Small Fish, Big Pond

Since the Apple iPad has come out and been somewhat disappointing eyes have turned to the Microsoft Courier for hope. It’s hard to guess about what a currently non-existent device is going to be like; although in comparison to the iPad hype at least we have some concept videos to work with.

Amazingly people seem to be really interested in the Courier, especially since the iPad turned out to be a big iPhone touch without flash. The big question is why?

First off is that the interface is much more different than existing interface on laptops and smartphones; I think this is what people were expecting from the iPad. There is naturally going to be some interesting things you can do with two screens that you can’t do with one. Although at home I’ve found the only thing I use a second screen for is to watch TV and get distracted while I’m trying to do real work on the other screen.

Matt Buchanan at Gizmodo seems a bit negative on the “devolution” of the device now that the iPad is out; maybe hoping against all hope that a device created by crazy Ballmer won’t turn out to be the Mac fan’s dream. But he makes a good point that the graphical interface that Courier seems to have a ton of complex hand gestures to operate. This is actually one of my gripes about the iPad is that it’s rumored to have a ton of new but needlessly complex touch gestures to do simple tasks that can be better served with simpler inputs. But when it’s on an iPad its revolutionary, when it’s on a MS device its needlessly complex (reality is it will suck on both).

As far as inputs are concerned I also like that it is going to have a stylus input. So much of the tech community seems to be anti-stylus now ever since the iPhone dropped it for big giant buttons that take up 1/4 of the screen. It’s actually a great interface and perfect for a tablet sized device. You don’t see lawyers and doctors walking around with notepad jabbing big giant crayons or markers onto the page. When you have a small interface you need some to do fine work.

I think the main draw for the courier and the reason why people seem so optimistic about it is that from the concepts it looks like it’s built to actually be used as a tool to make you more productive. Seriously, it’s cool that Microsoft sees this as a something that can do something other than watch youtube videos in bed. I think that either consciously or subconsciously the current zeitgeist in the handheld tech world is that we want something that that can make us better at doing actual work and not a recreational product. We’ve had enough fun with the fart apps and the smartphone lightsaber duels that with a larger device we want something that can be use to make work easier or at least less chaotic.

The very design of the courier makes it more work related than recreation; it’s hard to imagine using it in a traditional tablet use like watching videos or surfing the web with that split down the screen. However I’ve noticed that the interface is really only good for graphics artists or people who are making ads for Nike. 99% of my work involves punching things in with a keyboard, either writing, programming, or configuring via command line. Still coming from the PDA side of handhelds vs. feature rich dumbphones I really want a device that is suited towards productivity, kind of like how I’m really tempted to trade my phones for a Dell Mini 5.

However on the recreational side the courier would make a great e-reader being about the same size and form of a medium book. Engadget is even guessing that Microsoft is positioning this as their e-reader solution. And contrary to what some misguided people say I believe that the page by page form factor is the perfect way to read (but not with changing pages with stupid finger swipes on a screen). Reading really needs a break every few paragraphs for the mind to take a breath. I’m sure you’re seen a page online that was just a huge long scroll of text that went on far longer than you could bother to read. If you haven’t seen anything like that check out some of my older posts and some upcoming posts (or this post come to think of it).

Anyway the Courier really looks to be all that we had hoped that Steve might have made the iPad into. At the very least its’ another innovative and new product that Microsoft seems to be toying with. After a decade of being fat and lazy while the upstarts stole market share it looks like they could hit a few home runs out of the park this year and make 2010 the year of Microsoft. Or Windows Phone 7 could fizzle and this concept never become reality. We won’t know for sure until we actually some them hit the streets.

Gizmodo is announcing Time of Death for the iTunes LP.

Everything I said when it was announced still holds true as much as it did half a year ago.
iTunes LP (possibly Cocktail) fails

The final reason this won’t work is that it doesn’t solve the core reason that people online only buy music a track at a time. People are sick of 2-3 good tracks and 10 “filler tracks” that are unwanted.

For getting people to buy LP’s instead of individual tracks EVERY full album purchase on iTunes should come like this by default at the normal album price. This is what iTunes should have been doing from the get-go to entice us into putting up with those 10 filler tracks. As a more expensive version of an normal track only album it’s not worth it.

