioned, was the capture of interesting websites I encounter. I've already noted several good CSS and web references and links to promising software products relative to my work. I like having the diary sync to my Tungsten E for viewing purposes — though I must admit, not much editing is happening on the Palm. Because I mainly work at my Mac all day long, that's just where diary entry and editing happens.

Related To-Do Concept
Because of the Diary's success, I'm going to test out a single text document for To-Do management. This idea also sprouted from a discussion had with my friend Lorenz Szabo, and a link to notes on a Danny O'Brien Lifehacks talk, about the use of plain text documents for managing To-Do lists (captured by Cory Doctorow). The idea is simple — stop fiddling with To-Do applications and putting your To-Dos and in a single text file that's managed manually. So, I've created my To-Do list today, and I'll see how well it works for several weeks. Of course I'll report back here on how it's working (or not) for me.

As always, feel free to leave suggestions or ideas about these ideas in the comments area!

Update: This morning, I paid a visit to Danny O'Brien's Lifehacks Wiki, through which I stumbled upon the C2 Self Improivement Patterns Wiki. Here, I found two relevant documents about Log Books and Electronic Log Books, both in the vein of the work diary idea. There is also a discussion here, about To-Do lists, and The Power of Plain Text. Interesting stuff.

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August 12, 2004

Bad Battery Day

Zoop.

The screen went black on my Titanium Powerbook, which is not unusual, except I'd awakened the Powerbook just 10 minutes before the battery died. Ugh.

No problem! I'll just get the AC adapter from my bag, plug in and I'll be good to go... wha? Where's the adapter? It's at home, on my desk. Double ugh.

Worse yet, I was at a local cafe, coffee in hand, awash in a virtual sea of free WiFi net access. Triple ugh.

My morning episode served as a reminder. As cool as technology might be, battery powered technology will eventually go kaput. And, it will most likely fail you when you least expect it, or can afford it.

Buying a replacement battery is of course an option, though maybe not the most sensible one. I don't take the laptop fully wireless very much (normally the adapter is along for the ride if I go mobile). Besides, 200-some dollars for a replacement battery seems much better saved and spent on a future Powerbook.

Next time I'm going to stuff the AC adapter in my pockets and tie the cord round my arm — at least until the old TiBook is retired in favor of something new. :-)

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August 4, 2004

Better Off

Better Off In this month's Wired Magazine, I read a story about an MIT graduate who left the high tech world for a life without electricity, out in the countryside. Eric Brende is the chap who turned in his high tech lifestyle for a simple one similar to the lives the Amish / Mennonite live — low tech and off the grid.

Drawing on the experiences of living a simple life for a year with his wife, Eric has written the book Better OFF; Flipping the Switch on Technology. It appears the book is just out (or soon will be) because when I tried to request the book from the Milwaukee Public Library, it spit back an error "Object not in System".

Here's an excerpt from Eric's personal About page:

My new book, coming out from HarperCollins this August (2004), is entitled "Better OFF; Flipping the Switch on Technology." It describes the journey my wife and I have taken from the fast-paced life of high technology at MIT to a richer, more leisurely and savory existence, using our own arms, legs, and heads to perform most of the everyday tasks machines once performed for us--from washing clothes to walking to the bank or grocery store to thinking through a frugal plan of "home-economics" in a modern city. Most of the book focuses vividly on a year Mary and I spent living in the country with an Old Order Anabaptist group that I call the "Minimites," where we learned practical knacks and principles of technological selection we now apply in our urban home.

Looks very interesting indeed. I'll have to keep an eye on this book and maybe even buy it before borrowing from the library, to see Eric's insights. It's especially relevant to my thinking lately, as I have written on the topic of being in control of technology, rather than driven by it in On Keeping Technology in Perspective. I do try to manage the tech in my life, but I'm sure I could improve.

So, if you too have an interest in simplifying your life by hearing insights from a fellow techie turned low-techie for a year, Better OFF seems like it might be worth checking out.

BTW, I must express my thanks to Wired Magazine, which I have decided to continue for another year. You might recall I contemplated dropping Wired not long ago, but decided to hold on for another year, at $10.

Oddly enough though, my "loyal" subscriber rate was $12, while the new subscriber cards (you know, the pile cards that fall out of each issue) were at $10 per year. I let my old subscription lapse and sent in a $10 card instead, saving $2. :-)

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April 7, 2004

I've Been Re-Mobilphonized

Rave Well, today my brand-spakin' new Kyocera K-7 Rave, Virgin Mobile phone arrived via FedEx from Amazon.com. So, I'm officialy a member of the mobile phone world once again.

Of course this phone is pay-as-you-go, and I intend on milking the free $10 worth of airtime it includes, for all it's worth. Eventually a $20 top-up card will be needed (and can last up to 90 days) but for the amount I'll use voice, I think I can go a while on ten bucks. We'll see. :-)

I was very impressed with my dad's Kyocera Rave phone, which I'd taken along to California for PalmSouce DevCon. The battery life was great, size small, and the sound quality was good too. All in all, a great, cheap ($70) piece of hardware.

I'll carry it to call others, only turning it on to receive calls if I'm working away from the office or am expecting a call. I want to take good advantage of the SMS messaging via email -- to save voice minutes for short messages.

I'm mostly pleased about adding a mobile phone to my life, though it, like any gadget, requires care and feeding, charging, topping up and carrying around. But that's a tradeoff I've decided is worth for the usefulness of the phone.

Now, I just need to pick a cool faceplate at eBay, to customize the Rave a bit... I don't want it to look like every other Kyocera out there, after all. :-)

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March 30, 2004

A Reminder on The Impact of Technology

Today, during lunch I happened to stumble across a very interesting article by Howard Rheingold (the SmartMobs author), called Look Who's Talking. His article was originally published in the July 1999 issue of Wired Magazine, and in it, Rheingold interviews Amish living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania about technology and how they decide to accept, limit or reject it.

Of particular interest to Rheingold was the use of cell phones by Amish in their communities. It seemed almost against my own perceived idea of Amish, who I saw as being against technology. I thought, "How could they accept cell phones?" As it turns out, that's not quite right. In fact, in the article, the Amish approach to technology is actually to weigh any tool's positives against its impact on community and human relationships. They ask:

"Does it bring us together, or draw us apart?"

when deciding on any tool or technology they might consider using. How interesting that was, I thought. I like that idea.

I kept reading and really enjoyed the article. To me, one of the key paragraphs in the article came near the end:

"Though the Amish determination to allow phones at work but ban them at home might seem hard to accept, I appreciate the deliberation put into their decision. In fact, similar reflection might highlight conflicts between our own practices and values. How often do we interrupt a conversation with someone who is physically present in order to answer the telephone? Is the family meal enhanced by a beeper? Who exactly is benefiting from call waiting? Is automated voicemail a dark hint about the way our institutions value human time and life? Can pagers and cell phones that vibrate instead of ring solve the problem? Does the enjoyment of virtual communities by growing numbers of people enhance or erode citizen participation in the civic life of geographic communities?"

This is something along the lines of what I was thinking in a post I wrote almost exactly a year ago, called On Keeping Technology in Perspective. Reading Howard Rheingold's story was a nice refresher — reminding me about those thoughts from 2003, which I felt were worth repeating.

Now, as then, I am not advocating a hermit lifestyle with no tech whatsoever. No, I believe technology can help us greatly, but to do so it requires us to question its role in our lives. Often we, in this very tech driven culture, just accept whatever comes down the pike as somehow useful and worthwhile, and take the hook, line and sinker, never questioning our goals and uses for the thing. I know, because I've caught myself doing this very thing. :-)

I'm reminded how important it is for me to question any new technology thoroughly. If I decide to accept something into my life, to keep it in mind as I use it — making sure it meets with my goals and expectations. And then, to be honest and part company if it fails to meet my goals, or I find it separating me from my family and friends.

This is the case with my use of a mobile phone. I had one for several years, but recently I found it expensive and not terribly useful for the cost. So, I cancelled my account and went mobile phoneless.

However, I have since seen how well a pay-as-you-go mobile phone is working for both my father and my wife. In fact, I've sometimes borrowed one of their phones as needed. And at other times I've experienced cases where I could have truly benefitted by having a mobile phone along. Time without a cell phone has been good, because it sharpened those moments when I realized a mobile phone might be very useful and helpful.

So, now I plan to pick up a pay-as-you-go Virgin Mobile phone of my own in April. It fits my needs well, because the cost is relatively low, compared to my minimal uses. It will be useful for keeping contact with Gail when needed, useful for travel and for emergencies. And to not be bugged, I can leave it off most of the time.

But this realization didn't come until I thought about my reasons for having a $20/mo. plan and a phone that mostly gathered dust. This resolution was much clearer and significant after going phoneless, because it helped me see the real uses of having a mobile phone rather than imaginary uses.

That's just a personal example, and maybe for you a mobile phone is critical for your life. What I'm saying here is, consider evaluating the technologies and tools you accept. Consider thinking about their true usefulness and being aware of their positives and negatives, improvements and energy draws on your life. Really be honest about how important they really are.

I wonder if we did this, what would surprise us as less useful or important than we imagined? What would we see as drawing us away from our friends, families and communities? Would we have the capability to say no to those things if we were really honest?

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March 29, 2004

Free Culture

Late Friday night, I happened to read about a new book just released by Lawrence Lessig, called Free Culture (via Boing Boing).

The book is a very nicely written argument that US copyright laws should not be treated like property laws — that owners of copyright should not be able to hold power over copyrights for eternity. Lessig suggests that releasing copyrighted things into the public domain after a reasonable time is key to culture staying creative by building on what has come before.

What's interesting about the book is, it's being released, like Cory Doctorow's novels, for free download. So, Lawrence is putting his money where his mouth is, indeed. :-)

Because Larry has released his book with a Creative Commons license, others have already created multiple format versions of the book (iSilo, Mobipocket, MS Reader, Plaintext, etc. and another in Plucker format, all for free download.

I'm am now at page 130 and I must say Lawrence has a great style of presentation, using stories and examples rather than getting bogged down in lawyerly mumbo-jumbo. In fact, I'm enjoying the read very much. It's got me thinking about copyright, ideas and creativity in a way I hadn't before. That's good, especially as a creative person working in the Internet realm.

If you have interest in this area, I can recommend Free Culture quite highly, even though I'm just 1/3 the way through it. The flow of the book is very good, the structure of the argument is logical (but mot unapproachable) and it's an enjoyable read that makes you think. Can't beat that!

Update 2004-03-29: Now you can hear the book as MP3s read by various folks. Pretty cool.

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March 24, 2004

A Palm User's Newton Notes

Today I wanted to post a few brief notes after playing with the Newton 130 Sammy McLoughlin sent me a few weeks back. Coming from a long-time Palm PDA user, I thought these might be interesting. Or maybe not.

