A1E1

Flipboard and Zite Alternatives for the Desktop?

2012-01-22T10:02:00.002-06:00

I mentioned in an earlier post some of the reasons why I was thinking my next tablet might be an iPad 3 rather than an Android Tablet even though I've done more Android development than iOS. However, as I look at the things I do with a tablet, and consider things I'd like to do, I'm finding myself drifting toward a Windows Slate like the Gigabyte S1080 or even a multimedia laptop with an all day battery such as the Toshiba Satellite L755 (with the 12 cell battery add-on). For many things I do (Word Processing and Photo Editing) this would be an improvement. For some things (viewing 500px or reading Reddit) it will probably be a wash. But two things I REALLY like on my iPad are Flipboard and Zite. I know they are based on RSS readers under the hood, but I can't seem to find anything browser or even program based that does the same sort of presentation. Are there such creatures out there? If not, is anyone working on them? I would presume that when Windows 8 comes out this fall there is going to be a huge demand for such.

Now I remember why I left the iPad the first time

2012-01-09T19:17:00.000-06:00

Has been an "interesting" past couple of days as I have had several reminders of why I moved away from the iPad in the first place. I am having an issue where the iPad will no longer talk properly to the one machine I keep iTunes on. Wiping the pad and wiping iTunes and reinstalling has not fixed the issue, and so syncing seems to be terminally broken.

Which wouldn't be so bad, but I am trying to work on an art project where I need to be able to move graphics between programs, as well as back and forth to the PC. I am finding ways to do all this, but I am having to play all sorts of games with filenames and such that I just find beyond ridiculous.

Of course one answer would be to jailbreak, but then I have to wonder if I'm not better off switching back to an Android Tablet where none of this is a concern. It's just frustrating that even though Apple is put forward as the company that "gets" it's audience, that it can still miss in such a big fashion.

In the meantime, there are a few weeks before I have to put money behind my decision, and maybe something will come along that will make me feel more sold that there is a "right" answer after all. I did briefly consider even going back to a laptop, but for several reasons I really (!) need both the long battery life and the ability to easily move back and forth from landscape to portrait that a tablet still has over most laptops out there.

Is that a Telescope in your Pocket?

2012-01-08T10:04:00.000-06:00

One of the things I end up doing at the start of every new year is to spend some time cleaning up my Photo Directories, and preparing a new directory for the new years' shots. Lately I have also worked to track what cameras I have used each year. This has been a little more intense this year as my T2i has had a non-working LCD screen since a photo shoot at a drought affected state park in late summer. I say non-working because the glass is perfectly fine and the backlight turns on. Just not image on the screen. My photos still turn out fine, but I don't have as much flexibility as I should have.

In any case, this has been important as I have a pretty strict budget for next year, and I don't see myself buying a lot of camera equipment if I still want to get a tablet. So I have been looking at some of my older photos to see what I can and can't live with, and to see what my "best" move for 2012 might be.

All of this is a somewhat long prelude to the post title. I have sent the T2i in for repairs as I'm fairly certain that will be $200 or less, and based on the reviews I've read, the IQ for the next generation T3i is actually a little worse. So the question then was whether I should get a walking around lens for the T2i (18-270mm Tamron most likely - but at a cost of $800), or buy one of the recent Super Zoom cameras like the Panasonic FZ series used to feature.

In doing so, I was surprised to see just how good the new $400 Canon SX40HS photos are with an amazing 35x zoom. Even at full zoom I wouldn't have a hard time comparing them to the Panasonic cameras I used to carry. But it gets better. You can get a Canon filter adapter and add a 2X Telephoto adapter on the end. Which translates to a 70x full zoom. In other words, with the default zoom on the SX40HS you can get decent images of a full moon or partial moon (some examples at http://forums.dpreview.com/galleries/40471416/photos/1652505/IMG_0557z%20t-a and http://forums.dpreview.com/galleries/4028029546/photos/1597047/IMG_0256_m_c). With the 2x you should be able to start imaging lunar features. Some folks have also reported being able to get pictures of the 4 large moons of Jupiter (trick is to get them when they aren't too close to the planet and it blows out the moons from the exposure difference). Hence you really are carrying the equivalent of a Telescope with you. Add in the fact that you can take super macro shots... and it was easy enough to convince myself that I am better carrying two cameras than one in this case both for cost AND reach.

Just wanted to share in case any of y'all are trying to make a similar decision :-)

Why Adobe Seems to be Losing It

2012-01-07T17:04:00.000-06:00

So I finally got around to updating to the combined Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements 10 package earlier this week. From past experience I knew this would go better by uninstalling the old version first, and installing new after. Of course that took a good bit of time, and so today was the first chance I had to actually start working with the products. And I can't say I have been impressed.

Opened PS Elements, and it wanted me to give it my Adobe ID. OK did that, it confirmed that I had one and had an online account, linked my online account, and continued to spin while getting that info. Decided if that took so long I had better do the same to Premiere, so closed PS Elements first, then opened Premiere Elements, and sure enough I had to login again (hello... if you have asked me once can't you pass that along), and go through the same thing.

Fine. So now I go back to PS Elements, and this time it asks me to register. Why didn't it ask me to register last time. Still I click on OK... and it asks me to login again. What the...

