No, I am not getting into publishing Children’s Books, though maybe I should, since new iBooks Author makes it easy. Instead, this post is all about the venerable Marketplace, the tough competition and the Innovator’s Dilemma.

I wanted to weigh in on RIM’s situation, after reading about Mr. Heins trying to defend himself and his company. Granted, RIM really was an innovator back in a day, with their breakthrough platform for routing emails, internet and other information we care about – directly to our mobile devices. Today, however, that is a bygone conclusion – a feature that everyone expects as Standard right now.

Apple outplayed them (and pretty much everyone) by focusing on User Experience. I really believe they were the first to realize that good user experience starts with Presentation, and they invested to bring Top Notch graphics into mobile devices. They also realized that Battery Life is critical – a cell phone without power is a paper-weight.

But how does one innovate? Start by reading latest Sci-Fi, then ask yourself – why is this fiction? Maybe it is Seth Godin’s Poke the Box influence on me, a book I am enjoying this week, but I really want to give some tips for once-mighty RIM. Being a Me-Too is a tough place to be – especially in the current marketplace. With three mighty companies there (Apple, Google and Microsoft), and with biggest decision point for consumers (all else being similar) is focused on Overall Experience and Apps Ecosystem.

Innovation is all about revolution and radical jumps forward, not small incremental improvements. Alas, did you know that Large Jumps Forwards are HARD?! I say RIM should focus All Their Resources on Radical, on Revolutionary, on Rethinking. And maybe I don’t see it, but bringing us yet another operating system (or platform on top of *NIX) is just a Large Waste of Resources. Those talented people should be focused on revolutionizing every other aspect of the mobile experience, and leave the base platform alone, to leverage existing ecosphere of Apps.

I was going to title this post “The Exciting Adventures of the Brave Me-2 Ship”, but you know what, being a Me-2 is never exciting nor brave…

For impatient souls among us, here are my conclusions:

• First thing – check the SATA/EIDE and power cable connection between your hard-drive and the motherboard. If possible, try another SATA outlet on motherboard or another SATA cable if available.
• If it still happens, the bad news is that this is likely a disk controller error, which is especially problematic since nowadays disk controllers are built into the Motherboard. If you are in a budget crunch, one potential workaround is to slow down your HD to use different PIO. This may avoid hangs, but will slow overall performance, so no fun solution…
• Proper solution appears to be to replace motherboard, hence replacing disk controller. There are many motherboards starting at just $50 and in most cases it will improve overall performance and stability for you, even if you keep the same CPU and other components.

I am pretty confident that this is the right diagnosis, as we went through a lot of trial and error investigative work, in a space of few weeks, after it started abruptly. At first, I was pretty much convinced that HD is dying. The system had two hard-drives, and the older hard-drive was seemingly working just fine, even with the same SATA cable and connected to the same slot on the Motherboard. Turns out it was using slower PIO by virtue of it being older HDD. During the troubleshooting process I reinstalled fresh Windows 7 64 Bit multiple times, on various HD drives, only to see the issue start happening almost instantly after clean install. Few days ago a fresh HDD became available (separate long story), so I tried replacing the “dying” HD. Guess what, it being newer HD, it was instantly affected by the same issue, even though I put clean Windows there also. Thus it was concluded that controller was faulty, and I went shopping for a new motherboard. As an aside – DDR3 memory is Ridiculously Cheap. I was able to pick up 8 GB of Gamer grade memory for $25 (after rebate), so that is another bonus with upgrade.

We ended up replacing CPU also (time for upgrade anyhow), but all other components stayed the same. Right now I have 3 Hard-drives happily working flawlessly there, including the “dying” HD, and the rest of the computer is faster and better than ever.

Feel free to leave comments if you are still struggling with this issue, and I will try to answer. Good Luck and Happy New Year!

PS: As a bonus tip – while I was troubleshooting, I had to reinstall Windows 7 couple of times on various HD drives. Did you know you can avoid “tarnishing” your license in such scenario by Skipping product key page during Windows 7 setup? Very handy, and then you have up to 28 days to put your real key in and activate. During that period Windows is fully functional and we had used it like that for over a week while troubleshooting.

And now – it’s 11.11 pm and I am racing against the Clock to publish my First Game into the Android Marketplace on this Special Day!

Yes, the game is coming! So this post will have to wait, and WILL get updated.