Size and Weight: The Newton is Honkin' BIG and HEAVY! We're talking 3 times the size of my Tungsten E here! I could certainly see problems shoving this Newt in my pocket for a shopping trip. Still, when I turn this observation around, at the time it was probably considered small compared to the svelte Powerbook Duo line. So, I guess size and weight depend some on perspective.

Handwriting recognition: HWR seems to work decently, though the Newt 130's processor is so glacially slow, I could probably brew a cup of tea while it processes each sentence. My friend Andy says the Newton 2100 was a vast improvement on translation speed, having 4 times the RAM and a much faster ARM processor (200MHz).

Color: It's green. Very odd for an electronic device IMO. Everything in that period of time (1996) was gray or black or maybe silver. So I found it intriguing that the Newton line is a very nice British Racing Green color. I like it.

Data Secure: It is very hard to wipe data off the Newton. Since the Newt uses internal Flash RAM, when you enter something, it stays, dog-gone-it! Unlike our Palm OS devices which wipe out with a draining of the battery life, a Newt can survive complete battery wipe out with no problems whatsoever. Now this is a feature I would absolutely love in a Palm OS device. So, PalmOne and Sony, why can't Flash RAM be used in new devices? It must be really cheap right now. Huh? ;-)

UI Design: The Newton is very humane and has a sense of humor. When I reset the device and entered my information, I was impressed with the little touches, like newton illustrations, and other niceties that made me feel like human beings and not robots built the Newt.

I am still coming to grips with the UI approach as it is very different than the Palm OS -- there is no Applications launcher and things are in different places than I am used to. Still, it is an interesting exercise to look around and see just how differently the Newt is from Palm devices, and how it is similar.

I am still unsure that my Newton 130 will be at all practical. I've considered a Newton Keyboard, but I have heard these are not perfect, and to top that off, getting text into the Mac seems like an exercise in twirling baling wire and duct tape to make the conversion. We'll see.

Worst case I get a chance to explore the Newton and have a fun device for Nathan to play with when he gets to the age where he can appreciate it.

Thanks Sammy! :-)

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March 5, 2004

Gizmodo and Engadget

Engadget.com I'm a fan of gadgets, as you may know, and therefore really liked the Gizmodo, a weblog all about gadgets. Today I learned that Gizmodo's editor, Peter Rojas, has left to start his own new gadget weblog called Engadget.

Peter is a great guy. I wish him lots of success with his new Engadget weblog. I've had a several email discussions with Peter since while he ran Gizmodo, sharing stories, or pointing out typos or web code errors I'd seen. Peter was always very cordial, always responded to my emails, and was often quite funny in his reponses.

I'm also pleased that he's continuing to push forward the idea of a blog as a moneymaking venture. While I prefer to blog for fun and to give something back to the web community, I think it's positive to see good bloggers earning something from their work.

If you're a fan of Gizmodo, be sure to check out Engadget and add it to your favorites or your RSS feed aggregator.

Have a great weekend!

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March 1, 2004

Monday Tidbits

Monday again. No real theme, so it's a tidbits day. Yea! :-)

Eastern Standard Tribe
Finished reading Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe this weekend and enjoyed it. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom remains my favorite of Cory's books, and I also prefer several of the short stories in A Place So Foreign and 8 More over EST. But EST is still a fun read — I found myself laughing out loud at several points in the book.

Problems with the book for me were grasping the current time/flashback. I felt a little bombarded with things as I began the book and put it down for a few weeks. When I came back things improved. I dunno if it was me or Cory's approach to flashbacks, but it took until about chapter 8 until I figured out what was going on and began enjoying the book.

Cory's view of the future is stil quite interesting nonetheless. One key part of this story is the centrality of "comms" in the narrative. From what I could figure, the comm is a very smart mobile device that acts as a phone, video camera, audio note taker and full blown PC in a handheld package. Comms communicate via "squirting" data between each other, though a full time high-end net connection is pretty clearly present too.

I didn't feel as connected to EST's characters as in Cory's other books, and I don't know just why. Maybe it was their personalities. Not sure.

I also felt this book had a higher level of profanity than Cory's other works, and I'm generally one who feels that profanity in general media (films, books) is used way more than really necessary. Yeah, I realize people really use that kind of language at times, but it often gets in the way, when a lesser word or no profanity at all would work just as well.

Overall EST gets a lower mark than Cory's other books, but is still a fun read, once you get used to the flashback theme of the story.

PDAs vs. Mini PCs Thoughts
Looks like Andy's comments about the future of mobile devices is getting some great responses. I was very pleased to see comments and trackbacks on that piece, as I felt it was very challenging and thought provoking.

After reading EST a thought came to me: If indeed devices of the future are as powerful as notebooks of today, why couldn't you be free to choose the format you feel most comfy using? If someone is a very mobile person, why not the form of a smartphone, and if you're less mobile, maybe that of a Tungsten T3, a Newton, a Tablet PC, a laptop or a desktop?

The OS itself could even be tweaked, so that one OS "skin" would look just like Windows, another like OS X, another like Linux, another like a Symbian / Palm OS / Windows smartphone? The OS is really just a conceptual way to deal with files, text and pixels, so why not treat it more as a skin that's customizable?

And that brings me to the point of modularity... why not a "core" that can be plugged into one or many different device shells? That way you could have a smartphone when you needed it or a laptop or whatever when you needed that? I suppose it comes back to my WorkPod idea.

Lastly, on comments from Andy's post, I think Tom Stoneham has a great point about age difference and interest in learning.

"Young children have no problem whatsoever learning new interfaces. They happily switch between different desktops, game consoles and mobile phones with rapid 'need-to-know' learning curves."

I do think older users are more resistant to new things than younger users. Still, I think most people (not tech people) are inherently lazy about learning new things unless they have a good reason to. Kids now are maybe less lazy because the see value to knowing how to work technology for their needs and benefits.

But this does put computer and device makers in an interesting spot. Do they design devices for the young, knowing they will be willing to invest learning time, or do they moderate for the huge glut of baby boomers who are much more resistant to learning new things? Hmmm.

Have a great Monday. See you tomorrow.

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February 27, 2004

The PDA vs Mini PCs

OQO Today I'm deferring my post to my long time friend Andy Bauer, who had an interesting discussion with me the other evening about PDAs and miniaturized PCs for the masses. I thought his take was very thought provoking, so I've asked Andy permission to publish his argument here on my weblog.

— Mike

Andy: The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the future of PDAs / smart phones / whatever is none of the current devices but rather a PC (or Mac) in pocket form. (Whether this is already technically achievable today, is another issue.) But why?

1.) People are lazy. Apart from a few % of the population, no one wants to have to learn new things.

2.) People are used to one specific desktop OS (mostly Windows), and that's what they want to stick with.

3.) People invested in software for their desktop, they don't want to do this all over again.

4.) People invested in time to optimize their desktop PC environment and invested in time learning it, they don't want to invest this time all over again.

I think that all of today's 'super-duper mobile devices' have a core flaw: they use a different OS than the one users are used to from their desktop PCs. Whether that OS is Symbian, Palm Cobalt or Pocket PC doesn't matter. The mere fact that it is different collides head-on with ALL of the 4 points above.

The result IMHO is, that none of these devices will EVER reach more than those few % of the population as mentioned in point 1 above. And Palm is already seeing its PDA sales figures stagnate. And my prediction is that these smart phones a la Nokia 6600 or their new Communicator 9500 will suffer the very same fate, they will stagnate at the same % (appealing to the same % of the population). (Apart from maybe people who own these smart phones but never use them for anything but phone calls, i.e. don't use any of the smart features.)

Now imagine this:

a) Microsoft (or Apple hopefully) finally manages to make their desktop OS scalable, so it works on very small and very big screens.

b) Some hardware manufacturer (Apple hopefully) manages to create a device the size of the Tungsten T3 (or Nokia 6600) that incorporates a complete PC, at the same price (or lower) than the T3.

My prediction is that with the introduction of such a device, which fulfills points a) and b), the PDA market will finally shatter its barrier and reach a much bigger percentage of the population. I NO LONGER believe that any device like smart phones, communicators or PDAs a la T3 are the future. Not even as a niche product.

Of course it could happen that Microsoft (or Apple) fails at point a). Only then do I see a chance for today's devices. But not because they are so great, but because Microsoft or Apple are so bad. And as long as b) is not happening (and we're not just there yet) today's devices also have a reason to exist. But ultimately I believe they are doomed, doomed because their concept bears an inherent core flaw, which can never be resolved: they run against the 4 points above. And most people are lazy and reluctant to learn new things. That's human and that won't change any time soon.

But there are promising first steps towards pocket sized PCs: The PC Core, The Vulcan and the OQO.

And once the problems of a scalable OS, data entry / handwriting recognition and price are solved, I don't see any future for handheld OSs - with the exception of embedded applications perhaps for 'one-feature-devices' like iPods.

In a way it's funny that Microsoft almost got it. They long ago realized that users want a PC in their pocket, that they want to use a OS they know. Which is why they invented the Pocket PC platform. But they did it all wrong. They didn't realize that it needed to be the VERY SAME operating system able to run the VARY SAME applications - not an OS that just feels somewhat similar (although that helps). But I suppose the technology wasn't there yet to do that.

But they also made a second mistake, they did not realize that ultimately their desktop OS would have to become the 'Pocket OS' and hence did not invest in making their desktop OS more scalable. They missed that boat and even went the other way making it less scalable. That is the one slot where I think Apple has a BIG chance. If they manage to create a handheld device that runs a full OS X, they can perhaps persuade more people to switch their desktop OS too, because I feel that if people are going to have to learn a new OS they'd rather learn Mac OS and with that get a fully integrated desktop-mobile solution than learn Symbian or Palm Cobalt and get a less than optimal desktop-mobile integration.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that this is my conclusive opinion on the subject. I honestly NO LONGER see a future for any of the handheld OSs, unless Microsoft, Apple (or Linux even) screw up. Just think about it: without any of the languages and printer drivers OS X can easily be installed in 1GB. With the iPod mini's 4GB Microdrive, a low-low-power G4 at 800MHz-1GHz and one special integrated chip combining all the other motherboard functions, how small could such a device be? I bet it could be the size of a Tungsten T3. And with the T3's 480x320 screen and Apple's Newton handwriting recognition, how can you lose? How can this device not be a billion times more useful and easier to sync than any Palm OS ever will be?

The difficulty that I seem to have is to bring across that I am NOT saying that there is no room ever for any Palm, Symbian or Pocket PC OS device (or whichever handheld OS you use). Some keep claiming that these OSs were purpose-built for devices with little RAM, crash-proof, etc. something that desktop OSs never will be. But that was not my point. My point was that forcing these OSs to do all singing and dancing '�ber-PDAs', allowing them to open and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, PDFs, play movies (incl. Flash movies), etc. is a dead end route.