Finally get into the product, am pleased to see that it does work with the T2i RAW files (one of the major reasons I upgraded), and go to resize the image. The image resize shows the pixels, and then has the box to change the size in inches. I go to change it from inches, and it gives me several options - but none of them are pixels! So I click on "Learn more about image size" to see how to fix that. Which launches the help screen that now tries to install Air, except Air can't install because Help is running...

Seriously. Did anyone at Adobe actually USE THIS PRODUCT before shipping? I understand the desire to make folks want to purchase the full product, but having something this awkward that still manages to run slow on an i7 with 12 gigs of ram makes me think that someone wrote the program for the Mac, ran the code through a translator, and then compiled and shipped without actually testing first. Because I just refuse to believe anyone could have tested this and said "Yes, this is a user experience I would be proud to tell my friends about".

So I close the request to install Air, and it churns and churns for about two minutes before taking me to a web page that tells me what I am seeing, but nothing about any actual setup options. And it covers half the description with a prompt asking me if I want to look at the help from earlier versions of the product, which makes reading the help for this version that much harder.

OK... now that I have that off my chest, I will say that the product does let me do a lot of useful things that will help improve my workflow so that I don't have to use the Canon Software to turn the RAW into a TIFF, and then edit that with another tool to create a final PNG. But it still feels slow compared to tools such as Paint.Net, and I really have to wonder why they make everything so hard to find.

In any case, it may just be me, but I remember back when I felt bad about using the free products because the Adobe software versions were so much easier to use that I felt like I was being penny wise and pound foolish. But if this is their future direction, then I think they shouldn't be surprised to see more than just their Flash market dry up...

Building a Vanilla Android AOSP ICS Rom on Windows 7 64-bit

2011-12-30T14:40:00.001-06:00

Please note that this is a guide to how to setup an environment to create your own ROM, and to build a test AOSP ICS Rom that will work on an emulator. While it is possible to do all this in 32-bit Win 7, you will find it much (!) easier in 64-bit Win 7. The intention is to allow all the folks who have said they'd like to work on a ROM to get their feet wet. If you complete all the steps in this guide you will have a Vanilla ICS Rom that works in the Android Emulator. You would still need to modify the kernel for the CPU your particular device uses and add the special radio and other drivers before porting to your device.

Of course you can skip step 4 if you are willing to either dual-boot Ubuntu, or go into Ubuntu full time. However I figure a lot of folks on here are still on Windows for one reason or another.

1) Make sure that the ROM for your Windows 7 computer is set to allow Virtualization. If you have a Core i7 this will be the default. Otherwise you will need to make sure to set it manually through the Setup that should come up before BOOT.

2) Download VirtualBox 4.1.8
DL Link here for VB:
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.1.8/VirtualBox-4.1.8-75467-Win.exe

DL Link here for VB Extensions (necessary for USB, shared folders, etc):
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.1.8/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.1.8-75467.vbox-extpack

3) Download Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit
DL Link here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download
Make sure (!) to select the 64-bit version before clicking download

4) Install VirtualBox and Ubuntu:
Install and Setup Guide:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/130922-linux-install-windows-7-virtual-machine-using-virtualbox.html
(Note that some of the images from this guide are from an earlier version of Ubuntu)

I personally recommend that as long as you have at least a Quad Core that you give your VB machine Two Cores and Two Gigs of RAM. For the HD size of your Virtual HD remember that the Android Source Code is almost 16 Gigs. For speed and other purposes I suggest creating a fixed size 80 Gig (or larger) Virtual HD. While this can be on an external drive, if you have room on an internal drive that will also improve performance.

5) Install the Toolchain (Android Build Environment):
http://mjanja.co.ke/2011/11/building-android-4-0-on-ubuntu-11-10/

The first three steps will take between 1-2 hours. Step 4 will take an hour or so as well. Step 5 takes multiple hours due to the size of the Android repo source library. Plan accordingly :-)

Hope this helps!

Or perhaps an 11.6 inch tablet would be better

2011-12-18T11:53:00.000-06:00

Not sure how I missed this announcement the first time, but evidently Samsung is expected to release an almost 12 inch tablet in February (coincidence?). Pardon me while I drool... and while I consider whether the larger screen significantly alters my plans from just a bit earlier today.

Still... almost 12 inches.... :-)

Writing About Tablets Because it's Soothing...

2011-12-18T11:24:00.002-06:00

Some days I regret reading Reddit. Not for the content so much as some of the reminders of what else is going on. However I have no desire to get into those discussions. Nor do I want to talk about SOPA or related issues right now. After all, I have to go into work tomorrow regardless :-)

Instead, a possibly more useful note - why I am reconsidering my 10" tablet purchase. My plan was to get the Streak first (which for the most part is proving to have been a good idea), and then get a Transformer Prime in February. However, as I've been "messing with" several things this weekend, I'm starting to think I might be better off with an iPad 3 depending on when those come out. The reality is that the Streak handles most things I want fairly well (and some things exceptionally well). There are a few things where I'm finding I miss a larger screen, and those particular things tend to have better software options on iOS than on Android.