I have to say I’m really excited for this, Tron was a great movie even if it’s a bit dated now, and one of my favorite movies growing up. The new one looks excellent and makes good use of the movie technology today.

It also goes well with the plot in that the digital world has grown by leaps and bounds since the first movie and has become a dangerous place. I’m actually half way though writing a blog post about how this is happening in real life so a movie about it coming in December is fitting.

A few cool things from the trailer: of course the light cycles are upgraded (light car?) and the image of a guy wiping out in a light wall is excellent.

They also kept the Recognizers!!!! I was wondering because in TRON 2.0 the recognizers had been converted into packet transports. That had some excelent quotes for tech and network geeks like me.

“In the event of sudden archive decompression, a subnet mask will rez into your overhead memory. If you are accompanying any subprograms, please install your own mask before assisting them.”

“You would probably lose your header if it weren’t compiled on.”

“8 bits short of a byte.”

Grab the HD version here. Thanks Giz.

It’s also going to be 3D but I’m hoping it was filmed in 3D and not 2D->3D converted like Alice in Wonderland which I hear is a sub-par alternative.

Tying together two recent posts, the WiFi tech that Apple is exorcising from it’s app database is the same technology that makes GeoSense work on GPS less laptops.

On a side note I think Sekai Camera was one of the few Augumented reality apps that developed well. The comments places were far more location specific than Layar’s display.

By finding your location with nearby WiFi Access Points. Not such a big deal on iPhone since it has GPS but it just shows how useful a tool it is.

Google Europe head honcho, John Herlihy, is a moron.

Ok, he’s not a moron but I really hate it when people get so wrapped up in their new smartphone that they get tunnel vision. His quote was a small part of a big “pat on the back” session extolling Google’s virtues:

“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,”

In Japan more people do use phones rather than computers. But it’s a cultural difference; they’re not ahead of us by way of tech innovation in this regard. In fact surf the web through a Japanese phone and you’ll see just how far behind it is compared to the richness of US mobile service consumption. The web pages render fast because they are the equivalent of 1996 html only lists of text.

Second is the fact that this guy obviously doesn’t see the huge market of gamers out there, or the professionals who need actual applications and not just a email browser.

Like I said, I believe John Herlihy is smarter that he sounds, he’s just got a bit of tunnel vision right now. I think if he were to step back for a bit he’d say something more like, “I believe in three years time smartphones will be purchased before desktops by most consumers.” Which I think could be very likely.

Why on earth would Apple think that it’s a good idea to pull WiFi detecting apps?

I think pulling all Porn and high Flesh to Clothing ratio apps is a little draconian but fair from a company point of view. However apps that help you find WiFi access points is a useful tool when mobile. Especially for a device that can be seriously limited if 3G reception is poor or you have an older phone with no 3G.

Porn apps are useless, and if Apple really wanted to make a statement and fix their image they’d pull all the fart apps. But legitimate apps that make a mobile phone a useful tool should be the apps to reward not remove.

It’s funny because everybody is always saying that the App Ecosystem that Apple has made with the iPhone is its greatest strength. But in reality the ecosystem is poisoned, and it’s only getting worse.

Sorry, I need to vent but if you work in the WAN networking industry do yourself a favor and stay away from the General Datacomm Xedge multiplexing devices.

I know they can do a lot of but they’re not worth the headache. Besides for the cost of 4 T1’s you’re trying to tie together you can get a fractional T3 with more bandwidth for cheaper.

Do the tech grunts a favor and go with the frac. T3; those are relatively easy to setup. Just some friendly insider info.

I remember when Windows 7 came out one of the new features they were touting was the ability to connect “sensors” to make the computer more self aware of its surroundings. It’s basically an attempt to give the computer the same abilities that are common in smartphones now like GPS or cell tower location awareness, accelerometer movement awareness, or ambient light sensing abilities.

This all sounds well and good; it would be cool if you could sit in a coffee shop, search google for nearby dining or shopping venues and get a location aware result rather than responses that may be located hundreds of miles away.