UPDATE: Game is Live on Android Market!

Now, the next morning – reflecting on the freedom of the weekend. I am at the crossroad for my next project – we (as a family) have been brainstorming making another Game. Yet, I got so annoyed when my main 1tb drive crashed few weeks back, that I think I’ll make a diversion from that plan. You see, I am pretty sure that Most (albeit not alll and sometimes not latest) files were mirrored on most of my other PC hard-drives or External hard-drives. But it is such a nightmare to know what was and what wasn’t, and where it is!? I am trying Windows Live Mesh again to see if it can help me manage and mirror files around our home, but Alas, it is dead slow with big number of large files, such as video collection.

It seems that often in life we get paralyzed by inaction. As Steve Jobs would say - The Penalty for Failure is Virtually Non-Existent! So with these inspiring words I think I’ll embark on creating my own version of file management solution, but done right and taking Modern Digital Life into account!

Opinions welcome and if you do manage to point me to a solution which already works, I will probably just use it and return to our original “Next Game” plan.

Actually, today’s post is a bit more technical than that simple discussion, but stick around and join the discussion, you’re sure to learn something (and contribute!)

The latest news from our (recently) beloved Apple is that (amazing) Sandbox technology is on the horizon, which will run App Store apps inside their own Sandboxes. Here are few words about sandboxing – it is basically a mechanism for computer to protect itself (and the user) from (potentially) malicious or misbehaving application that user wants to use. As security experts will tell you, there are plenty of supposedly useful applications which are just a (shameless) wrapper around virus delivery mechanism or an even simpler system that quietly looks at what you browsing to and captures user/pass you put into your (financial) website and silently sends it via the Internet to the perpetrator. After reading some interesting discussion on the subject, I decided to weigh in here.

Granted – I am as paranoid as the next guy, and you should ALWAYS know the source of Any Application you download and (even try to) run. And the issue is complex, as so far all I have seen is that users become mostly victims of increased security – how often did you call your bank because you forgot your password?! In fact, I once left a financial institution because their login procedure became 5 screens long, with pictures, symbols, pins, sentences, etc…

The punch line: if Apple Approves an App and grants it Sandbox Permissions, but later we discover that App still had Malicious Password stealer hidden deep inside? I say – We Sue Them! They performed a Paid service — developers Pay to get into App store and share cut of profit. Given that the aforementioned paid service had Primary purpose of Vetting an app for our (naive) users’ consumption, I see door wide open for Class Action. Seriously, given the size of Fiasco (millions of accounts stolen?), no 100 page License agreements we all carelessly click through will protect them.

So, Apple – for your own good – let the users free! Or better yet – Respect that they (sometimes) know what they’re doing!

Anyhow, let’s recap the contenders

• Kindle – Interestingly, I don’t own any – and yet I have Tons of options for reading Kindle books (iPhone, Tablet, PC, Mac, etc) and already own many books on the platform. This is truly an achievement, which I applaud Amazon for!
• Nook – I really have nothing against them, but I have virtually no prior books on the platform and no dedicated eInk reader. Still, their readers looking better all the time and they caught up to Amazon with Nook software reader being available on most platforms. Good job, B&N!
• Kobo – Once partner of failed Borders, is an independent maker of eInk devices and the software platform. They are also present on many platforms and ironically I do own that eInk reader I picked up at Borders closeout. We use it once in a while, but who knows about long term prospects?

Not in the running:

• iBooks – Apple insists on closed platform ways – show me Android iBooks reader? Or how about PC reader? And not even corporate discount Nope, no go…
• Google Books – Serious contender and I am glad to see they have the book available. Brand is strong with this one, but I just don’t know if this is another “Google experiment” with books, or are they in it for the long haul? Plus, no native clients on laptops detracts from reading experience a bit – although Web reader is mighty enticing. In fact, I almost forgot about this option…
• Microsoft eReader – Um, anyone remembers this one exists? Exactly…
• Adobe Digital Editions – I don’t even know if any store uses this… In fact, Adobe themselves didn’t post this free eReader on their Download page – seriously?!?!

So, chime in – help me decide. Weigh in your Pros and Cons and tell me where you got this book, and why! And yea, I am so crippled with this decision that I walked into retail store to buy Real hardcover. But then I got sticker-shock – where B&N employee politely explained to me that their pricing is completely different from their own Web pricing and That’s that.