First off, there is reading my FB, Twitter, and 500px items. On iOS there is Flipboard for the first two, and the 500px client for iPad for the third. On Android you are essentially looking at Currents, and it doesn't handle any of these particularly well even on a larger screen. Then there is reading. If it's a text page stored in a format where the reader can be "reflowed", then the Streak works as well as a larger screen. And has the advantage that it is in my pocket if I'm just looking to read a few pages while I'm waiting on something. But if it's an image file (such as scanned Manga) or a PDF, then the bigger screen is a major plus. On iOS you are looking at GoodReader and ComicGlass for this. On Android you actually have several options for the PDF, but for the full page reader you are probably looking at PerfectViewer. PV works ok on a big screen, but on a smaller screen it's a bit inconvenient.

A bigger concern, however, is that if you look at sales and development for at least the next year you are likely going to see as many things only on iOS as you are on Android. So if I want to make sure I can keep up with the latest apps, there is a strong incentive to have a device in each camp.

What I am thinking at this point is that there is a decent chance that Apple will also follow the iPhone model and keep a low end iPad 2 available at a very good price. I could easily see them decide to keep the iPad 2 16GB WiFi only around, and offer it for $249-$299 once the iPad 3 is announced. That would allow them to more easily compete with the Kindle Fire and the Nook for that end of the audience - and would make it a lot easier for ME to justify getting another tablet in the first place.

In any case, that's what I'm thinking about at this point. Feel free to drop a line or leave a comment if you want to discuss it :-)

Evidently they mean it when they say faster than Home Broadband

2011-12-10T12:15:00.001-06:00

Having had my share of ups and downs with Clear, and AT&T, and other companies, I guess I just thought the sign up in the T-Mobile store was marketing spin. Specifically they had a couple signs that claimed their 4G service was "Faster than Home Broadband".

My Clear service on a good day is 6M down and 1M up. Not bad. My cable service was somewhat faster down, and about the same up. After seeing what AT&T's 3G service rates claimed to be versus what they actually were, I was pretty cynical about any marketing related to speed.

So when I hit SpeedTest this morning my jaw just about hit the floor. My results:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1640720799.png

In case you can't follow the link that's 13M down and 2.5M up. I ran it a couple different times today, and I'm getting pretty consistent results. It's just eyeopening to think how much of an upgrade I just made when all I was expecting was about the same speed. I will be keeping an eye on it to see if this is a Saturday special, but I have to say I am impressed to see a claim backed up with facts like this.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

2011-12-09T22:33:00.001-06:00

Less people think that HP has a corner on this after their Touchpad debacle, let me give you an example I have a little more personal experience with, from a company that's an easy drive from my house.

Here's the deal. Let's say there was a 7 inch Honeycomb 3.2 Android tablet with a Tegra 2 dual-core processor, an 8 hour battery, front and rear cameras, GPS, built in 4G, wifi (including tethering), and as a photographer one of the most interesting features of all - a full sized SD card slot (not micro). Now, lets further state that this tablet retails for $250. Not $250 on a two-year contract, but $250 straight.

I suspect that there are a handful of you that have already figured out what I'm describing, but I also suspect there's a much larger number of you wondering where you could buy one of these. In fact, it is still possible to find these, although the manufacturer just this week announced they were discontinuing it.

I'm speaking of the Dell Streak 7. If any of you had heard about this tablet before, it was probably when it was first introduced and T-Mobile's 4G network was shaky, and it ran Froyo. Even then, many of it's features SHOULD have made it one of the most popular tablets out there. After all, look at all the excitement there was over the Nook Color which had much poorer features.

Instead, Dell had no idea how to market it, and after putting enough time to truly get the system polished to a point where it could easily compete and win, decided to cut their losses. Having had one for a couple of days now, I have to say it is possibly the best investment I've made in the last several months. It is successfully replacing my iPad, my PHS-300 4g/wifi router, and my cell phone. So I now have almost all the same capabilities I did before (a couple less in one sense, several more in another), and I've lightened my load. Being able to use a Fat32 SD Card is HUGE for my photography as I can pull the card out of my camera, and preview images instantly. None of the uploading and converting I had to do with an iPad. And the 4G coverage on T-mobile beats my Sprint/Clearwire/Virgin Mobile hands down.

Given that I was a developer for the Amiga 1000, I suspect I shouldn't be surprised at finding a diamond that isn't in the rough so much as buried in the bargain bin. But I will tell you that if you are thinking of a tablet this "holiday" season, you may want to see if you can still grab one of these while the getting is good!

Update on my Home Toolset FWIW

2011-10-09T13:13:00.000-05:00

One of the things I try to remember to do is to update my list of what I'm doing and what works (and doesn't) so that perhaps I can see where I could tweak, and perhaps you can get some ideas.