A mini handheld PC will by definition be a lot better suited to do all these things. And with the advent of SOC (System on a chip) PCs, 4GB Microdrives, hi-res low-power OLED screens I don't see why a PC cannot be shrunk into a device the size of a Tungsten T3. And if this device had a screen with a res of 640x960 it would be perfect. It could be used mostly in 2x2 pixel doubling mode (i.e. an effective resolution of 320x480) but for web pages, Word documents or PDFs the full res could be used - without penalty since these apps themselves allow zooming of the document view. With more pixels the text would just look a lot smoother as well as giving a better hi-res thumbnail preview.

Palm OS, Symbian or Pocket PC, these will always have a niche in 'single purpose devices' like e.g. a Zire 21 which does a few things and those well. Or I could imagine MP3 players using those OSs or GPS devices. But I just don't see any future for high-end devices. Those will be eaten in a few years by desktop OSs pushing downwards.

Most people will now argue that the Mac OS was not designed to be run on a screen that's 320x480. Well no. The Finder is just another application. I do not see why Apple couldn't design a 'Pocket Finder' which uses smaller icons and smaller text fonts suitable for a 320x480 screen. Yet the OS behind it would NOT be a 'Pocket Mac OS X', but rather the real deal, being able to run all the apps like on the desktop. Surely they would then need a higher resolution even, because Word doesn't run in 320x480, but clever schemes can be used to get by: like e.g. virtual resolutions where one can scroll around on a virtual 800x600 resolution, or a 320x480 screen allowing to switch to hires mode of 640x960, or even foldable displays or whatever the future comes up with. I'm positive this 'problem' can be solved.

Some argue that its better to have a purpose-built OS for a handheld device, because they don't crash as often. But that's not really a good argument either. If my purpose would be to edit Word documents on the go then NO operating system is better purpose built than OS X or Windows. And in regards to crashes I feel that OS X crashes a lot less than my Clie...

Another argument is that PDA functionality will end up in the mobile phone anyway. Well, if it is just PIM apps, perhaps. But not even there I'm sure. In times of group calendars I can vouch for the fact that not even today's Palm OS is able to sync with my office group calendar giving me all the dates of all my colleagues - something I do need to know. It's not good enough for me to just sync my own dates, I need to be able to see all dates from at least 10+ people. So I'd rather use a pocketable PC with the real deal PIM groupware application we use on OS X or Windows where I can do that, than a Palm OS device that only gives me a subset of the data that's useless to me.

And finally I believe that rather instead of having mobile phones becoming smarter and smarter to take over PDAs (as everyone today thinks the trend is), I feel that the opposite will happen: in 5 years from now PCs (or hopefully Macs) will be 'pocketable' and come with a built-in 3G or GPRS datacard (as well as WiFi and Bluetooth) to provide Voice over IP phone services. If the device is as small as a Tungsten T3 this could be used as a phone handset, or if the device is slightly bigger then a Bluetooth headset can be used with the device remains in a pocket or bag. And the device will switch seemlessly between WiFi hot-spot access or the 3G datacard.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that also the days for the 'smart phone' are numbered! These will be superseded by these pocketable PCs.

— Andy Bauer

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February 19, 2004

Great PDA vs. Laptop Comments

Hey everyone, apologies for missing the past few days of posts -- I've not been feeling that well following my return from California, so time for rest overruled time for blogging.

I'm feeling a bit better today, so I've decided to post bits of many great comments from Monday's post, Apple PDA Rumors and The PDA vs. The Laptop. I'd love to keep this topic alive. I was very happy to see so many readers really thinking about how they use their tools, and if they're doing things with a tool because it's effective or just because they can. I was even happier to see them leaving comments. :-)

Here are some of my favorite quotes and some responses/comments of my own:

"There is one thing that you can do better and more comfortably with a PDA: walk. I tried a laptop, and chucked it after about two weeks. Now my PDA slips in the (front) pocket of my jeans. And I wear tight jeans." -- rene carlos

"Take it easily with you where ever you go by putting it in your pocket (if you don't have your laptop with you, what good is it?)" -- kpr

This is an excellent point! One thing the PDA certainly excels at is mobility. There are certainly times when a laptop would be unusable in a mobile situation, like going shopping, where a PDA works very well.

"Lasts all day on a single charge (no laptop can do this!)" -- kpr

The battery life of handhelds is often better than a laptop, though I have to say, it is less than it once was (e.g. 4-6 weeks on a pair of AAAs). Judging by my Tungsten E's battery life and stories of short T3 battery life, the addition of color screens and powerful processors hasn't been matched by increases in battery life. I do hope this changes soon, whether by improvements in power savings or better battery technology.

"Web browsing on a T3 is very nice, especially with Web Pro 3.01 in landscape mode with full screen turned ON and in Handheld view. My thumb fits perfectly on the T3's 5-way navigation pad for easy page scrolling. Mike Rohde's weblog looks perfect on it too, as do most of the other web pages that I read daily." --kpr
"Some statistics say that over 90% of a computer's use is reading the internet and email. PDAs are already good at this, and getting even better and better all the time" --kpr

This was actually very surprising to me and encouraging. I found web browsing on a Tungsten C very painful as well as my experiences on the Dana Wireless. I tended to favor Blazer on both devices because it didn't force me to scroll right to see pages. But it sounds as though Web Pro 3.01 may be doing some good things.

I should note however, that not one Palm OS browser could manage to log into the Fairmont hotel's WiFi network at the PalmSource conference... so there is quite a ways to go in browser technology and web designers building compatible websites.

As for email, I think tools like SnapperMail and VersaMail make email on a PDA much more attractive, but unless you have server-side spam processing or great filters setup, dealing with the high percentage of unwanted email seems to be a problem, especially on a small screen.

"I shake my head in wonder at all the new models boasting of browsing and emailing and wonder how PDA manufacturers can continue down those lines instead of making these uber PIMs." -- Gary

While I do think there are a chunk of people making use of internet and wireless technologies in PDAs, I also wonder why more emphasis hasn't been put on improving the PIM tools. PalmOne made some steps in this direction, and Cobalt seems to be doing so as well... question is, why did this small step forward take 7 years? Arghh!!

"Also one of the big pluses has to be the speed that I can be up and running on my PDA. I can confirm the details of an appointment, add an item to my expenses spreadsheet and write a couple of to-dos before my laptop has even powered up!" -- Jo T-C

This is a very nice feature of a PDA vs. a Laptop, though speedy power up can be achieved by never shutting down and sleeping the laptop instead.

"When I do carry my laptop, I seem to have a pile of extra required paraphernalia – cables, and power adapters etc. And also there is increased vulnerability when carrying such an obvious laptop shaped bag, they are such a target for thieves!" Long live PDAs, I say. I think both my life AND my back has improved since purchasing one. -- Jo T-C

This is a good point -- I too find myself almost over-planning when I carry my laptop along. I want to have any possible cable along, just in case. Often, because my PDA is a little simpler, I can get away with a power brick, folding keyboard and an SD card.

Usually though, this happens only when I do local visits to the cafe or maybe a short weekend away. If I'm expected to do work on the road, my Powerbook is really a necessity, because as a web designer I can't develop graphics and websites without it.

"If you need mobile access to mail, streaming Internet audio, etc., then the Treo 600 is and excellent choice. If you'd rather wait until you're back in your office, or at the hotel, then by all means wait until you can use your laptop. The PDA works best in a mobile space and if you need technology for when you're mobile, then you can't do better than with a Palm OS device. :D -- Mashby"

This is an excellent point (Mashby's entire comments were great) because it gets to what you really want to use a device for. Each device can do something the other cannot and that's where their values lie. It's always a tradeoff and is up to each person to decide where that line is.

However, this still leaves open the problem of how many people will actually trade off the laptop full-featured experience for the minimalist PDA approach. I still think this is a small percentage of the overall population of computer users and I wonder if that percentage wil grow or not... will semi-smart phones be enough for anyone not interested in $500 smartphones or PDAs?

And finally, resonanace makes great points-o-plenty in his comments and description of hauling a PDA or Laptop on a trip. I really like his closing statements:

"The error most power PDA users and uber geeks make, however, is that everyone wants or should want to download maps from mapquest into a portable device. For most people, printing said maps out makes much more sense. That sort of sensibility seems to escape technophiles."

This is really where my questioning focused... are we as technophiles, über-users and geeks expecting that just because something can be done that everyone should do it that way? I long for both the vision of what can be done but the practicality to say "hey, you can do this but why the heck would you when that thingee works better?"

It's related to a story I'd heard in my design school days about an art director who needed a quick n' dirty layout done for a hot deadline. She gave the job to a young, recently graduated designer who, instead of manually putting pictures and text on paper with a photocopier, spent hours in photoshop creating a masterpiece. The art director was frustrated with this, because while the Photoshop layout was nice, it was complete overkill, taking four times as long to create. That's not even mentioning how the layout would probably get shredded to bits in the client meeting.

That gets to the heart of using a tool for what it does best. I think PDAs are moving closer to laptops, but there are many tradeoffs. There are also things laptops can't do well (like fit in a pocket, or last a day on a charge) but there are things PDAs can't do well (like let me design graphics or build web pages comfortably).

Our job as users is to be realistic about what the best use is for each device, to suit our needs. To make a device do something another tool does better seems to me a waste of energy, unless there's some compelling reason to push those limits.

Wow, this one got kinda long, but I'm very happy to continue the discussion. It's good to challenge your notions now and then, especially if it brings you to better decisions that you had begun with. :-)

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February 16, 2004

Apple PDA Rumors and The PDA vs. The Laptop

Following a link from my well-connected Mac friend Andy, I read two long, detailed and very intriguing articles (part one, part two) by John Manzione at MacNETv2. The general gist of these posts is that PalmSource announced Mac OS Cobalt "non-support" slightly too soon for Apple, whom John suggests has a "Smart PDA" coming very soon (July '04).