Seriously – we have industry behemoths trying to set platform trends for ages to come, where should we vote with our cash – and WHY ON EARTH would publisher insist on fixed pricing!!?! I am certain everyone would be selling this one At A Loss at this ciritcal platforms’ junction, given a chance.

Granted, some of the occurrences are not their fault – try as they might, bad sellers are still abound there. I understand that it is really hard to figure out who is lying, the buyer with years of track records of purchases, or seller who joined few weeks ago and got no solid feedbacks yet.

But this post is not about that, it is instead all about things that are Completely within eBay Inc’s control, or at least they ought to be. Here are just two of more Fun bugs for this week, that are live on their Production site:

• My eBay – Whoever asked them to do Ajax on the items list, the developers must have looked back and said Huh, is that like “Food” item? They are completely clueless how to implement it properly, paging is just awful, printing completely broken, going to see item and coming back is broken.
• eBay Search – This is funny, because clearly this is a different team and implemented “list” technology completely differently. They have complete reverse of the above bug – if you do navigate to second page, but then switch category, your new category list starts with Second page!!!

Seriously, we aren’t even trying to discuss how far the website look & feel is from anything resembling modern web. Instead, we are talking basic functionality here, leading to people being unable to view properly the Items people paying Money to display and sell. The sad part? I am sure they employ a small army of developers and testers.

In fact, I am here to say that the bigger the team gets – the harder it is to maintain consistency or quality. So what can we learn here? Here are some constructive tips for our brethren at eBay IT :

• Hire a Small group of HIGH Quality developers (yea, expensive ones) to develop and design core Infrastructure for the site, Including UI Components and their “glue platform”.
• Once that core platform is ready, unleash the rest of your developers to customize, reuse, enhance and repurpose it across all eBay Inc properties. Yes, that does mean that My eBay and eBay Stores and other eBay Lists will share the same components – that’s a Good Thing!
• Create a LOT of automated tests, including ones that Render page and look at it to reflect that it functions as expected. There are plenty of frameworks for this. Still, after these automated tests, there is No Substitute for High Quality live testers, the ones who notice things with usability also, beyond plain “ugly” bugs (like my wife, who finds these things weekly).

Okay, end of annual eBay Rant – you can return to your regularly scheduled mediocrity. Oh yea, and feel free to shop on Amazon more, their site is still behind times, but still light-years ahead of eBay, and they also offer slightly used items on their marketplace

• No action required to check-in. Yes, I hear all the privacy screams – there are solutions. Pre-approvals, coupled with anonymity until specific friend requests to see ‘more info’.
• Data must not be in a silo – that makes it useless! I would prefer if it could auto-flow into single place or at least be public.

I realize these sound like ramblings of a mad man – but that is because it is! Time to take our social to next level, ya’ll, before society decides that whole Facebook and Foursquare fad is a gonner the way of MySpace.
I’ll be awaiting your comments on Friendster

Update: I definitely should have checked Twitter – See the problem yet?

Update2: Live from Apple iPhone event – Introducing Family and Friends app, now you can tell where your family and friends are. Apple Heard Our pleas!?

Well, last night, while reading appearances schedule and panels (just for reference, really) I changed my mind.

Too little Too late, as they say. I hung out at the famous parade, but already felt that the crowd this year was WAY beyond anything before. I couldn’t find decent spot to snap much photos, even. So I decided to beat the crowd and while parade was still going on, I hit the registration line. Well, the photo you see is about a 3rd of line that promptly formed behind me. In front of me, the line was about twice this size. In case you struggling with math (and can’t see end of this line), a 3rd means there are 2 MORE lines like this going around the building, but in fact all 4 building sides (with surrounding parking/gardens/etc) is where the line stretched.

Since the best panel I was looking forward to has almost finished, and I was still in line about an hour later (yea, it was barely moving too), I decided to pass on Con this year and save my $50.

They really ought to do something!? I do know you can pre-register for entire 4 days, but apparently many people prefer 1 or 2 days (like me), and I don’t believe they offer that as pre-purchase option!!! Furthermore, why not just have some Mobile App where you can simply pay online, and just go in second(s) to pick up your badge, and voila. They already do this very successfully with Fandango for Movies and StubHub for Sports and other Events.