As some of you might remember, I "cut the cables" back in 2009. Here is what gets me and the family through the week these days:

TrendNet TEW-671 br wireless dual channel (2.4 and 5 GhZ) router (about to be upgraded to a Linksys E4200 - more about that when I get it later this week)
Two WDTV HD Live boxes connected to their respective LCD TVs via HDMI
One year subscriptions to MegaUpload and Fileserve (about $120 total a year)
MagicJack with one year subscription (About $16 a year)
One ASUS CG desktop hooked up to the TV in our bedroom via HDMI
One Cradlepoint PHS-300 portable router
One iSound Portable Power 16000 battery
LG Optimus V (rooted and running IHO port of Gingerbread) with a $25/month Virgin Mobile prepaid account
CLEAR WiMax account ($55/month for one home line and the portable USB account)

Some of you may recall I tried using the Cradlepoint and the iSound to provide my Cell Service for a couple months. It worked OK, but there were portability issues - mainly due to the USB modem from Clear being able to fall off too easily. I also bought, but have hardly used a Digital Converter box and an RCA internal digital antenna. But these days I rarely watch Live TV, and even then can usually stream from a site as easily as turn to a channel. I also had my PS3 setup on a TV, but once I sold that TV I decided I didn't need to replace it.

One thing I am considering for later this year is to try that Cell Phone replacement again once my 2 year contract with Clear is up in December. I am thinking of going with an AT&T or TimeWarner Internet only service for home (about $30/month), and then buying a Verizon 4G LTE device with their $50/month prepaid LTE service (5 Gigs). That would get my monthly fee to about where I am now, but with better coverage since I can get Verizon in a lot of places that VM/Sprint don't reach. That would likely give me more responsive service at home since the Clear service throttles and most wired offerings don't (at least at the limits I'm likely to hit).

Feel free to let me know what you are using these days as well :-)

The End Of Manufacturing (or why Amazon Stock is still a great buy)

2011-08-28T08:31:00.001-05:00

I know a lot of folks have been keeping an eye on MakerBots and 3D printers with the idea that some day you might stop buying anything but raw materials and have those build what you need when you need it - the only additional cost being for the blueprints. However I think the reason you don't see those catching on is not only because of the limitation of the current devices, but also that having stockpiles of every material you might need to have could be as costly or more so than paying someone else to handle it.

What I think is very likely, and probably less than five years away now, is that a large company that mainly handles sales and distribution like Amazon would keep industrial versions of those machines at each of their distribution centers, and then simply build the items when you order them. That allows them to cut down on waste and storage space, and they can even build the items in the box they will ship them to you in (exact form filling foam could reduce packaging costs and minimize damage). For Amazon this also means that inventory issues of overstocking and such almost completely go away.

So, if you're worried about your job going overseas, I think soon that won't be an issue. Because even cheap labor won't be cheap enough to compete with this model. If you invest in stocks, you may want to plan accordingly :-)

From iPad to Xoom to iPad2

2011-08-05T20:37:00.000-05:00

In the last 12 months I've had an iPad, switched that out a few months ago for an Android Xoom, and then earlier this week switched out again for an iPad2. Let me start by saying I am not overly impressed with the iPad2's wifi issues (even dropped by the "Genius Bar" today where they said since they could tether it to a phone it must not have issues... what?!?), but then that's not why I bought the iPad2.

Let's go back to this time last year. It was at about this point last year I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get a good Android tablet before the end of the year. Not just a cost issue, but there was nothing that was going to be worth buying. So I could keep slogging my netbook along, or I could give in to the inevitable. So I spent several months figuring out the iPad, and getting to understand the advantages, and compromises, of the tablet form factor.

When the Xoom was announced, it caught my fancy since I had already had a bit of time with a Viewsonic G-Tablet, and knew that there was some serious horsepower under the hood. Of course the iPad 2 was being announced then as well, but I was really getting to miss the ability to use Flash. I was also looking forward to possibly writing my own programs and I knew that would be much easier for Android than for iOS. Sure enough, once the WiFi Xoom came out (Homey don't play that 3G/4G stuff), I managed to get hold of one. So I spent the last several months enjoying what I could do with it, as well as playing a bit of a hacker with the 3.0->3.1->3.2 upgrades over on XDA-Developers. It was also great that I could now do almost anything on the web I could do with a desktop, and that outside of a few things where having something stuck in one place is a GOOD thing, I pretty much was doing EVERYTHING with my Xoom.

So why on earth would I go back to an iPad?

About two weeks ago, I was rummaging around for a video editor for the Android, and again getting disappointed that there was nothing to speak of. And while the online version of Photoshop Express was getting me the basics, it wasn't giving me everything I needed. One of my photo sites then did a review of some of the iOS photo software, and I realized that I could be doing more if I had an iPad again. I still held out for a bit though, presuming that there would probably be Android versions of most of those programs. That hope was dashed when I read an article last week that Motorola had sold a grand total of 440,000 3G/4G/WiFi Xoom's compared to Apple's several million iPads. I'm enough of a developer and a businessman to know that if "I" had to decide where to put my energy or my company's energy, I wouldn't need to think long about it.

Sure enough, outside of the WiFi issue, the iPad2 has delivered the missing pieces. It has software to let me control my Canon T2i (more important since a little accident last weekend). It has several different packages for editing my photos - using the RAW version to boot. And of course it has iMovie which will let me work on my travel videos over my lunch hour.

Given that it now looks like the Quad-Core Android tablets will not be available before the Quad-Core iOS, I consider it unlikely that I will flip back anytime soon. I'm going where the software is that will let me be productive, and for now that is definitely in the Apple camp.

For your consideration...