Here's an interesting quote from part one:

"It will use an OS X-like OS, having full integration with iCal, Mail, Address Book, iSync, etc. It will be QuickTime driven, with support for the new codec’s, including Mpeg-4. The display will offer 65k colors and will be as large as the largest Sony Clie (there's that Clie thing again). The screen will be touch-sensitive, using Ink as the input software. Just imagine the latest Clie (!) with an Apple twist, meaning a whole new design concept, a flip screen, and a keyboard, FireWire, USB and Bluetooth. And it will be hard-drive based, using the same hard drive in that the new iPod mini uses, but I'm told the drive will be bigger. I have no idea what the cost will be, nor do I have any information about the processor, RAM, or anything else. However, it won’t matter if you have a Mac or PC, it supposedly works with both platforms through the introduction of iSync with Windows and an arrangement with Microsoft. (you don't think Apple advertised iLife '04 as being "Microsoft Office for the rest of your life" for nothing, did you?)"

and another about the reasons behind the long delay in part two:

"In the end, want Steve Jobs wants is what you get. He wants Wi-fi, Bluetooth, FireWire, Hard Drive, QuickTime, and OS X functionality. And he wants to be able to actually type an email, or an instant message, or input data quickly. You can’t do that today, no matter how nimble you are with a cell phone or PDA keypad (Although Sony’s Clies come pretty close). He wants to sync it easily with his Mac, and Dot Mac. He wants to watch video and listen to music, he wants to surf the web from anywhere, and he wants to get email anywhere. He wants something that will make him more productive and entertain him as well. He wants it all, and wouldn’t build a device until he could make it happen, on his terms."

Rumors like this have been floating around the Mac rumor mills a long time, so in some ways I'll take this with a grain of salt, but it would be great if such a product would appear. My guess is that should this Smart PDA from Apple surface, it's going to be high-end rather than low-end. Think the iPod of PDAs (in other words, not cheap).

The PDA vs. The Laptop
Now, relative to these two interesting articles was a chat I had with my colleague Matt Henderson recently about PDA usage. In a nutshell, Matt argued that there is not much that you can do with a PDA that cannot be done better or more comfortably on a Mac or PC laptop. Only those things which are truly useful for a majority of people when away from said laptop are truly practical to do on a PDA, such as checking your datebook, to-do list or addresses (PIM) and things like e-book reading and other remote-specific tasks (like retrieving data on a film you want to rent, showing photos, shopping lists, etc.).

Matt argued that while you can do many things with the current batch of PDAs out there, it's more or less "doing it with a PDA because you can" rather than "doing it with a PDA because it is better or easier". Web browsing is terrible, email is passable (but still limited and done by mainly über-geeks) and just about anything you can name as being "doable" on a PDA over a laptop is much more "make work" for the PDA than something a PDA can excel at and do better than a small, light, fast-waking, long-lasting wireless laptop (such as a 12" Powerbook, or what have you).

I argued the PDA side of things and yet Matt's responses seemed to undercut my defense. He asked me "how many business people do not travel with a laptop any more?" Not many to none I replied. Matt responded with something like "If so, why wouldn't a business person just check email or surf or whatever on their lightweight laptop rather than a Tungsten C or other PDA? Sure, you could use a Tungsten C, but would it be a better experience? And in reality, how many average business people would really do this? My sense is, only über-geeks would."

Hmmm. I think you've got a point there Matt.

We also talked about the question of true mass-market appeal of smartphones -- would these fall into the same category as PDAs? Will people be quite happy with semi-smart phones that maybe have some nice features (camera, MP3 player, minimal PIM info features)?

Yes, you can check your email on a Treo 600... but is it an imminently better experience than checking your email on the laptop right in front of you (or there in your bag)? How often are we really so far from a desktop computer that a Treo 600 would be that compelling for even checking email?

I'm not sure of my thoughts on Matt's questions, but I think he raises a very valid question in my mind: exactly what am I using my PDA for? Am I simply "making work" for it so that it feels more useful (and justified) or are there actions which are vastly superior when done on a PDA? Hmmm. Have to really ponder that one and not just give a knee-jerk reaction.

I'd love to hear your feedback on either the Apple Smart PDA rumors or this line of logic from Matt about PDAs vs. Laptops, as I'm, quite honestly, still brewing on both of them.

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January 20, 2004

I'm Lovin' SMS

8500 One feature of our recent Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go phone service has been the usefulness of SMS messaging. I know that this is huge in Europe, Asia, Australia, etc (for many reasons) but I'm just glomming onto and really loving texting. Let me tell you why...

Well, as you may or may not know, Gail's phone is pay-as-you-go, so making or receiving calls cost money. That's fine, since we knew this going in and realized that even so, we wouldn't use up many minutes because of our phone usage patterns. However, shortly after getting the phone for Gail, I did some research at the Virgin Mobile website and learned that SMS messages can be sent from email mailers, using @vmobl.com after your mobile number and to the receiver of these email/SMS messages, there is no charge for them. Cool!

Once I put two and two together, it hit me that SMS messaging could greatly reduce our minute usages, because I can SMS a short tidbit that I might normally call Gail about. This is great in the case of Gail off shopping and I realize I need something: I can just create a short email with "Need Milk" in the subject line, send it, and she'll get an SMS.

End result: we save $0.25 for a one-minute call (or more if the message is more complex) and still get the message through. These little bits of savings really add up when you're paying for every minute of voice service. We've already used this feature for Gail's and Dad's Virgin Mobile phones, and it works really well for us.

Yesterday I popped by MobileWhack, a new weblog I've recently discovered and saw a tidbit about using Mac iChat to send SMSes! The original info came from PowerPage (a great resource for Powerbook users), and it works great! I tested this feature using iChat on my OS X box and then had my brother Steve try it with the Windows version of AOL IM.

In a nutshell, you select "Chat with Person" in iChat or AOL IM and where you would put their IM address, just enter the mobile phone address preceded by +1 for the US (e.g. +11234567890). I cannot verify if this works internationally, but it seems that if that +1 is there, you might be able to use the international code (+49 for Germany as an example) and send an SMS to a phone with SMS anywhere in the world. I might have to get a few international friends to test my theory.

One PowerPage comment says that this feature is US only currently, but may be extended in the future. Can't say either way what's true, but It'd still be interesting to test out.

That's why I'm loving SMS. I'm sure it will be very handy when I head to California in February for the DevCon, since Gail can send messages via SMS without needing to get me by phone while I'm in meetings. I can certainly see why SMS and "texting" is so popular around the world, and I suspect it will continue to grow in the US as more people get mobile phones. I'm just pleased it works so well for us.

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December 3, 2003

Serious SMS Spam on the Horizon?

You may recall my post from September 12th about Microsoft Smartphones potentially becoming platforms for SMS spam? Well, nothing has happened here just yet, but a little news item (Co-branded version of MobiSMS) posted at Computing Unplugged did make me a little worried about the future of SMS as a useful tool.

Why? Well, let me just post a few quotes from the news item on MobiSMS, a mass SMS sending tool, geared for Outlook:

"MobiMarketing have taken the award winning MobiSMS for Outlook and unplugged many of the core component parts. “It’s just a question of ticking the box, and we will brand the product with your logo, connect the application to your preferred SMS gateway and provide a set of business processes to start making money from SMS messaging”, said Alistair Campion, General Manager of MobiMarketing."

I start worrying when I see "MobiSMS for Outlook", "just tick a box" and "start making money from SMS" in the same paragraph. These days I regularly get 90-100 emails daily and maybe 5-10 are legit emails -- all because of spammers. Can you imagine spammers getting hold of a mass SMS sending tool like this? Yikes!

I'll just leave you with this quote from the article:

"As a plug-in component for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, MobiSMS makes the sending of an SMS as easy as sending an e-mail."

Lookout SMS users. Here it comes.

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November 26, 2003

Tech Trendsetter Study and A Thanksgiving Break

I just have a small note today about a very interesting Pew Research Center whitepaper called Consumption of Information Goods and Services in the United States:
There is a trendsetting technology elite in the U.S. who chart the course for the use of information goods and services. I've only had a chance to scan through the table of contents and a few summary pages but it looks quite interesting, especially if you have an interest in what drives technology.

That's all for today. I want to wish all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving a good day of thanks. I'm going to take a break from blogging until next week Monday. Meanwhile, I promise to eat lots of tasty turkey and trimmings. :-)

Have a great weekend!

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November 25, 2003

Old Time Radio

Old Radio One of the wonderful things I grew up with was radio, the amazing wireless technology of the last century. It always amazed me to think that broadcasts were flying all around me every day, and all I needed was a little transistor radio to capture them.

As a kid in Chicago, I listened to pop music on WLS, tuned in Chicago Cub baseball games on WGN, but my favorite radio activity was listening to radio drama. I can still recall the cool summer nights in bed with my little radio and earphone, listening radio dramas on my AM radio until I drifted off to sleep.

My show of choice was the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre with host E.G. Marshall. Each night this show would present a thrilling mystery with multiple actors, sound effects and music for a very engrossing experience. I loved the depth of the mysteries, the excellent writing and how a radio drama brought my imagination to life. I loved many TV shows, but they never seemed to spark my imagination like a radio drama.

Later in life I came across other radio shows from an older era on public radio -- the 30s, 40s and 50s and fell in love with these recordings of live radio drama. I enjoyed the stories and the funny old products being promoted and best of all the old-timey lingo often used in the dialogue. It was like being transported into the past, 30 minutes a time.

Then, again through public radio, I came across modern radio dramas, like Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars and Empire Strikes back and separate American and BBC renditions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Wow, these shows were broadcast in full stereo, with entire casts and special effects personnel doing sound effects and music. These days you can hear radio dramas on CD or tape, either at the bookstore or the library.

Anyway, for some reason, I decided tonight to search the net for old radio dramas in MP3 format. I thought it might be fun to load some old shows onto my Tungsten E, and since they're mono and not super hi-fi, maybe they'd even be quite small.

So, I fired up Google and entered "Old Time Radio + MP3" and within the first few links, had found Jaweb's colelction of downloadable MP3 files of old radio shows! There are a variety of old shows in many genres ready for downloading listening to as MP3s. Titles include Sherlock Holmes, The Shadow, The Avengers, Suspense, Lux Theatre, Fibber McGee & Molly, Creaking Door and more... !!

In my brief search, I've also come across WRVO from New York state, broadcasting old time radio as MP3 streams. Then I came across the Live 365 stream of CBS Radio Mystery Theatre run by a fan named myafchak. I've also found the nice informational site Old-Time Radio with even more background and details. There must be much more old time radio info out there too. Cool!

So, if you're an old radio show fan -- or especially if you have never heard any radio drama before, check out these shows. You might be amazed at how entertaining they can be. :-)

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November 15, 2003

Spontaneous Bluejacking

This Saturday morning I came across some interesting links about bluejacking (sending messages to unsuspecting recipients via bluetooth). In particular, I came across a nice website called bluejackQ.com, created by a creative young Brit (jellyellie), who has provided all sorts of information on bluejacking from a bluejacker's point of view. I love it!

