Bit Stories

Bit Stories 2008-07-02: Recording Screwups, Moblin.org, Linux, MIDs, and NetMeeting

joshua.bancroft@intel.com (Josh Bancroft) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:20:39 +0000

Here's this week's show! Have a listen, and check out the download/subscribe links and detailed show notes below.This week's show is only 30 minutes long and weighs about 28MB (it’s a 128kbps MP3). You can download the file directly, listen using the streaming player above, or (BEST OPTION!!1!) subscribe to the Bit Stories podcast feed in your favorite podcast aggregator (like iTunes). If you subscribe to the feed, you’ll get each show delivered automatically as it becomes available - probably once a week or so, with the occasional bonus video or audio segment thrown in for fun. Plus, we’ll love you forever if you subscribe! :-)Here are some free form notes from today's show:Yet Another Audio Setup Embarrassing Confession: We recorded the last two shows using the built-in mic on my MacBook Pro, instead of the elaborate mixer/condenser mic that we have set up. Because I'm an idiot. The saving grace? It sounded pretty darn good! :-) Have developers let the Tablet PC community down?Brian paved and reinstalled Windows XP on his Samsung Q1 UMPC Why XP instead of Vista? Not quite enough horsepower. Josh has done the same thing (gone back and forth between XP and Vista) on his Asus R2H UMPC Speaking of mobile device operating systems... Moblin.orgWhat the heck IS Moblin? Is it an OS? Moblin is a stack of tools to help create OSes and applications for Mobile Internet Devices. It's sponsored by Intel, and hosted by Intel Software NetworkUbuntu Mobile Edition (UME) sneak peak is out there, if you have a Samsung Q1 Ultra Brian feels that he won't be able to use a Linux-based MID because of the lack of mature ink/handwriting input support It's really hard to do an ink interface well Will Atom-based devices ever have the horsepower to do handwriting well? Is this a hardware or a software problem? Do open source projects do better when there's a common, widespread demand and need for the result (like a web browser)? Do enough people in the open source community need and/or want good ink and handwriting support to motivate them to write it? Would enough people use it and care about it to make it worth their time? Since Mobile Internet Devices are all about the Internet, having a good browser is going to be essential. Windows versus Linux on these small, pocketable internet devices. In general, lack of UI "polish" in Linux applications is a deterrent for non-geeks to adopt it. Brian's "essential" applications on his Samsung Q1: Microsoft Office, Firefox, and Microsoft Money Is Firefox the exception to the "Linux applications don't have a good interface/user experience" stereotype? How easy is it going to be to "install any app you want" on the upcoming Linux MIDs? The challenges of adapting applications to devices on smaller screen. UMPCScrollBar - a great little app that lets you scroll windows around the smaller UMPC screen, so you can get to the "Install" and "OK" buttons that get pushed off the bottom of the screen. Intel Software Network's mobility community makes tons of resources, tools, and smart people available for people writing applications for these devices. Take advantage of us! Without great software, Intel products are just a bunch of really tiny hot plates. :-) Have we discovered the REAL reason Intel has chosen not to deploy Windows Vista? Is it because NetMeeting is no longer there? Microsoft stopped distributing NetMeeting in 1998 - TEN YEARS AGO. But Intel lives and breathes NetMeeting - old habits die hard. (Update after the show: according to Wikipedia, Microsoft released a hotfix that allows you to download and install NetMeeting on Vista. Guess we were wrong! ;-) ) Macs do Screen Sharing, based on VNC, but there's NO way on a Mac to participate in a NetMeeting call, because it's a closed, proprietary Microsoft protocol. Google Docs is GREAT for live collaboration. PowerPoint is a great presentation tool, but it is NOT a collaboration tool! It gets abused WAY too often. PowerPoint abuse starts early - Brian's 7th grade son is already doing it! New recording time - Wednesday morning instead of Friday afternoon. Hope this gets the show out faster, and Josh and Brian perkier. Josh's morning voice - he's not a morning person. Brian gets up at 5:30 AM. Stuff we didn't get to this week: Brian dips his toes into the world of Twitter and FriendFeed, and next week is iPhone 3G day! Come stand in line with us!The show is picking up steam - we're hitting our stride, and cranking them out. Many, many thanks to our listeners - we love you guys! We love connecting with people through the show, and getting to know who's listening. But the only way we can do that is if you talk to us, so leave a comment, email us, or find some other way to say "hi", and let us know what you think of the show! :-)