One Down - Two to Go - Editing RAW files online

2011-07-03T15:59:00.000-05:00

Have to say that I was surprised how little fanfare there was to Adobe Photoshop Online adding the ability to display and edit RAW (specifically those supported by their Camera RAW package) files using their online editor and organizer.

In fact, I now have a very mobile photo processing workflow. I take the pictures with my T2i, I then take the SD card and put it in a USB reader attached to my Tablet. I then copy the photos to the tablet, and either sort them using the Adobe Photoshop App for Android, or wait until I use ES File Manager to copy the directory to my desktop and sort them there. Either way I then take the photos I plan to use and upload them to Photoshop online. From there I can edit using my tablet or the desktop (any of my desktops which makes this even more convenient), and then take the edited version and copy back to the tablet or desktop. I can then go to 500px from the tablet or desktop, upload and tag the photos for display and sale, and then finally spend a little time making sure that I have copies of everything on one of my two 4TB external drives.

So I can do pretty much everything but the photos themselves using the tablet, or a mix of the tablet and desktop. Which just leaves 1080p videos with subtitles and editing videos as things that the tablet can't do. More than a little impressive to me anyway!

Where are the 17 inch Tablets?!?

2011-07-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

As much as I've enjoyed reading about the iPad vs Honeycomb debates, or the 7 inch vs 10 inch arguments, I find myself wondering why I don't see anything about the next step - the complete replacement of computers with tablets.

I know that to many folks this is going to sound either completely naive (yeah, lets overlook the whole 20 years in the industry thing), or way out of left field. However, at this point there are exactly 3 things I can't do with my Xoom that I still need my desktop computers for - Playing 1080p MKV files with subtitles, Editing videos, Editing photos. That's it.

Come the October/November timeframe we are going to have portable chips that are more than comparable to a mid-level desktop computer in terms of both CPU and GPU power. While I won't claim that you will be able to run Crysis at full frame rate, you may well be able to at least run it. At that point, I think you will be able to do all 3 of the things I've mentioned above.

At that point, the problem is going to change from the Tablets being powerful enough to do the tasks to the Tablets being BIG enough to do the tasks. I would no more want to edit a file on a 10 inch i7 notebook than I would a 10 inch tablet. Because at 10 inches I can't see what I'm doing well enough. Nor do I want to go back to the desktop paradigm where I have to hook the thing into a separate monitor and interact with my file at arms length. I want to be able to put it on a stand when I need to type, or when it is serving as my video player - and then flip it into my lap to make a change and go back again.

Not to mention - can you imagine what a honking big battery you could put into a 17 inch tablet. Even with the somewhat higher needs of the display, I suspect we'd finally have a tablet that could go a couple of days between charges. Which means the slight additional bulkiness is still less than carrying around a separate battery to top it off if you aren't sitting at a desk all day.

So will someone PLEASE make a 17 inch Android or even iOS tablet? Because that's what I want my next purchase to be. Something that will let me have my full computer with me all the time. Of course if you're already working on one, I would be happy to be a Beta Tester :-)

Giving 500px a spin

2011-06-30T21:54:00.000-05:00

Longer story over at the Ewan Photos blog, but I am giving 500px a try. If you just want to see the photos, you can check out my first portfolio of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Memrise would be great - if it would load in a reasonable amount of time

2011-06-27T20:43:00.001-05:00

Many of you may have run into the same articles I have seen about this great new free service called Memrise for learning languages. So I signed up and quickly was going through their "Basic Japanese" word list. I was feeling much more comfortable than I have even with Rosetta Stone, at much less of a financial investment. I was so pumped that I could hardly wait until my 4 hour "refresh" window was up and I could do my next session.

Unfortunately, that's when the "free" in the service became overwhelmingly apparent. It was taking minutes (literally) to load my word list, and while I would enter an answer it took another minute or two to actually score and bring up the next word. So I started having attention problems which started dropping my score. Worse, when I came back for my third session it decided to start asking me to type in the words I was learning. Since up to this point I had just been picking from flash cards of english to japanese, or vice versa, I found myself completely unprepared. Now the wait to see if I was right or not became almost painful, and the inability to get any hints quickly turned me from "yay, I might finally learn this" to "wow, there is no way I would wait for a site to refresh this slowly unless they were paying me".

I decided not to make a big deal thinking maybe it was just a big weekend for them, but the past week and this weekend have been as bad if not worse. I have no doubt they are growing faster than anticipated, but I can't think I'm the only person who has gotten quickly discouraged.

Someone please drop me a line if they ever push out a version 2. I have some plants dying on the vine that could probably use the CPR :-)

Google Search Still Has a Ways to Go

2011-06-14T21:37:00.000-05:00

So here's the situation - while flitting around the net tonight I was reminded of a web video I watched a couple times several years ago. I believe it was on Atom "Films", and I seem to recall it being sponsored by Absolut Vodka. Had a quirky, upbeat instrumental theme. Storyline was that a guy saw a coin, went to pick it up, and died. He gets to the office where they process people to determine where they are going to go, and is told he is a bit short of points. We then see a calamity happen that upsets things in the office, and our protagonist gets back to Earth where he tries to make up the missing number of points. This includes saying good bye to his girlfriend in her sleep, getting a smoothie, doing some dancing, and just as he is about to be dragged off again, flipping the coin he picked up to land in a beggar's cup. We then see he has earned enough points, and as the doors open to put him in to be processed again, they close, and he is whisked off to his reward.