I appreciate the bluejacking information, tips & tricks, a FAQ, Forums and even posts bluejack stories. But I especially enjoyed jellyellie's story of bluejacking at Waterloo station, London, which includes pics her dad shot of the event. Here's an except:

"I causally turned around to face my victim and noticed that she was drawing a bottle of water from her handbag-type-thing. Right, I thought, time for Mr. Photographer!! I had briefed him on his mission, pointed out his subject and told him to get ready. Sometimes the 'ghastly Nokia message received tone' can be a comfort to a young bluejacker, especially when it means that your contact has been received by the victim. In this case, it had meant that pink-stripy top lady was reading my request for a sip of her water. Ha! Even a bigger grin emerged on her face. Un be-known to pink-stripy top lady, she was being photographed in the same shot as her bluejacker."

It's amazing to me how people just do spontaneous kinds of of things like this, but maybe it shouldn't be. After all, this is exactly how most Palm-oriented mailing lists, like the venerable Pilot-PDA list, and websites like PDA 24/7, PalmAddict, Palm Infocenter and even the Palm Tipsheet (which I founded) have begun. Each one sprung up because someone in the community decided it was needed or would be cool to do.

Self-emergent solutions to problems from within communities are very cool things.

You go jellyellie! :-)

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November 12, 2003

Thoughts on Wireless Lifestyles

My friend Lorenz Szabo sent along an interesting essay on his wireless adventures in Austria, which he wrote and posted last weekend. Lo has been influenced by several other webloggers like Jeffery Belk, Om Malik, Steve Patriquen and Phillip Torrone, who have all written about their use and experiences with both WiFi and cellular wireless networks. Lo doesn't really use WiFi at all, preferring UMTS, GPRS and Bluetooth connections for his link to the Internet, via phone and PC card to his Tungsten T and Windows laptop.

His article got me to thinking about wireless use and how each person's environment and lifestyle influences their wireless choices, which is why I believe many wireless options are better than fewer, or just a single option (like WiFi vs. GPRS).

As an example, Lo has a very mobile lifestyle and his environment changes quite a bit over the course of an average day. He might spend time in his flat, on the train to work, in the office, at the gym, at Starbucks or many other places around Vienna in his daily routine. Lo carries a mobile phone and a Tungsten T, which he connections via Bluetooth. He can also connect his laptop to the Internet via GPRS data card if he needs more 'full-featured' Net access. Lo says he wouldn't want to live without Bluetooth, GPRS or UMTS, but has no real interest in always-on broadband, as he spends very little time at his apartment and has no interest in streaming music or other high-bandwidth activities.

Meanwhile, I spend most of my day in my home office and only a small percentage of my time being mobile. Because I'm not very mobile during an average day, I have no real need for a mobile phone or Bluetooth for that matter. However, the broadband connection and the WiFi network here are very well used on a daily basis. I'm required to be online during my workday and while working I'll often listen to streamed music or might have an IRC discussion with a work colleague. Meanwhile, my wife uses a Mac Powerbook with a WiFi card to check her email and surf the web.

So, my conclusion is that your environment and lifestyle really drive your needs for wireless access. I have no need for Bluetooth or a mobile phone because my environment is generally a single location and my lifestyle is not very mobile. Lo on the other hand, has a very mobile lifestyle and spends his days in multi-environments. Others, I'm sure, have mixed needs in between these two extremes.

Therefore, I hope that Bluetooth, WiFi, GPRS and a wide mix of standard ways to access the Net remain available so we can all choose the way we want to reach the Net. I have never understood the WiFi vs. Bluetooth or WiFi vs. GPRS battles I've come across, because to my mind, those are all complimentary rather than competing technologies.

In the end, my hope is that PDAs, notebooks, PCs and other electronic items which can take advantage of wireless connections, will begin including multiple options as standard features. At least offer SDIO slots or add-on features so that these technologies can be tacked on to our devices as we see fit.

What you think about wireless access? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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November 3, 2003

My Funky House Paint Idea

A few weeks back, my dad was over at the house, playing around with a house painting program on our old Windows box. Dad was busy converting a photo of our house to wild colors and we were talking, when I came up with a funky idea for house painting.

Here it is: What if you could develop a house paint with color pigmentation that could be shifted simply by pressing a button on an electronic device? The idea being that your house paint would be a clear coat with tiny electronicly-changeable pigments floating around in the paint. Probably the closest current paint to this would be pearl paint, which changes color depending on your viewing angle and the light.

But this idea would be a step further: rather than set pigment colors, why not pigments which are changed to a new color by showering them with an electronic signal from a small device? I suppose this could even be a Mac or PC application which lets you view colors on your screen and then hit the 'Change' button to switch to those colors instantly via a local electronic transmitter.

I envision that you'd just need to paint the trim of a house with one of these electro-paints on frequency 1, and the rest of the house with electro-paint on frequency 2. Then, with a handheld device, you could select a preset color combination, or create your own, and press the button. Viola, your house would then change colors!

This would be great for many reasons. Rather than needing to re-paint your house once you get tired of your house colors, you'd just need to select a new palette and click the button on your desktop or handheld pigment-changer. Or, in the summer you could choose light or even reflective colors to keep your home cool and in winter, switch to colors that would keep your house warmer.

On the fun side of things, if you threw a party, your house could be switched to a couple of wild colors, so it would be easier for guests to locate. You could even color your house to match the seasons or holidays -- orange and black on Halloween, green and red for Christmas. You get the idea.

I suppose this idea could also be applied to other things like cars. Have a boring gray car? Repaint it with electro-paint and you can have a different color car every day of the week if you so choose, at the press of a button! :-)

So, is this a nutty idea? I suppose there would be technical hurdles involved, but it seems like it could be one way to have a little more fun with your house, car or whatever, and save the hassles of repainting to get those things looking different.

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October 31, 2003

iChat AV: I'm Lovin' It

iChat AV Some most days I love technology, though on some days it drives me nutty. Today has been a good tech day, and I say that because I realize how great it is to do voice and video chats over the 'net.

Today I spent a few minutes chatting via iChat AV, with Sammy over at Palm Addict (a great guy who is doing a wonderful job for Palm OS fans with his site). Sammy wanted to give his new Apple iSight camera a go, so we connected up and had a little chat. Sound and video quality were excellent. It just amazed me again, that I was talking with a friend who lives 4,000 miles away over the Internet, in full duplex!

About an hour later, I convinced Michael Ashby in Nashville Tennessee, to install the iChat AV beta on his old iMac 233 MHz machine, running Mac OS X 10.2, and had a short chat with him as well. Quality was not as good as Sammy's iSight, since his iMac's built-in microphone made it sound like he was sitting on a diesel truck. Also, since Mike's iMac is slow, he was limited to audio chats, but that's still a pretty nice option.

I've actually been doing iChats for a while now, with my good friend Andy (who has a Powerbook and iSight camera). Funnily enough, we don't do the video chat that often, even though we both have iSight cameras. Rather, we audio chat together, usually once a week. It's quite nice, with my speakers turned on while I'm working, because it's almost like having Andy sitting at a desk behind me. We are sometimes silent for periods of time and then when something pops into our minds we can just chat freely, as if we were in the same room together. Even better, I can work and chat at the same time. It's really great!

As for the PC side there seem to be several options out there, including Yahoo Messenger, FlashTalk ($30 per year for 2 licenses) and Skype (free while in beta). Earlier this week my father, brother Steve and I tested FlashTalk, which worked pretty well. We hope to give Skype and Yahoo Messenger a try this weekend.

From what I hear from Michael Ashby, Skype is alot like iChat AV, with full-duplex, or close to it (full-duplex means it sounds like a regular phone call and not an intercom system). Still, even an intercom-style chat system is very workable and useful.

In any event, I highly recommend that you check out one of the Mac or PC applications listed above if you have a few long distance friends out there you'd like to chat with. You might be surprised at how much fun a voice or even video chat can be. :-)

Have a great weekend!

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October 30, 2003

Mac & PDA Tidbits

Happy Thursday! For your blog-reading pleasure, I have a bunch of smaller tidbits to mention on both Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, Mac G5s and PDAs. Enjoy! :-)

First, Panther. Today, I came across a very nicely done eleven page report, called What's New in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther over at divintoosx.org. The report by Mark Pilgrim, offers a comprehensive overview of what's new in the latest OS release from Apple, complete with screen snapshots. Not only do you get concise descriptions with small mini-screenshots in context to the descriptions, you can click individual mini-screenshots to see them at 100%. This might be helpful for anyone curious about OS X Panther who lives far away from an Apple Store. Very well done Mark!

At MacDailyNews.com, I just read that Michael Hanscom, a temp worker at Microsoft got fired for taking a picture and blogging about Apple G5s on a shipping palette at Microsoft HQ. Apparently he breached 'security' measures and was let go, after someone came across his weblog post. Good to see Microsoft haven't lost their gentle touch.

Gizmodo has a post on a prototype Sharp 300 pixel per inch screen for PDAs that was mentioned at Yahoo news today. My friend Andy, who loves super hi-res screens and can actually read incredibly tiny, nearly-unreadable-to-the-human-eye typography, should be very, very happy about this news. ;-)

On a related note, my friend Lorenz alerted me to a PDAGeek blurb on Microsoft adopting 640 x 480 as a new resolution for Windows Mobile, (a.k.a Pocket PC), shortly after a new Toshiba Pocket PC was released with a new high resolution 640 x 480 screen. Pocket PC will finally have an option for higher res screens, which is good, since it will make Pocket PC fans less grumpy and will help keep PalmSource and its licensees on their toes.

Last week iSilo and iSiloX were updated to version 4.0, offering many new features, most notably, new font options. Personally, I'm still quite pleased with version 3.35 and will stick with it for a while yet, rather than do the $10 upgrade. It should be mentioned that iSilo 3.X can read the new 4.X document format, as it just ignores added file data that the new 4.X format added. So, you can still even format iSilo documents with iSiloX 4.0 and read these documents using iSilo 3.X on the Palm side.

Further, Lorenz (my handy iSilo fanatic) let me know that iSilo can read raw text files right from an SD card or Memory Stick. He says he just dumped a big pile of plain text files on the card and is able to read them with no conversion whatsoever. Might be a handy feature for anyone who has to carry loads of plain text reference documents with them.

BargainPDA has a nice "short" review of the new Sony TJ35, which is the chief competitor to palmOne's new Tungsten E (the device I'm switching to shortly). It seems like a decent device and should stack up pretty well against the TE. However, that extra $20 over the TE's price of $199, an odd front mounted Jog Dial and less generally popular Memory Stick format, might be a tipping point for someone who's not already a Sony Clie user. Heck, I'm a Clie user and I chose the TE, so it can happen. What I'd really like to see is a shot of the TJ35 next to the TE... I'm curious to see how they compare in appearance and size.