Overall, trip downtown was still worth it. Still grabbed good number of photos and videos of the parade and great to see so many other fans of the genre out there. Conclusion – I will just (try to) pre-register myself next year, probably still for just one day. Hopefully they will finally figure out how to make that available for people, avoiding this fiasco of 3 hours line under Hotlanta sun.

Geek On, fellow travelers!

Well, late Friday night I learned that HP decided to clearance out the remaining inventory, at steep discount! Yes, the price is down to only $99 for 16 GB model and $149 for 32 GB model, effective Saturday (August 20th).

Well, apparently some people were even faster on the trigger on this item. Although I was up early on Saturday trying to snap one, they were nowhere to be found. Seems like more prudent folks out there camped out and snapped them litterally at store open time. All 30+ electronic retailers around me were out of stock virtually instantly! I even scoured Twitter, searching for tweets around people finding Touchpads in stock, but Alas, none were from my area. What Gives!?

To be fair, the hardware specs on the device are most impressive, but it’s future is uncertain. I think for such low price, it is a worthy experiment and hardware is close enough to get Android ported over (sooner or later). But even with WebOS, it’s solid Internet browsing and entertainment device, so at this price, why not? Ironically, for all the mania (there was more of it on Sunday when BestBuy dropped their prices also), most likely in about 1 year these devices will have $100 to $150 as a regular price point for this level hardware (my prediction).

Anyhow, here is how you can snap one up (if you hurry, this still maybe up). Amazon is selling via their Marketplace (OnSale when I linked).

Buy HP TouchPad via Amazon (Marketplace) – 16GB Version or 32GB Version. HURRY!

If they are all gone from there, check out SlickDeals forums for tips where to find them.

As someone in the Software Industry I just wanted to say this: Over my 18 years in software industry I have seen Many ideas dubbed “revolutionary” at the time. But, I have not seen a single one that I would consider patent worthy. In fact – just about every “software patent” that I heard about was borderline ridiculous. More often than not same algorithms or coding concepts have been in use for years in various companies, but likely were never disclosed in the open. Sometimes, they may have been disclosed in open-source even, yet Patent office doesn’t check there, so they grant it anyhow.

Let’s say tomorrow I think of a clever double linked-list, combining hashed keys distribution buckets concept with bloom filters, to speed things up. Heck I could sit down and write it from scratch, all from my own head, simply because it seems like a great efficient idea to organize data in memory! Boom, someone else could patent it, even a year after I write it and use it, and now my code is violating patents?!

I promised short post so let me just sum up my thoughts on this:

• Let’s abolish pure “software” related (algorithmic, code, etc) patents altogether, they just don’t make sense – much like protecting a Drink formula. (Yes, simply follow Coca-Cola’s advice and keep your source code secret, if you want to protect it).
• For other Innovation and Patents – I respect the companies right to extract value from their unique ideas. However, with our increased pace of society now, patents should step up also. I say they should be granted within a month from application and kept valid for a year or two at most.

So there – all problems solved – and no more giant corporations squabbling over source code that was (mostly) written years ago by (undoubtedly clever) developers who since moved on to write even more clever code, for someone else (who probably doesn’t try to trick patent office into patenting it).

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed above are strictly my own personal thoughts

I really like to encourage less violent and more creative games and this one is definitely it.

Game graphics is nothing fancy in this one, and the whole thing is written in Java – not exactly known for it’s lightening speed nor optimized memory management. So, a good XP system with 1 gb memory was really struggling, and after just few minutes of play was grinding to a halt. Interesting, putting Ubuntu on there didn’t help any, and resulted in slowdown seemingly even faster!

So off I went to find a new system for my son with virtually no budget, but with goal to have him run latest games. So I started with refurbished open-box system from local Microcenter. It already had 6 gb DDR3 memory with Intel i3 and 1Tb drive! To this I added nVidia 440 GT graphics and 20” LED backlit display, and still stayed at around $500 mark!!!

The PC is screaming fast with Windows 7 64Bit and has no troubles with Minecraft at all. In fact, it also runs World of Warcraft at max settings with no problems either, especially after we discovered DirectX 11 support hidden in Advanced options in WoW!

So to all those analysts who project every few years that we would never need a more powerful computers, except if Voice Recognition or HD Video Editing takes off. While those scenarios never materialized – good old Gaming is keeping our demand for ever faster computers with prettier graphics Alive And Well!