With all that information, WHY can't I find the title of this video? Of course the answer is that the key words for this search are too common. Still, if I can give the synopsis, why can't Google (or someone else), compare that to storylines of videos that were published originally on the web, and give me a short list for me to wade through and/or watch?

If such a thing exists, feel free to point it out to me!

Man vs Machine - Why John Henry Lost and We Will Too

2011-06-11T09:58:00.000-05:00

The New York Times had an article the other day that addresses one of the key issues of this century. Specifically while 9% unemployment may seem bad, we may eventually think of that as the "good old days".

There has been a fair bit of discussion on this over on Hacker News, and I'd like to repeat my .02 here for folks not commonly used to reading there:

"So if you had their attention what would you tell them? If there is a solution to this problem that lets us all retire without the economy collapsing, I'd be curious to hear it. As it is we can put off that day for some time, but eventually you will get to the point where the "thinking machines" have all the knowledge of how to run our companies. Then the only jobs left will be those that can't be learned. I don't see all of us becoming artists, and even if we did, how would we con the machines into paying us for it?"

To make it clear, I don't see the trend of humans being replaced by machines, thinking or otherwise, changing in any reasonable time frame. The story of John Henry ends with him beating the steam driven machine, but which of them was around to work the next day? So it is likely to go from here on out. As such, I really am curious as to what folks think the majority of humans are going to find to do of sufficient value to keep our families housed, clothed, and fed?

Feel free to leave your ideas in the comments section :-)

Small Differences can have Huge Impacts

2011-06-08T08:55:00.001-05:00

As I've mentioned on here a number of times (and yet I don't hear of droves of people dropping their contracts so I wonder if I'm getting the word out enough), I use a Cradlepoint PHS300 with a Clear 4G USB stick to provide my cell phone service. The PHS300 shares an interesting limitation with all the other 3G/4G WiFi "pucks" out there of a 4 hour battery life. It's almost like they are designed not to last a whole day for some reason...

In any case, I used to get around this with a Tekkeon 3750 external battery. This didn't give quite a full day of coverage, so I would make time during the day to recharge the PHS300 at my desk so I could conserve the Tekkeon, and then usually made the home stretch on a second PHS300 battery. I recently replaced the Tekkeon with an iSound 16000mAh battery. The iSound has enough juice that I can run the PHS 300 off it all day, and still have juice when I get home.

That may sound like a small difference, but in practice it is HUGE. It means I don't have to worry about being sure to turn the battery off every chance I get. It means I don't have 10-20 minutes each day where I'm unavailable because I'm switching PHS 300 batteries. And it means that I don't even have to carry the second battery. IOW, it is an experience that is much more like having a "real" cell phone than what I had before.

When you are evaluating your tech, be sure to consider your edge cases. Sometimes even a small improvement can make a big difference, and you want to make sure you aren't missing out because you don't think 5-10% is enough to fool with. That 5-10% could be the difference between useful and trying to be useful :-)

The Music Service No One Offers Yet

2011-06-06T21:16:00.001-05:00

Have seen the stuff coming out about iCloud, and have tried almost all the music apps and services available for iOs and Android. Unless I've missed something, there is no one service, at any price, that will give me all of the following:

1) Integrate a recommendation engine with the music I ALREADY own. I owned a lot of CDs which I've ripped as well as some Amazon MP3 albums and some iTunes non-DRM MP3s. There are few of them where I've listened to all the tracks more than once, and quite a few where I'm in no hurry to go through all of them again to rank them. So let me use a recommendation engine to build a playlist from some of the ones I have selected, and help me rank my personal collection without boring me to death.

2) Integrate the music I already own with streaming music that I don't. I appreciate the iTunes Genius suggestions, but even better would be if it would just add those into my playlists and give me the option to buy them if it turns out I actually like them. If I'm building a playlist or doing a sync, that is one of the times I am LEAST likely to want to listen to a 30-second sample. And I've learned my lesson about buying without hearing the whole song first.

3) Make it easy for me to choose just my stuff or just your stuff as well. There are times I really want to just expose myself to new stuff. When I'm in that mood, let me tell you that I don't want to hear stuff I already own. Even better, let me decide I want to hear stuff I haven't listened to before. Note that new stuff doesn't have to mean NEW in terms of dates. I suspect there's a lot of music over the last 20 years I haven't listened to that would be new to me, and that I'd like to add to my menu.

4) Make sure your music is available to me when I'm not connected. This is a particular burn point for me as most of the National Parks, and a lot of both West Texas and SE California are so rural as to have minimal if any Internet connectivity. Use the Slacker model to make it next to impossible for me to extract tracks you have cached if you have to, but give me SOMETHING to listen to if I'm trying to keep my eyes open as I'm driving through the desert.

5) Make your service AWARE of which device I'm on. For my desktop, I am likely to have all of my purchased music on a local drive. So don't sync with the online service and give me two to three copies of everything. On some of my handsets, space is at a premium so only sync the current playlist and a couple of others based on my listening history. And when I'm showing something to a friend, do the "Zune" thing and let me loan them a tune for 2-3 plays so they have time enough to realize what great taste I have.