BitStories 2008-06-27: Intel and Vista, Firefox 3, Snow Leopard, SSDs, FriendFeed, and More

joshua.bancroft@intel.com (Josh Bancroft) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:32:51 +0000

This week's show is about 47 minutes long and weighs about 42MB (it’s a 128kbps MP3). You can download the file directly, listen using the streaming player above, or (BEST OPTION!!1!) subscribe to the Bit Stories podcast feed in your favorite podcast aggregator (like iTunes). If you subscribe to the feed, you’ll get each show delivered automatically as it becomes available - probably once a week or so, with the occasional bonus video or audio segment thrown in for fun. Plus, we’ll love you forever if you subscribe! :-)Here are some free-form notes and links for the stuff we talked about this week:Intel's JF1 Workplace of the future. It isn't soundproof. Josh is not leaving Yahoo. Intel's Not Deploying Vista (NYTimes). It's more complex and subtle than "Vista Sucks". Really. Vista's not really that bad - we've both used it. Stability, tablet features, etc. are much better than XP. So why am I not using Vista today? Because I switched to Mac. It's not that I don't like Vista, it's that I don't like Windows. :-) Conspiracy Theory #1: Intel is creating a Linux distro for employees. All the big companies are doing it! Conspiracy Theory #2: Does Intel's processor technology come from aliens? Did they tell us NOT to use Vista? Firefox 3 was released! It set the Guinness record for software downloads in a day - 8+ million. Their servers were smoking craters for a while. Speed, stability, new UI, and memory footprint are much improved? Is Firefox 3 threaded for multicore processors? We don't know. Tell us! The use of the term "you can't swing a dead cat without hitting..." Swinging a dead cat is not endorsed by Bit Stories. Besdies, Josh is allergic to cats, except Serious Cat. Snow Leopard news - GrandCentral, OpenCL, LLVM, and smaller app footprints. Is Snow Leopard still going to have Rosetta emulation for PowerPC binaries? Hard drives are only getting bigger and cheaper (can you even BUY a Mac with a drive smaller than 250GB?). So why reduce footprint? SSD (solid state disks). Pay more for Windows on a netbook, or keep the price the same and make the SSD bigger? SSDs are The Future, but they're still WAY expensive (it's a $999 option on the MacBook Air). How few moving parts there really are in a laptop (HD and fan) Where do you draw the line for legacy hardware support? Apple pushes the envelope because they control the whole stack. Microsoft has it a LOT harder, because they have to support such a wide variety of hardware. Are Mac users more forgiving when Apple drops legacy support (smacks us around) than when Microsoft does it? Josh cops to being an Apple fanboy It's a miracle that Windows even works at all, given how many different hardware drivers (of varying quality) that it needs to support. Intel motherboards have finally dropped support for PS/2 ports. Josh is surprised in two directions - that they finally dropped them, and that they're still around. Josh's Father In Law as victim of legacy hardware confusion. (custom keypad thingy) Incompatibility doesn't happen as much on Apple, because they control the whole stack. But control comes at the expense of competition. It's amazing that Apple has let Psystar live for so long. Twitter and Friendfeed Twitter has problems. The term "Plurk-up" is just GROSS. Josh explains how FriendFeed sucks up and aggregates what your friends share, and let you have conversations around any of those things. Josh has been resisting FriendFeed, but two things pulled him in - the conversations that were happening, that he was missing out on, and social gravity. Josh goes where his friends, his network, are. Enough of them are on FriendFeed now to make it worth it. The joy you feel when you discover a new, efficient way to connect with people and read (RSS, Twitter, now FriendFeed) FFToGo.com - nice mobile version FriendFeed is the source of all joy in the universe? The addiction factor - isn't FriendFeed just one more time sink? It's a balancing act - you have to be judicious on what you follow - feeds, Twitter, or FriendFeed. But the social aspect (things bubble up) of FriendFeed make it more efficient/potent, so you don't have to search and dig for the interesting/important stuff. The other obstacle - the "real time factor". Interruptions - tweets pop up, distract. Josh and Brian both have major FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out. You have to train yourself to ignore, and to be compelled to read every. single. thing. Use tools like Summize to track your name, topics, so you don't miss the REALLY important stuff, and then be OK with the fact that most of the rest of it is a river. Stand in the middle, let it flow by, grab what's interesting when you have time/attention. FriendFeed helps with FOMO, because the interesting stuff bubbles up Brian and Josh argue about which of us is more ADD. Unread Item Syndrome - all these made up dysfunctions that we have... Use a client like Twhirl or Twitterrific. Be the boss of the tools, not the other way around Training for "social media tools for software engineers" that Josh is working on, Brian to be a Guinea Pig We can geek out over anything - never had a problem filling time. :-)Are you thrilled that the show is back? Mad that we changed something? Think we suck for being gone so long? Just want to say hi? Post a comment, and let us know! Seriously. We crave the validation that your feedback brings. You have no idea how fragile our self esteem really is… :-)