So be sure your computer is powerful enough and dive in!

This one really hit home for me – as most of you probably know, we are completely Internet family here. Really – my 7 year old has his own laptop on his play table. It’s there for many years now and he feels extremely at home with it. My other kids are not under 13, but definitely were using Google and Microsoft and other services, for many years as well.

I must be missing something – but I definitely know that Yahoo has Family accounts Specifically for children under 13. In fact, that is how our 7 year old Elijah is able to safely enjoy email! Furthermore, there are now myriad of Online Social Games Designed for Children – such as Lego Universe he enjoys immensely this summer.

If other big companies, including Disney, Nickelodeon and many others, figured out how to let Children onto their site – is Google just incompetent or lazy?

And what about Facebook? There are TONS of children on Facebook under 13, we know for sure. They aren’t safe, because Facebook has no good parental controls or mechanisms! Either way – we keep telling our son that he needs to wait until he is 13, as lying is not something we do. There are countless times he gets upset about this, if only to be able to play those fun Facebook games (by Zynga and others) he keeps seeing others enjoy. Ridiculous – even Facebook has no excuse not to have some viable Parental controls and let kids onto their site! Does Facebook and Google think they are still young “dorm” startups, with no time or budget to ‘figure it out’?

Dealing with important Real World issues like parental-controls is what being big business is all about!!! Do they want the next generation to grow up holding a grudge against these companies, for not letting them onto their sites sooner?

The button is up in the address bar – and to make it easier, we added BIG BLACK arrow to point to it (Click on the image for larger picture). Once that button lights up blue, web site should work on all pages and buttons. As an aside – that feature in IE works with most any other website you may be having troubles with in IE9. But if you continue to have any further problems, simply post comments below – I am sure collectively we will figure this thing out.

If you have a Borders store closing near you (sadly, they are struggling with bankruptcy – which seems inevitable, in retrospect) you should be able to pick one up for just $60 as well. I wasn’t even sure about this price, with company going bust. But, it reads EPUB and PDF format, even if Borders were to decide to discontinue their online store as well. Though, I think it is more likely that they will keep that business or sell that unit to someone. And why not, it’s virtually free money, as almost no overhead for operations there – just online servers to sell digital downloads and manage DRM. Seems no brainer – a business with no complex warehousing or shipping, and no chance of “overstocking” or “under-stocking” a title.

We only had it for one day, but so far works as advertised! Like Kindle, it is eInk (so black and white and no videos, naturally) and should last for almost a month on a single charge. Ours came preloaded with about 100 classic titles, and I didn’t even realize at first that it also lets you read Free eBooks From Your Local Library!!! Plus, it should let you read various languages through loading up your own specially formatted PDF or EPUB files, though I haven’t tried that yet. Here is full features recap from Kobo eReader site.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Looks like timely news on shaky state of Barnes and Noble today. I like their stores, but I also must admit that in the last year hardly been there, or bought anything.

Actually, the Media Console client software is also for Android, Blackberry and it even works on iPad 2 ! This is most likely US only (sorry International friends), and probably not all local libraries offer it, though I hear very high percentage do.

Pretty simple to use – just look up your county’s library and login via your mobile device’s browser, using your library card. Then select latest blockbuster eBook or Audio Book in your favorite category, and click Download! Voila, it should download and be available for you to enjoy in seconds! Although, having selected long Audio Book myself, I had to wait until I was in Wi-Fi zone to be able to download it. It works just like any other Library material, in that it will expire within 14 days (or whatever your library designated). No need to “return” anything to the library, it will just disappear off your device.

I started off with absolute classic 1984 by George Orwell, which I enjoyed even more than expected. Then, I continued onto modern fiasco tale in All The Devils Are Here – The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.  Ironically this “other side of the coin” book seems most appropriate to me, and will undoubtedly stimulate my further exploration into alternative structures for society next.

Did I mention that OverDrive Media Console is Absolutely Free? I haven’t checked on all platforms, but I can confirm that it is free on iPhone, Android and Windows. Enjoy!

PS: I read that some libraries offer Audio Books in WMA format – these won’t play on iPhone (not sure about Android), but can be enjoyed on your Windows PC. Just glance at Audio Book format which should be listed on your library’s Audio Book page, before the download.