And to wrap up, palmOne and Handspring are now officially one company, and PalmSource is officially a separate entity. Weird to think that Handspring is now back as part of its originating company, Jeff Hawkins and all. But as I ponder this, it seems a very good move right now: the Treo 600 is getting excellent reviews, as are the T3 and TE. It seems like everything is aligning for palmOne at just the right time. Good to see this after the years of drought we've just come through. It should be an interesting few years ahead. :-)

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October 14, 2003

Computer Tutoring for CEOs

Hal of PalmStation forwarded a great CNN story: Execs who are tech dummies seek secret training which talks about CEOs and high-level corporate executives who really know nothing about computers, but are afraid to be seen as weak by admitting it.

"You'd be surprised by what they don't know," Shaheen says. "And they're not comfortable asking the IT person in their company because then they show weakness to their staff."

Furthering the problem are secretaries and assistants who tended to handle computer work for their bosses, leading these execs toward "Executivus Obsoletus" status.

Much of the ineptitude is blamed on doting secretaries who handle e-mail and other computer chores for their bosses, computer trainers say. And executives often are too embarrassed and intimidated to attend computer classes with clerks and secretaries.

It's telling though, that this is becoming a market for computer consultants. I have experienced higher-ups being not technically savvy, though in my case I was the one doing the helping and the higher-up was happy to have me do so (not in secret).

I think it also indicates that technology is now so thoroughly infused into business, that CEOs and higher-up mukety-muks are feeling the pressure to conform to the new computer-oriented world. It would seem that a CEOs luxury of not knowing what's going on technology-wise is cutting it less and less.

However, I do feel for these CEOs, since I think coming into computers now, as a newbie non-user would be very hard. That's a bit of a knock on computer designers who've made software and hardware more complex instead of simpler and more intuitive to use.

Well, except for Apple and PalmSource anyway. :-)

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October 6, 2003

Going Pre-Pay

8500 Today, after much thought, research and discussion, my wife and I have decided to take the plunge into the world of pre-paid wireless. At lunchtime, we stopped by a local Best Buy to pick up a Virgin Mobile branded Audiovox 8500 handset and two $20 pre-pay top-up cards.

In case you're considering a similar switch, or are just the curious type, I thought it might be useful to share our thinking about mobile phones and contract vs. pre-pay plans.

We came to the realization that neither of us use a mobile phone enough to justify $20-30 per month wireless plans with many minutes and long-term contracts. For us, a mobile phone is really a convenience and safety item, rather than a necessity. A little research on the net and at local stores led us to pre-pay mobile services as a way to meet our mobile phone usage and budget quite nicely.

In reality, both of our mobile line usages combined fell well below the 100 minutes per month mark. I rarely used my phone and my wife only used hers occasionally to call with a tidbit of info or to setup a meeting with one of her friends. Safety was also a common use for our mobiles: to have a way to reserve a hotel or call for help on a trip.

As for long-distance, if wanted to use the plan Cingular included with Gail's line, we had a very limited Midwest region in which we could call freely, while anything outside that region had a roaming surcharge tacked on. My brother Steve, wisely pointed out that an inexpensive long distance calling card might actually be a better deal for instances when we did make long distance calls (not often).

We also realized that we could probably get by with a single mobile phone 99% of the time, since most of the time one of us is at home. If we really need another phone in a pinch, my folks offered to loan us theirs. And, as my friend Andy says "I got along for 30-some years with NO mobile phone whatsoever... I think I can probably manage without one now." An insightful point indeed.

I'd also mentioned that my folks picked up a Virgin Mobile phone a few weeks back. They made the change mainly for safety purposes during their recent trip to New England, and as a low-cost way to keep in touch with the family. They were very pleased with their Virgin Mobile phone on their trip, reporting that the sound quality was very good and coverage, even in somewhat rural areas was better than expected. With that last bit of positive feedback, my wife and I began seriously discussing the idea of going to pre-pay.

Our Cingular contracts expired in October, so canceling wouldn't incur any $150 per line cancellation fees (one big reason for staying with Cingular) and our old Nokia phones were showing signs of battery death, with time-reset screens appearing at every power-on. The cost of replacement batteries and the idea of jumping into another $20 per month, 1 or 2 year contract (complete with new cancellation fees) wasn't terribly attractive.

What was attractive was a Virgin Mobile phone and a no-contract plan and about $13.50 per month for service, assuming we get a $20 top-up card every 90 days and including the cost of new phone (spread over 12 months). Plus, whatever minutes we don't use in a 90 day period are rolled over when we top-up with a new $20 card for the new quarter. That's not bad!

I had considered waiting until December to switch, so we could keep our old phone number once Number Portability became law, but after some contemplation, I decided it wouldn't be worth the wait. Not that many people know our mobile number(s) and it's certainly easy in that case to just tell those who do know, what the new number is. I'd rather take the money we'd have spent on the overkill Cingular line, toward the new pre-pay service (especially since the monthly cost is less and the minutes roll over).

We really liked the Audiovox "Vox" 8500 flip phone offered by Virgin Mobile. It's quite small, which makes it great for popping into a jacket, purse or pants pocket. We also liked that the actual users' reviews we found online were quite favorable. I suppose as we use this phone we'll find the plusses and minuses, but for an occasional call it ought to work perfectly.

Today, after activating the Audiovox 8500 with Virgin Mobile, I called to cancel our last mobile line with Cingular. Ah, it felt so good to be done with all that. We've now left the realm of long contracts and pricey monthly fees. We'll see how pay as you go suits our lives and I'll be sure to report on our experiences from time to time. Hopefully this little story of our switch helps someone else considering it -- if so, we'll be very happy to have helped out. :-)

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October 2, 2003

Longing for Analog

Early this morning, I sat at the local cafe, reading the last few pages of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and realized that I miss being purely analog.

What do I mean by that? Well, I'm old enough to remember the days when computers were laughable little toys, like the first ZX-81 personal computer my father built from a kit. In fact, nothing was really digital until these kinds of computers came along... in the eons of time before computers, everything an average person came in contact with was fully analog.

Anyway, today I finished my hardcover book and started thinking about the work I do and how temporary and ethereal it all seems. I do my daily work on a laptop, which contains thousands of files and many projects. It contains correspondence and websites, source graphics and documentation, music and video clips. But these things are all held together by battery power and little magnetic bits that are either on or off... marked that way on the hard disk inside. They're almost not really physical at all: just magnetic marks on a platter.

What about my work out on the web? Websites I've designed, weblog entries I've posted, emails I've sent to lists or off to other friends that might reside on a server somewhere -- they too are all suspended in a digital state of on or off, kept in place by electrons. If the power plants of the world suddenly ground to a screeching halt, and all the batteries of the world ran dry, all of my work and that of others, would disappear in a poof of electrons.

When I even think back to the days prior to computers taking the design and publishing industry by storm, at least I had physical access to my work, drawn or printed on paper. I could pick it up and hold it and show it to someone else without the need for a special 'viewer' or a network connection. If the power went out, it was easy to keep working (assuming it wasn't evening) since pens and pencils, paint, paper and t-squares required no power to operate. It was all analog.

In fact, years ago, when I worked at the design firm, I still remember feeling different than several of my younger designer colleagues. That particular day, the power failed. My co-workers all sat looking at their blank computer screens, shuffling dead mice or tinkling the keys of their unresponsive keyboards, while I moved to the drawing board and began to sketch out concepts for projects I was working on that didn't need computer input.

I had been schooled in analog design concepts and processes that used pencils, pens, charcoal, paper, paint, wax and other physical items. I learned to draw, paint and conceptualize ideas manually, without a computer, and this was a good thing. Later, the computer did come along and it was also a good thing too... power to the people and all.

However, the computer sometimes has a magnetism about it -- the idea that all problems will be solved with the powerful digital tools it offers me. I find myself being wooed by the computer when I need to solve a design problem. At times it's a real battle of internal will to break away and grab a pencil and sketchpad, but when I do break away and go analog, I am always rewarded with much better design solutions than I could have come up with, working on the computer.

I think it's a sense of freedom when I'm sketching. I feel free to do anything I want with pencil and paper, with no limitations. Meanwhile, with a computer, in the back of my mind there's this subtle pressure to try and fit within the parameters of the tool I'm using, or to fall back into a rut of old tricks you know well in a particular application.

Now don't take me for some kind of Luddite who's turning his back on computers and all things digital. I think computers are wonderful, powerful tools which have offered us all access and capabilities that we would have never imagined years ago.

No, what I am suggesting is, the computer and digital tools that it offers us should sometimes be left alone while analog processes and tools are experienced and enjoyed. Sketching on paper, reading a bound paper book, shooting a film-based camera, writing handwritten letters and so on. I'm suggesting we appreciate the digital power we have, but at the same time, celebrate the joy of analog technologies. After all, we are analog and not digital beings.

Go forth and do something analog today! :-)

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September 15, 2003

Dad's Pre-Pay Mobile Phone Experience

Rave Mobile Phone I've written here before about mobile phones in various ways, so I thought it would be interesting to share the story of the Virgin Mobile pre-pay phone dad just bought. My father popped by over during my lunch-break today, After looking at the details online, we headed to Best Buy to check out Virgin Mobile phones and competing services.

We found the Virgin Mobile kiosk at Best Buy and spent a few minutes comparing phones and services before dad chose the Kyocera K-7 Rave. What's funny about this all to me is, the entire Virgin Mobile line of pre-pay phones is marketed to teens and 20-somethings, yet dad is buying one and mentioned several other friends not in the target market buying Virgin Mobile phones. :-)

So, dad bought his phone and a $20 top-up card and was very pleased with the deal. He wants to have a phone for being available when he or mom are out and about, and when traveling. The price just can't be beat. We figured that a $20 card every 90 days (mandatory for keeping a current account) over a year's time came to about $6.66 per month. Figure in the initial $75 phone cost and pricing only jumps to $12.91 per month for the first year. That includes long distance, voicemail, call waiting, caller id and other features. Plus you have no contracts or bills to pay. Not bad compared to other mobile services that start at $20 per month for 1 or even 2 years.

I've actually been keeping an eye on Virgin Mobile's pre-pay phones myself, as my wife and I are nearing the end of a long contract with our current provider. We're trying to think about what to do next. We both user our mobiles sparingly, so it seems a bit crazy to spend lots of money each month for a phone we "might" use now and then. I would much prefer to pay for what we use, because we both use a mobile phone so little. Maybe we could even live with just one phone (blasphemy in the modern world!)

So, we'll see how dad's experience goes. I think it's going to be good, which means we might switch sooner than later and forgo the number portability. This is because we'd have to wait until late November before we could carry our current number(s) to Virgin Mobile. Still, the only real hassle in getting new numbers is that we'd have to alert friends and I might need to print up new business cards. Maybe it's not as big of a deal as I think.