BitStories 2008-06-13: Josh and Brian Ride Again! iPhone 3G, Netbooks, and More

joshua.bancroft@intel.com (Josh Bancroft) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:27:57 +0000

Hey, remember TinyPodcast? No? Well, Brian Jarvis and I (Josh Bancroft), two guys who happen to work at Intel, started doing a weekly podcast way back in 2004. Basically, the two of us geeked out about the latest mobile devices, cool software, and technology news and rumors, and recorded it. It was moderately popular, and some people actually complained when it tapered off...Well, we're back! And we're under the Bit Stories banner now. I work for Intel Software Network, and I've had the idea and intention for a while now of doing a show there like Brian and I used to do. Now we're actually doing it.If you haven't listened before, this isn't some professionally produced, slick, marketing message controlled by our corporate overlords. We're just a couple of geeks who love gadgets, phones, computers, the web, and software, talking about whatever's new and cool. We try to make the audio sound good, but it's always going to be a little rough around the edges, and we're OK with that. Sound like something you'd be interested in? Come have a listen.In this show, we talk about the following, in no particular order:The iPhone 3G announcement - its features, whether Brian is finally going to cave in and get one, how AT&T is raising prices on the plans just because they can, how we can't wait to see what comes out of the App Store, and everything else we can think of. We're a little obsessed. :-)Netbooks vs. regular laptops vs. Tablet PCs (with the tangent typing vs handwriting discussion).Where we want to take the show - we don't have grand plans - we pretty much have always played this by ear, but we'd love to hear any ideas or suggestions (or complaints!) you have, so we can keep it interesting.And a whole lot more I can't remember right now!The show is about 38 minutes long (we try to stick to the magic 40 minute length), and weighs about 35MB (it's a 128kbps MP3). You can download the file directly, listen using the streaming player in this post, or (BEST OPTION!!1!) subscribe to the Bit Stories podcast feed in your favorite podcast aggregator (like iTunes). If you subscribe to the feed, you'll get each show delivered automatically as it becomes available - probably once a week or so, with the occasional bonus video or audio segment thrown in for fun. Plus, we'll love you forever if you subscribe.Are you thrilled that the show is back? Mad that we changed something? Think we suck for being gone so long? Just want to say hi? Post a comment, and let us know! Seriously. We crave the validation that your feedback brings. You have no idea how fragile our self esteem really is... ;-)

Cory Doctorow: Privacy Isn't Dead -- Let's Not Kill It

joshua.bancroft@intel.com (Josh Bancroft) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:02:00 +0000