But who has a Laptop with GPS built in right now?

I know that come Dells and other computer are making it an option but lets face it, 99% of the world doesn’t have any use for Windows 7 sensors.

Well today How-To-Geek has a great writeup on how to put geosense on your laptop to get geolocation abilities without GPS. It’s funny that I was reading this article in a coffee shop, downloaded, installed, and had location aware abilities, all within about 5 minutes.

The install is fast and simple, the accuracy isn’t GPS level but it’s certainly good enough for weather results and nearby shopping opportunities.

As all this tech is new for laptops there isn’t a lot of abilities yet:

- Geosense made a location-enabled Google Maps client.
- Windows Sidebar “Weather” gadget: Detects location and give local weather.
- MahTweets: Geotags tweets and Flickr photos

But now that the ability to be location aware is free and simple anybody can get it, and as the number of people with it grow the apps to do more will follow. Since most of us smartphone users are getting used to these abilities from the phone it’s nice to have the laptop catchup so all of our devices are equally useful.

Get Geosense for Windows 7 (all but starter edition) here.

Saw this at Japan Probe. It’s a video of the tsunami from Chile finally hitting Japan and traveling up the mouth of a river.

It doesn’t seem amazing but you have to remember how much energy it takes to physically shove so much water that it crosses the Pacific ocean at hundreds of miles an hour to create waves in Japan (the wave slows and gets taller as the water comes to shallow water). To get an idea of the energy needed imagine being in the pool and shoving the water as hard as you can to make a wave a few inches tall travel ~20 feet.

Also you can see how a Tsunami isn’t just a big wave it’s a long wave. Watch the water level along the bank and it rises about a foot as the wave passes and stays there as water rushes up the river.

Seems to freak the birds out too.

Talk about amazing prescience to coming events. Yesterday Mosspuppet ranted on the US Patent office’s asinine actions in granting Facebook a patent for “The Feed” and went on to talk about how it’s bad for business when companies make generalized patents to stifle competitor innovation (video below).

Today Apple filed suit with HTC for violating their patents.

If you’ve ever read the stream of patents that Apple constantly files it’s pretty obvious what is going on. Apple is basically working to patent every idea they have, in most cases things that they have never done and never will do. Just whatever random ideas they have that sound like good ideas. While I think putting patents on your creations is a good idea I think it’s a real dick move to patent an idea you never actually created. Then when somebody come a along and makes that idea a reality you shouldn’t be allowed to take them to court for innovating and creating something never existed.

Abstract idea patents in themselves are pretty bad to begin with; if it doesn’t exist you shouldn’t be allowed to patent it. The “we may do it someday.” argument doesn’t work. I dreamed of airplanes that flew into space full of passengers when I was 5; I shouldn’t be allowed to patent the idea so I could sue Virgin Galactic now.

There’s also the idea of putting a patent on something that is s basic many people have the same idea. Here’s some of the Apple ones involved in the HTC issue from the excellent breakdown at Engadget.

- Patent 7,362,331: Patents transition effect of opening or closing a window in a browser when it moves at a non-linear speed. Most modern browsers do this.
- Patent 7,469,381: Patents the effect of scrolling to the end of a list and having it snap back to the end with a little elastic bounce.
- Patent 5,920,726: Patents controlling the power usage of a device component to save battery power. Every hand-held device in the world does this.
- Patent 5,929,852: I believe this patents using an application to access an online database like most iPhones apps, all Google resources, and many desktop apps developed in the 90’s onward.

One famous Apple patent is the idea of “Multi-touch”; interacting with a screen with more than one input is a basic idea and one that existed before Apple popularized it. But Apple has the patent, and now that more devices have it they want their cut of the income others are making with this basic idea.

In fact one commenter on Engadget pointed out that Apple held off suing other companies using multi-touch for years until they had all established it as a common use and made loads of money off it so as to maximize Apple’s gain when they finally lashed out with their lawyer armies.

In the end all I have to say is that I agree with Walt Mosspuppet. It’s stupid to grant these vague patents and detestable for companies to use them as clubs to beat on competitors that are innovating in the market.