6) Finally, make sure that ALL of the music is fixed so that I don't have a number of tunes that are real quiet because they were sampled one way, followed by another that almost blasts out my portable speakers. Is it really that hard to sample the amplitude of the next song playing, and see if the range is narrower and so the volume needs a boost?

There you have it. If there is such a service, let me know so I can subscribe ASAP. If you build such a service, please send me a beta invite! :-)

Replacing your iPhone 3Gs Battery - Easy to Start... Painful to Finish

2011-06-04T17:43:00.000-05:00

My daughter's iPhone has been dying for the last few weeks, and between my IP Phone experiment and the fact that hooking it up to an external battery has been "good enough", I have been putting off doing anything about it. However, I haven't been able to convince her that she really wants to switch to Android, and it turns out that while the rest of the family can drop AT&T either in June or July, her line isn't off contract until November. So I decided to look at "options".

One of the first items I found was the following video from DirectFix:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIEdIxRpU3g

Watching this three minute video convinced me this was going to be a piece of cake! Heck, Apple even labelled the connections by number in the order to remove them. It's like they were begging me to do this!

So I went to the site, ordered the battery, screen tool, screen suction tool, and mini Phillips screw driver. With shipping it wasn't quite $30 - less than any phone we were going to get unlocked, and it wasn't adding another two years.

Got the parts earlier today, and started to work while watching the video. This time through, I noticed a few places where they talked about doing something, but didn't really show what they were doing. This was a bit of a problem with the screen tool as the ends quickly leveraged themselves into plastic junk. A mini standard screwdriver worked much better to pry things loose, and then the suction cup did the rest of the work. Then later they mentioned a couple things about how the motherboard was under a couple of lips, but I had no trouble getting it out, so that obvious wasn't a big deal.

Got everything out in around 10 minutes, put the new battery in, and now it was time to see how to put it back together.

Hmmm... say, this video stops right after you get the old battery out. Isn't there one that shows you how to put it back together? Well yes, there are some. The best of these is:
http://youtu.be/oEmlPK9R6Og

However, even here they tend to "fast forward" through the tricky parts because you obviously figured it out well enough to take it apart, right?

Not so much as it turns out. I had everything connected, and was only missing one screw, when I went to snap everything back together... and the top half was a real struggle. Then when I went to put the SIM tray back in... it wouldn't. Open everything back up, walk through things again, realize that there was something in the corner where the camera was that just wasn't right. Fiddle with the fit and a metal clip here for half an hour, and finally get everything to feel like it was seated properly. Then get the cables back on, and the glass fit much smoother this time, look over at my workspace, and notice that I was so excited that I had left out four of the screws.

Not willing to tempt fate, I put those in a small bag, and finished screwing the phone back together. Sure enough, it came back to life, remembered all her contacts, and is chugging away happily. Except for one little thing. It seems that now the camera won't work...

Assuming I put something in the wrong place or missed a connection, I'm going to consider this a success since the phone is doing everything else just fine, and I did save a good bit over sending the phone out for a repair, or replacing it. On the other hand, I can't say that I plan to do this again any time soon :-)

When it comes to Programming, a Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

2011-06-02T19:51:00.000-05:00

Am working on the port of one of my games to Android since I have a little time in the evenings, and I was able to find an example that I couldn't find on StackOverflow or any of the books on Android Development out there. Which wouldn't be surprising except that it's such a common task it is a wonder that folks have to grok it out themselves. Specifically a nice, simple example of how to use a button click to change from one screen to another. Once I get closer to being done, I will probably do an overall series on Android programming since it should be good for folks who are not looking to do the next first person shooter in an Animated 3-D world, but rather just want a simple game that has decent graphics and a story.

In any event, it took me the better part of a day to figure out a problem that I was having with the example, which led to my title for this article. I won't post all of the code her, but let me post a couple lines:

b.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
public void onClick(View arg0) {

Now, if you look at this code, there is something here that if you have coded in C or done much system programming looks absolutely right. But if you are familiar with Android, it is probably sticking out like a sore thumb. So, go ahead and take a minute and look closely at the example.

Taken a good look? Great.

So you'll notice that the code, copied directly from the original example has:
"(View arg0)"

arg0 is used in many programming languages to refer to the argument line options for the program that is being run, and so to let you access those options to let someone enter the player's name, or other options.

What the line SHOULD have been is:
"(View argo)"

Yup... that's arg followed by the letter o not the number zero. And debugging wasn't helpful because the program would Force Close before I got anything useful out of it. Probably because arg0 DOES mean something in Android, but you don't use it that way. I probably should have picked up on this sooner given that the person who wrote the example named his main class "Screen 1", and the main view "screen 1", and then mixed cases in a couple of places. The last issue with the example was one the original author couldn't have known about, which was the Android SDK changing from "id =" to "android:id=". The fact that some of the documentation for the Android SDK on the main Google site STILL has the old/bad version doesn't help either.