This episode of Bit Stories was recorded at the O'Reilly Executive Briefing held at OSCON 2007 - the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon, on July 24, 2007.At the briefing, Cory Doctorow gave a talk titled "Privacy Isn't Dead -- Let's Not Kill It", in which he talked about making software that we control, instead of letting software control us, and how we face the danger of becoming willing members of a police and surveillance state.Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite science fiction authors, and writes more understandably about complex topics like privacy, DRM, open software and culture, and how technology affects our lives than anyone I've read. He's one of the main contributors to the most popular blog on the Internet, BoingBoing.net. His personal blog is craphound.com, where you can find and download complete copies of all of his books under a Creative Commons license (as well as read about why he, as an author, thinks this is a great idea). Can you tell I'm a fan? ;-)I was thrilled to hear him speak at OSCON, and even happier when he agreed to let me publish this recording of his speech. Cory also asked me to crossload the audio file to the Internet Archive, which I was happy to do. Just as a note, all Bit Stories media files are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial license, and automatically crossposted to the Internet Archive via blip.tv, in no small part because of Cory's influence on my thinking and work. :-)This Bit Stories episode is audio only, about 30 minutes long. You can listen in the streaming player above, download the MP3 file directly at this link (weighs about 30MB), or subscribe to the Bit Stories feed in your favorite podcast aggregator (like iTunes) to receive this and other Bit Stories episodes automatically and for free. Check out the Bit Stories home page for other episodes and more information, and let me know what you think of the show!

BitStories Video - "Junior" the Autonomous Vehicle

joshua.bancroft@intel.com (Josh Bancroft) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:59:50 +0000

The DARPA Urban Challenge is a contest to build an autonomous vehicle that can operate in a city setting - a car that can drive itself around town. Sound like science fiction? Stanford University is well down the path to achieving it with "Junior", a modified Volkswagen Passat wagon, powered by a pair of Intel quad core computers, and some of the most advanced software in the world.Sound familiar? It should. Stanford Racing Team's "Stanley" autonomous vehicle won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. In fact, it was one of only 5 vehicles to finish the 132 mile desert course. So these guys obviously know what they're doing. :-)I shot this 6 minute video at Research@Intel Day at Intel's Santa Clara campus, where Stanford and Intel researchers were showing off Junior. I talked with Sebastian Thrun from Stanford and Scott Ettinger from Intel about the story behind Junior, and the hardware and software used to make him go. You can download the video directly at this link, or watch it in the player above.Find out more about Junior and the Stanford Racing Team as well as the DARPA Urban Challenge on their respective sites. The DARPA Urban Challenge is scheduled to take place on Nov. 3, 2007, so tune and cheer Junior on! :-) The video file is a 640x360 MPEG-4 H.264 video file. It weighs about 73MB, and should play just fine on your computer, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, or just about any other device that can play Quicktime video.

BitStories 001 - Start at Suck

joshua.bancroft@intel.com (Josh Bancroft) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:35:25 +0000

Welcome to Bit Stories! This is episode 001. You can say you were there at the very beginning. This episode is audio only, MP3 format, about 10 minutes long, and weighs about 9.5MB. You can listen using the player above, or download the episode directly at this link (right-click, save). The best way to get the show, though, is to subscribe to the Bit Stories feed in your favorite media aggregator (like iTunes). That way, new Bit Stories episodes get delivered to you automagically. The show's home page is http://intel.com/software/bitstories.This is a quick introduction episode, by me, Josh Bancroft, about what I want the Bit Stories show to be. This show sucks, but that's intentional. Like Guy Kawasaki says, "Don't Worry, Be Crappy". My approach here is "start at suck", and then continually improve. That's where I need your help. Let me know what you think of the show, what you'd like to hear discussed in the future, and anything else on your mind.Give it a chance - I'm really excited about this project, and I'm going to be putting a lot of energy and effort into it. It's going to be fun, so come along for the ride! :-)