Apple isn’t doing this out of fairness, they’re not doing this because they’re losing money, and they’re not doing this to improve the market for their consumers. It is a purely selfish move to solidify their market lead, and leach money from the companies struggling to compete. And the people who suffer most are the consumers, the innovation in technology, and the free market itself.

Thanko has a USB mouse with a speaker in it for people who don’t want to splurge on speakers (that cost less). Paired up with a microphone that clips to your shirt you can have VoIP calls holding the mouse to your ear.

It reminds me of the old Maxwell Smart gag, “I want you to speak into my elbow while you look up my nose” (I guess you have to have to have seen it).

Or like Scotty trying to communicate with a 20th century computer in Star Trek IV.

Geekstuff4U via Akihabara News

When I went to Japan I put Skype on my phone so I could keep making almost free calls home and not pay for long distance calls.

Skype is now pulling support for Windows Mobile and won’t offer the service anymore. So go grab the installer now so you’ll have it in the future. After this you’ll likely only find it hidden in the corners of places like XDA forums.

Get Skype for Windows Mobile here (while it’s still available).

From Treehugger. At TED David Cameron (apparently in an attempt to look like less of an ideological conservative) actually pointed out a really good idea to promote conservation.

On electricity bills just compare the user to their neighbors.

A commenter in the post mentioned that showing money saving would be a better incentive but why not show both?

People love to lord over each other how much better they are, or if you’re under-performing they like to know so they can comeback and beat their neighbors. it sounds silly but everybody loves to make a game out of things.

Head over there for the full post and a video of the talk.

It’s amazing how much green screen is on TV.

I long for the day when TV and movies filmed reality instead of a person against a fake backdrop.

I remember watching a season opener for 30Rock and noticed that they were fliming live on the streets of new your because when Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey walked past there were more than a few people doing double takes as TV/Movie stars walked by.

Thanks Gizmodo.

TechCrunch has a great post on a new company coming out that built the interface for the movie Minority Report where they’re actually making it real. They have actual video of it in progress and it looks spectacular; I would love to play with this.

The company is Oblong Industries, and their product is definitely well worth checking out.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

However as I’ve posted before (in reference to Microsoft Surface) this type of computing isn’t as practical as it seems. MG Siegler falls into the mindset that many of us techies have with cool ultra tech like this. It really does seem to be the way of the future from our perspectives; the problem is that being neck deep in new tech everyday our perspectives aren’t exactly grounded in reality. To try to ground myself I always think, “If I walked my grandmother or my parents up to this device, would they have any idea how to use it or would they prefer something else?” Or in this case, would I myself really still want to keep using this after the initial novelty wears off.

I wanted to say here what I basically said there that while this is super cool for specific interactions it doesn’t translate to real world applications like email and surfing the web. When watching the video keep in mind that this is a promo video where things are carefully orchestrated to make it look as seamless as possible but much pre-production was likely done (like how the computer knows how to perfectly crop elements out of videos to be thrown into a haphazard mess on the screen in front of the user).

First off is how much it will cost, and how much room it takes up. It looks cool for massive government installations but do the same thing in front of a 11″ netbook and you’ll look like a moron.

Second is that it’s not as intuitive as it looks, this isn’t pinch to zoom, you’re going to need to learn alot of complex 3D gestures to use this. And for what? Complex interaction with photos?

Third, lack of accuracy. It’s nice for virtually grabbing an image and rotating it but notice the lack of clarity while drawing with fingers. People who use Photoshop will know how useless it is unless you have nearly pixel perfect control.

Finally, is simple human nature. People are lazy and if there is an easier way to do things people will prefer that. Almost everything done onscreen can be done with a keyboard and mouse with next to no physical effort. As fun as it would be to command fleets in a 3D world using my hands in the game series Homeworld, I can do it just as well slouched in my chair with a keyboard and mouse with less effort, significantly less room, and significantly less price.

I love the “Minority Report” ideal as much as any techie but it’s not practical for mainstream use. I’m sure the government will have fun with it as well as some major companies; plus it will become a staple on CSI and related crime dramas. But it’s not the future of home computing.