Anyway, if you're at all like us and just need a low-cost phone that you only use sparingly, check out Virgin Mobile, or one of the many other pre-pay services out there. You might be able to save some pretty significant cash compared to a flat rate plan with minutes you seldom use and still have the mobile phone for your convenience.

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September 12, 2003

MS Smartphone a Future SMS Spam Threat?

MS Smartphone The other day, it hit me. After an informal chat with several friends, I realized that at some point in the future, MS's new Smartphone platform has a good chance of to becoming the equivalent of Outlook to SMS inboxes. Let me explain.

Consider this: Microsoft is pushing their new "Smartphone" platform, which offers users combined PDA and phone functions. Okay, so this is nothing new -- the Handspring Treo and other devices have offered integrated features for quite a while now. The problem lies not in the features or capabilities of a communicator or smartphone, but in its strength of security.

I think this could be a big problem for the Smartphone platform. When you consider Microsoft's track record when it comes to security, particularly when you consider Microsoft's security record when it comes to Outlook, I'm already worried. If you're saying "No Mike, it's not going to happen" then just count the number of "Re: Thank you!" and other SoBig messages (with 100k attachments) that have clogged your inbox lately.

Now envision thousands of MS Smartphone users with hundreds of contacts in each of their Pocket Outlook address books -- one of which might be your own phone's SMS address. It would only take one hacker to develop a virus that attacks the Smartphone OS or Pocket Outlook to send virus laden emails or SMS messages to every contact in its address book. Unfortunately, I can easily imagine this scenario occurring.

Once this happens, how exactly would one clear their SMS inbox that's full of spam messages sent by your friendly MS Smartphone user? As far as I know SMS gateways are controlled by phone carriers. That means making phone calls to customer service and trying to explain the situation so that your SMS inbox could be cleared.

Next problem is, how do you stop SMS spam from from continuing? Can a carrier provide new SMS addresses to customers? I know my SMS inbox is tied to my mobile number. And once the MS Smartphone user gets your new SMS address, how long until the next virus spams you? Or would you simply shut down your inbox for good?

What's worse, you may have to pay for SMS spam you receive! In fact, pay $0.10 per received and sent SMS message on my carrier's network. SMS spam messages could really add up quick.

I was surprised to learn from my friend Andy in London that commercial SMS spam is actually quite a problem in Europe, because SMS and text messaging are so popular. From what I understand, companies get your SMS address when you sign up for contests, then send off promotional SMS messages once they know you're out there. Apparently, some users get so much commercial SMS spam that they practically stop checking their SMS inboxes or switch phone carriers.

So how long do you think it will be before we see SoBig-like viruses attacking SMS inboxes via MS Smartphones? I dunno, but I'd guess it could very well happen.

Now, I don't know if a hacker could feasibly develop a virus to attack MS Smartphones. I don't know if the MS Smarphone platform has an underlying scripting language like Visual Basic or if it has security holes like Outlook. But then again, just a few years ago, nobody really considered this a problem with Outlook, did they?

Hmmmm...

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August 28, 2003

Outlook, Corporate IT, "Trustworthy" Computing & Reliability

Matt sent me a link today to Good Times, a very funny and pointed rant by John Gruber of Daring Fireball. John discusses the scourge of Outlook and Exchange, how IT departments put more emphasis on job security than on "Trustworthy" computing, and his solutions to the problem, which include making systems (Windows, Linux or Mac) truly reliable.

I love that John takes the time to step back and take a broader, common-sense look at computer reliability. Why do viruses and Outlook seem inseparable? Why don't corporate IT department CIOs and workers understand their systems better? Why we should require much more of IT people on system reliability. In short, he suggests IT people should be expected to make their systems as reliable as plumbing.

Here's a long, but hilarious quote from the article:

Imagine if the plumbing in corporate America worked with the same degree of reliability as their computer infrastructure. This would mean that individual sinks, urinals, and toilets would go out of order on a regular basis. Water from drinking fountains would turn brown, but, hey, that’s just how it is. Every few weeks, teenage pranksters from Hong Kong would overflow every toilet in the building, knocking them out of commission.

In response to these problems, large companies would have large in-house plumbing staffs, led by a CPO (chief plumbing officer) reporting directly to the CEO. New restroom equipment would be chosen by the same plumbing staff that is employed for maintenance, thus providing a nearly irresistible disincentive to choose reliable low-maintenance equipment from other vendors.

In fact, all of the plumbing comes from a single company based in the state of Washington. This company’s plumbing equipment is engineered such that it is extremely difficult to see how it actually works. The corporate plumbers are often equipped with certifications from this manufacturer, but they (the plumbers) in fact understand very little about how toilets and sinks truly work.

Woo hoo! Go read the whole thing! :-)

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August 19, 2003

Cheap Internet Voice Calls

Last week on Gizmodo I came across the SIPphone, a desktop phone with an Ethernet jack instead of a regular phone jack -- a great idea for far away friends who both have broadband Internet service. Each phone has a set phone number, which other SIPphone callers can call to reach you.

The idea is this -- you and a far away friend split the cost of two SIPphones for $130. You keep one phone and send the other phone to the friend with whom you spend lots of cash calling with long distance. Great idea if you both have differing operating systems (say Windows and Mac OS) and make lots of calls. It'd be especially attractive for say one friend in the US and another in New Zealand, since in the long run it would save vs. international long distance.

Of course, if you're a Mac OS X user, iChat AV (in public beta, soon to be sold for $30) does pretty much the same thing with optional video capabilities. In fact, my friend Andy in London and I have just about weekly voice chats via iChat AV with pretty good sound quality, saving us tons of money over international long distance calls. I can tell you that it's a great feeling being able to call Andy whenever he's around and have a voice (or video) chat rather than pounding out an email.

Yahoo Messenger seems to at least offer voice chatting capabilities, but it's much more like a walkie-talkie instead of a regular telephone with full-duplex like iChat AV. Yuck! Yeah, it works but it's just another hassle... I want to have my service act just like my telephone does.

Which brings me back to the SIPphone. Yes it's a bit more costly than software for your Mac, PC or Linux box, but I see it as the kind of dedicated, nearly-brainless technology that just works. SIPphone is perfect for two or more computer users regardless of the OS they run and only depends on your cable connection: not your Mac, PC or Linux box, which for the right people, could be a perfect solution.

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August 13, 2003

Good Thinking on Email

Last week I came across an older post from March 11th over at Lonnie Foster's weblog, which I really liked and wanted to share here. Lonnie's post linked to and talked about an Ole Eichhorn essay called The Tyranny of Email, about email's intrusion into our lives and how to deal with it.

I had already made a few changes in my own email patterns before reading Ole's essay, which have helped: setting less frequent schedules for checking, splitting my personal and work emails into two separate "accounts" (something you can do easily with Entourage on the Mac) and limiting my checking of email on weekends to once a day.

However, Eichhorn's essay suggests setting even more limits on your email and provides good reasoning for his ideas. Here's a teaser list of Eichhorn's suggestions:

1. Turn your email client off. Pick the moment at which you'll be interrupted.
2. Never criticize anyone in email, and avoid technical debates. Use face-to-face meetings or 'phone calls instead.
3. Be judicious in who you send email to, and who you copy on emails.
4. Observing some formality is important.
5. Don't hesitate to review and revise important emails.
6. Remember that email is a public and permanent record.

But don't just scan the above list! Be sure to read the whole essay, since Eichhorn provides much more detail on the reasons why and how to go about making practical changes. If you're curious about response to Ole's essay check out Tyranny Revisited.

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August 9, 2003

My First Segway Ride... Almost

Segway It was Friday afternoon, and I was heading back to the office after a client meeting, when I glimpsed signs promoting Segway trial rides in a parking lot of a local shopping mall. Excited by the chance to see a Segway up close and maybe even have a go on one, I hung a left into the mall lot, and spent several minutes working my way back to the parking lot where I saw the signs.

It was much more of a hassle than I'd thought to find the Segway demo lot, as I had to wind my way around medians and across busy mall road intersections. Finally, I got close enough to see one of the promo signs, which read:

Segway Rides
$10 for 10 minutes

Oh man, forget that! I mean, if you want me to try a $5,000 Segway out and potentially buy one, I'm certainly not going to pay $10 just to try it for 10 minutes! I decided to pass up the opportunity, but not before getting close enough to see nobody out riding Segways except the demo staff.

I was even put off from stopping for a closer look because I figured the sales staff, desperate for a rider would probably try their darndest to rope me into riding one and I didn't have $10 burning a hole in my pocket. Besides, I couldn't afford to mess around too long, as I had plenty of work to do back at the office.

So, my opportunity to ride a Segway has come and gone for now. Hopefully I'll come across another chance to ride one of these things for no charge one day.

Maybe I'll reconsider at least having a closer look on the weekend, assuming the Segway folks are still offering demo rides. While I would like to ride one, even seeing one up close would be quite interesting. We'll see...

On a related note, if you have any interest in reading historical and up to date articles on the Segway, my friend Lorenz Szabo has compiled a collection of Segway articles from the web, into a nicely formatted Palm Reader document (203k). I must say it's really nice to have all these documents compiled about Segway, since it provides a longer term view of its history in one place. (thanks Lo!)

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July 16, 2003

Surviving Mobile Number Portability

Read a great article at BusinessWeek online today called Portability: Survival Tips for Cell-Phone Outfits. The article talks about US mobile phone carriers requirement to deal with mobile phone number portability on November 24th, 2003 and gives the big carriers some ideas on making the best of the situation.

In a nutshell, the article argues that mobile phone carriers would do well to go with the flow of number portability and make it easy. They should treat their customers as people rather than "units" by providing the excellent service their customers deserve. Lastly, carriers should make their pricing plans decipherable by mere mortals and hold off on the hidden fees.

An interesting statistic from the article:

"A recent survey by Management Network Group, a communications research firm, revealed that 6% of cell-phone users -- some 8.7 million people -- would switch carriers within a day if they could take their phone numbers with them. Some 27%, or 39 million customers, said they would switch providers as soon as they received a better offer. Better than 50% of those who experienced service issues in the past year said they would at some point switch carriers."

I for one will be looking to switch carriers, possibly to Virgin Mobile, since they offer an easy to comprehend pay-as-you-go service that suits my phone use patterns perfectly.

I hope that this shift in the US mobile market will improve options of the consumer -- mobile phone carriers already have way too much power, which makes number portability seem like a perfect way to give some power back to the consumer, where it belongs.

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July 15, 2003

Would You Like Linux with Your Weisswurst?

At lunchtime today I came across an article called Linux took on Microsoft, and won big in Munich, in USA Today online. Byron Acohido's well-written article by details the timeline of the Microsoft vs. Linux decision in Munich (the home of Weisswurst), along with behind the scenes information gathered after the decision.