Hopefully this will help you when you do YOUR next project :-)

One Little IP Phone Issue and a Desired Item for an IP Phone

2011-06-01T22:22:00.000-05:00

As I've mentioned previously, I have been saving a fair bit of money by using my Clear USB Modem, a CradlePoint PHS-300, and a Tekkeon MP3750 battery to allow me to have mobile VOIP on my Nexus One using the Sipdroid software and the PBXes.org service to integrate with my Google Voice setup.

All of the above gives me the ability to dial any number (free in US and Canada), receive calls, use GV voicemail to listen or translate messages, and get SMS Text messages. All of this is about $5/month in addition to my Clear subscription. Of course since I use Clear for my television programming, my home phone, and high speed Internet, that means instead of what used to be almost $300/month for everything I'm down to around $50/month.

With all that, you might wonder what I could possibly have to complain about. Well, it's a minor annoyance, but even after using Airplane Mode to conserve battery life (phone stops searching incessantly for a 3G/Voice signal), the lock screen still has a little "(No Service)" message. Really, Google? You create a phone that is designed to let folks avoid being locked in by the phone company, and then constantly complain about it if I don't have a SIM card in place?

This led me to the idea that I'd like to see for a "real" IP phone. Given the current state of batteries and electronics, why should I be able to add a shell or case to my phone that would let me plug the Clear modem into a recessed section, and then let the phone use the modem directly. I could drop the PHS device, and I suspect that the battery of the phone would only need to be souped up a bit since it wouldn't have to create as large a WiFi profile. This would also mean I'd have an IP phone that I could always keep "current" so that when 5G (or whatever the next generation is called) comes out, I just swap USB modems rather than needing a new phone with a fast enough radio, or having to replace the Cradlepoint, or...

If someone out there is a product design maven, consider that almost all Android phones have a USB port of some type (Micro or Mini most commonly) that the sleeve could connect to. So there's a fair sized audience of folks who already have the right device. Plus with T-mobile possibly going away, a fair number of folks who will be looking for a new service, who might prefer just to move to a Mobile VOIP solution. Heck, this might even be the sort of thing you could raise funding with on Kickstarter.

Feel free to thank me with a comp unit :-)

Ghosttown - the missing part from Google Music

2011-05-30T06:34:00.000-05:00

I had heard about the Android app "Ghosttown" on a couple sites, and so took it for a test drive this weekend. I have to say that if Google could incorporate this into their Google Music technology, they would go from good to great.

First off was to search for a Robbie Williams song - Millennium. It has a sample from my favorite part of the "You Only Live Twice" theme, and the lyrics are ok as well. Found the artist, which showed a list of all his albums in under 30 seconds, and then I started playing my song a bit after that. You can see how if there's a song you don't already have that this sort of instant discovery at no additional price would be a major win.

Next up was to dig a little deeper and see if I could find the Nancy Sinatra version of the original theme song that the sample came from. Sure enough it was there quickly again under "Other Songs". Menu'd back to the beginning, and now noticed that it had both artists and the albums it had discovered saved for the future/ Making replays even quicker.

So now it was time to test the limits.I decided to look for one of my favorite classical guitar pieces - Leo Brouwer's "Black Decameron" as performed by John Williams (the guitarist, not the conductor/composer). Sure enough, the composer didn't show up, and the songs displayed were from that other John. Obviously a case where Ghosttown could use the ability to search by Album or even Song title rather than just Artist. Of course Classical is a bit of no-man's land online anyway. Even MusicBrainz has issues with many Classical albums.

In any any event, you can then go back and start creating playlists so that you can pull the particular songs you wanted from the artists you searched for. In the case of Google Music, you can see how it could supplement music I already have with music out there by the same artist when doing an Instant Mix. Perhaps then I wouldn't get "Cornflake Girl" on half my playlists - anyone know if Tori Amos is paying Google to do that?

Regardless, given the app is free (or 0.99 if you can't stand the ads), I'd suggest you DL a copy. ANd if someone from Google is reading this, well, you know what to do :-)

Too little "two" late

2011-05-28T21:21:00.000-05:00

Was very surprised this evening to get an email through Yelp. I had rated one of the local cleaners as being 4 stars because it took them 3-4 days to return clothes (they use an environmentally friendly process that evidently involves people standing around and using paper fans to dry them), and they were the second most expensive option in town. So that was one half star off for each.

In any case, I posted that review in 2009. So imagine my surprise getting an email from one of their corporate types apologizing for not addressing my concerns earlier, and promising a response in 3-5 business days. Then going to the review to see what I had posted, and that the same person had rated their business 5 stars while making the same offer.

HELLO... I took one star off in part because you are slow to deliver and you're telling me that your customer service is at least that slow? Not to mention responding TWO YEARS after I made my original posting? Tempted as I was to take another star off for "clueless" behavior, I decided to just let it go. But it seems like if they were serious about making it up to me, they might try doing something that convinces me that something has actually changed. In fact, they would probably have been better off not saying anything if the best they could do was this side of mediocre. Heck, I had forgotten all about the place and now I'm getting all flustered about it all over again.

Which I post on here as a lesson for those of you who also provide a service. It's good to apologize if you make a mistake. But be timely about it, and make sure your apology includes what you are going to do differently the next time. "I'm sorry, and you can expect me to apologize each time we're late, and given our setup that will be every time you come here" just seems like a bad idea :-)