Some of the more interesting tidbits from the documents USA Today uncovered, indicate that Microsoft was willing to let Munich extend their Windows XP "upgrade-free-zone" to 6 years -- a big concession compared to the normal 3 to 4 year span. Here's a great quote from Munich council member Christine Strobl:

"Microsoft's philosophy is to change our software every five years," Strobl says. "With open-source, it is possible for us to make our own decision as to when to change our software."

Microsoft also agreed to let Munich buy copies of MS Word without having to buy Office in cases where workstations didn't need anything more. In other words, unbundling. This is another big and very unusual concession, since Microsoft uses the sale of Office as a big stranglehold on business.

My Austrian friend Andy suggested that Munich is known as Europe's "Silicon Valley", which means this win for Linux is a very strategic one. It could have a huge impact on Europe, the US and the world. Should be interesting to see how this one shakes out in the next few years.

A final takeaway quote:

"Microsoft came too late," says Wolowicz, Ude's chief of staff. "The perception of the majority of the city council was now (Microsoft) wants to put pressure on the decision. Psychologically it was not good."

Read the whole article... I highly recommend it.

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July 8, 2003

Surprise! Complex Gadgets & High-Tech Lingo Confuses People

Today's tidbit link (via Hal) is to the BBC story High-tech babble baffles many, on how high tech gadgetry is baffling potential buyers out of buying.

I've always had the feeling this was true, so it's good to see a story confirming my beliefs. This is what happens when engineers and marketers promote a boatload of glitzy "features" and related buzzwords and acronyms rather than offering easy to use and simple to understand solutions.

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June 11, 2003

Waiting for Number Portability

Nokia 3360 Came across this helpful David Coursey article Switching cell phone carriers? Read this first! at ZDNet (via Gizmodo) and it reminded me that Mobile Phone Number Portability is set to arrive sometime in November... unless the carriers manage to delay it again.

I for one hope that number portability becomes reality, and I think many other mobile phone users probably feel the same way. Right now my wife and I are nearing the end of a long 2 year contract with Cingular that's due to expire in September. Why did we agree to a 2 year deal? I think it was a deal for two Nokia 3360 phones, but honestly, I think I was just a bit brain dead the day we made the deal. :-)

Anyway, Cingular's service is decent and we've been generally happy with them. However, their pricing plans seem a little limiting especially compared to some of the $30 per month all-you-can-eat plans with data included from carriers like Sprint. Cingular offers Internet services, but it's a slow connection and adds another $10 per month to the bill, per phone. That's doesn't even include minutes used.

As for number portability, I just want to have some kind of choice in the carrier I choose. I dislike the idea of losing our mobile phone numbers, since I have mine printed on my business cards and my wife and I would both have to dole out our new numbers to family and friends if we were to switch carriers.

I'm hoping that number portability will encourage more competition between carriers and hopefully break the stranglehold they have on wireless service. I'd love to see even more battles for lower prices and more features and more importantly, better customer service.

Unfortunately, as David Coursey points out, carriers will likely make it harder to switch services with other rules, once the biggest "hook" they have now (number portability) is settled. Right now we have a $200 per line cancellation fee with Cingular, which strongly encourages us to wait until September to even consider a switch. I can imagine these fees are going to rise and become even more restrictive in the short term.

So we'll see. In reality we're probably going to trim down to a single phone come September, so hopefully this time next year our one remaining mobile phone number will be the same, with better plan, maybe from a different carrier. That'd work for us.

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May 22, 2003

Mobile Phone Tidbits

I'm not exactly the poster boy for mobile phone use, at least as the mobile phone companies probably look at it. I have a Nokia 3360 on Cingular and I like it, more or less. The truth is, I hardly use the thing. Of course it's handy when traveling, but on a daily basis it's turned off, since I'm generally near a stationery phone at home or the office.

For a little while I used the mobile package on my Nokia, to connect my Clié via InfraRed but because I am always near an Internet cable connection, I didn't find it a great value for the additional $5 per month it cost me. However, for travel, the mobile phone is invaluable, since I can call my wife and have her return the call on her Nokia for free (her plan includes free long distance). On my Palm DevCon California trip, our bill for a few hours of talk time was a measly $1.50!

Even with travel usage figured in, I hardly use my mobile phone. I've decided that I'm just not a typical mobile phone user.

Still, I am a mobile-oriented person, so I am interested in the role mobile phones play in our culture, even if I don't use mine very much. Over the past few weeks I've gathered a few interesting articles on mobile phones to share with you:

Mobile Phones Enslave Brits
First is the article Britons are enslaved by the mobile telephone from the Times Online (UK) about studies done in Britain showing everyday Britons are enslaved by their mobile phones, rather than freed by them. I found it interesting to read that dependence on the mobile phone was extrapolated as a form of control, and gave users a sense of power over situations. Some respondents even felt their mobile improved their self identity. Older users felt some of this but it seems that the younger generation say their mobile phones are "an extension of their physical being". Wow.

Kids Need SMS for Self Esteem
Related to the Times article was this one from NewMediaAge, suggesting that school kids get self esteem boosts from receiving SMS messages. Key quote:

"Children are so obsessed that they are unable to communicate verbally uninterrupted, are constantly checking their phones for messages, and become irritable if they have to be away from their phone for any period of time."

Yikes! I don't know about you, but this sounds a little disturbing.

Mobiles vs. Non-Mobiles
Here's another story along the same lines from Wired, which reports that kids are now breaking into two social groups: mobiles and non-mobiles. The article describes the "mobiles" group this way:

"The people who had become a part of the mobiles group had a hard time doing deprivation at all," Blinkoff said. "They couldn't do it at all."

Whoa. This is sounding more and more like addiction, eh?

I should be clear that I'm not against the mobile phone, but as with all technology, I do think we must be aware of how mobile phones integrate into our lives. I think it's wise to set boundaries to make sure our technology (in this case the mobile phone) doesn't control us, but that we maintain control over it.

To avoid ending this post on a down note, I must share this hilarious James Lileks response to the idea of un-inventing mobile phones:

"I have one. It's always off. If you turn it on, people call you, and there's really only one message you need to know right away: I am a trucker in the car behind you and there is an axe murderer hiding in your back seat. And you would, of course, say "how did you know my number?" Followed by "AAAAIIEEEE!"

Hee hee. Exactly! :-)

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May 19, 2003

Post-Bubble Silicon Valley

This weekend I came across a great Po Bronson article called Life in the Bust Belt from latest issue of Wired Magazine. The article describes life in Silicon Valley now that the Internet bubble has burst, comparing it to Detroit of all places.

If you recall, I'd longed for a description of present day life in the Valley after reading Silicon Valley Boys -- I think Bronson's 'Life in the Bust Belt' article fits the bill quite well. As I suspected, everyone is a little closer to earth these days -- preferring a stable but less exciting job to living on the edge.

For the most part, workers are happy to have a life back. "It's just a paycheck now," said one woman I rode Caltrain with. "I'm all right with that." At San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation, I got into a conversation with a former headhunter, now doing HR. "The subsector of the industry that profited from chaos isn't counting on a recovery. Ever." She used to eat at trendy restaurants; now the highlights of her week are a regular dinner with friends (alternating among their apartments) and the volunteer tutoring she does at an elementary school. She says, "The question 'What do you do?' now refers more to 'How do you pay the bills?' than 'What is your purpose?'"

I'm not suggesting this article as a way to experience schadenfreude (finding malicious joy in others' pain). Rather, I think it's a way to get truer sense of how things have changed in Silicon Valley, for those who don't live there.

I actually disagree with Po Bronson on his view that the Silicon Valley is no longer an icon. Silicon Valley will always be an icon -- it just won't ever be the same icon of endless growth and prosperity it was in 1999. But who knows... nobody predicted what happened in the 1990s! ;-)

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May 13, 2003

MP3 & Critical Mass

iPod & iTunes Been having some good discussions with a few Mac friends who are both very interested in the new iTunes Music Store and more particularly, the AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) format. This is the format Apple is using (with DRM features enabled) to distribute $0.99 tracks. AAC can also be used to burn personal music files from CDs, using Quicktime 6.2.

Matt is currently in the process of converting his entire music collection from MP3 to AAC, mainly because it takes so much less space on his drive. In our last discussion about his conversion Matt estimated he might save upwards of 10GB on his drive going to AAC from MP3. That's nothing to sneeze at!

Another friend, Andy, is also contemplating conversion of his music collection to AAC. Last week he told me that the quality of AAC is much improved over MP3 files with much higher bit rates. He claims AACs rival the quality of the original CD tracks even at 128 bit rates. He's also interested in space savings, as his drive space is limited and his music collection is quite substantial.

I can't comment on AAC sound quality vs. MP3, since I've not yet heard a comparison, though Matt posted an interesting tidbit on his weblog today questioning if there is any real difference between sound quality of an MP3 vs. AAC file, other than file size.

What I will comment on is this: the quality of AAC, even if it proves better sounding than MP3 is still not compelling enough to convince most regular people to re-rip their entire MP3 music collection. Here are my reasons:

MP3 has achieved critical mass. MP3 decoding can be found on more and more electronics items -- Craig Froehle mentioned buying a MP3 CD player with FM tuner for $40 at Best Buy just last week. MP3 players are now even available in mobile phones and car stereos. I fully expect to buy a fridge in the next two years with a 500GB MP3 player and Wi-Fi networking capabilities built-in. :-)

Most music players support MP3 and not AAC. Music players like my trusty Rio Volt SP250 can't play AAC files, so I'm out of luck whether I've burnt the AACs myself or bought from the iTunes Music Store. If my RioVolt and other devices like it offer a software or a firmware update, I'm pretty sure most regular users will not perform the upgrade. This leaves only the Apple iPod (an excellent bit of hardware) and Macs or PCs with Quicktime 6.2 for AAC playback.

Locations where you most often listen to MP3s are really noisy. Ambient noise surrounds any listener in a bus station, on a train, in an airplane, in your car or even your home office. Because of this ever-present ambient noise, any quality benefits of an AAC are going to be lost anyway.

MP3 is good enough for most listeners. I think of MP3 music as my own FM radio -- it has high enough quality to sound good in most locations, even with good quality headphones. FM radio is nowhere near the quality of CD music, but it has millions of happy listeners worldwide, because it is good enough.

So, if you're a stickler for better sound quality (which is still up for debate), you need more drive space, you have an iPod or only play converted music on your Mac or PC (with Quicktime 6.2), then it makes sense to consider AAC. Otherwise, AAC falls a bit short for those without a way to play tunes on a portable device, like me and millions of other people who use MP3s.

I do hope the iTunes Music Store does well. However I fear that until AAC reaches a wider audience and gains more users, it is destined to remain a cool yet minor niche format compared to the ever-popular MP3.

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