In an earlier post, I mentioned that my biggest criticism of the Kindle was the inability to share content. Really, it's my only MAJOR criticism of the Kindle device and platform. but this criticism is a big one.

With the Kindle 2 release announcement, I'd hoped that Amazon would come out with software/system updates that would allow for some method of sharing books/magazines/newspapers. The Microsoft Zune, which admittedly isn't tearing up the consumer electronics bestseller chart, has a feature that allows its owners to temporarily share songs with friends. It's a cool feature and helps promote the sale of new music among Zune owners. Sadly, when I currently finish reading a purchased book on the Kindle, it ends up in the online equivalent of a banker's box in the basement. I can pull it up later and re-read it, but mostly it's buried. The cynic in me says "Eh, whatever - the publisher and seller are both happy and have no incentive to let me share an e-book."

Now I knew this going into my purchase, so it's not like I can gripe too loudly - but it seems like such an obvious area for potential improvement with Kindle 2. Had they addressed this issue, I'd already have my current Kindle on Ebay or Craigslist and an order placed for the new version. Then again, I'm not convinced that allowing for the sharing of content would require the newer hardware version.

Here's how I could see it working. as a Kindle owner, I'd have a "Friends" list (not unlike IM, the Xbox 360, etc). I could choose to transfer a title (book, magazine issue, or newspaper daily) to someone on that Friends list. While it's available to them for reading on their device, it would NOT be available for me to read on mine. At some point, that title comes back to me and is then unavailable to the Friend. Like a physical book I loan out, I can't read the book at the same time as my friend.

I could see all sorts of arguments against this from the publishers. we'd lose sales to those Friends because why would they buy it if they could borrow it from you? What would stop someone from setting up their own mini Netflix-for-Ebooks and buying once to share many times? Here are a number of ideas for ways to accommodate publishers, free for the taking by the Kindle team. I think putting one or two of these in place would alleviate many concerns:

1. Limit my list of Friends to a small number - 3, even - to discourage any sort of mass sharing.
2. Limit the number of times I can add/remove people to/from my Friends list in a given period of time.
3. Limit the number of times that a title can be shared among Friends. For example, if a title has been shared with two other people, that's it. No more sharing unless someone else buys it.
4. Limit the length of time that a title can be over on that Friends list. Maybe they only get it for a week or two? 30 days?
5. Don't allow a new title to be transferred among Friends during the first 60-90 days after its release.
6. Charge the Friend receiving the book one-third of the purchase price.
7. Charge me and my Friends a premium for access to the "Sharing Among Friends" feature.

It's worth noting that NONE of these constraints are in place for physical books. When I buy the physical version of a book, I can lend it to as many people as I want. For as long as I want. Doing so doesn't cost either of us a cent. Further, I can put it into the "used books" ecosystem and the publisher doesn't see a dime after my initial purchase.

In fact, the ability to share physical books is the ONLY incentive I currently have to buy physical books that are otherwise available in Kindle form. If it's a book I'm likely to want to share among friends or family, it makes more sense for me to buy the physical book.

For example: I'm considering reading "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The physical version of that book on Amazon is $12.60, while the Kindle version is $11.34. It's the type of book that I'm likely to read and then share with a few family members and friends. So if I buy the physical version, Amazon gets my $12.60 and the publisher gets some portion of that. Beyond that, neither sees more money from me or the people I choose to share it with for this title. Like most people, I talk with friends and family about what I'm reading. so it's unlikely that they'd all rush out to buy the physical version also if they know they can borrow it from me in a couple of weeks. Even if they have Kindles, it's more likely that we'd buy the physical book just so we could share it and avoid spending the $11 EACH to read it.

BUT - imagine that I buy the Kindle version and have three friends with Kindles that would also like to read it. Assuming they've implement suggestions #1, #2, and #6 above, I could lend it to those three people. I'd have to lend it to one after another because the "license to read" the book can only be on one Kindle at a time. but each of those three people would pay $3.75 to have the book on their device for a period of time. In total, Amazon would have collected over $22 from my circle of just THREE "reading friends". A nice premium over the $12.60 they get if I go the physical route. which is the only option now for groups of friends/colleagues who like to share books.

In my view, providing some premium-level service that includes sharing could be a nice way for Amazon and the publishers to make some aftermarket money - and it doesn't have to cannibalize new sales. In fact, I think it will spur a lot of new sales for the Kindle. many people I've shown it to say they'd love to own one but they don't want to lose the flexibility of sharing a book with a friend. The ability to share via the "Whispernet" book download service would lower that hurdle, which could only be good for publisher's sales of ebooks.

Technorati Tags: amazon kindle , kindle , amazon , ebooks , publishing

Amazon announced the Kindle 2 a couple of weeks ago and a few people have asked me if I'm tempted to upgrade my Kindle to the newer version. Short answer: not really. The rest of this post is the longer answer.

I got my Kindle last April (after a wait of about three weeks) and it's been my constant companion since. It goes everywhere I go. It charges on my nightstand (though it only needs it once a week) and is in my bag when I leave the house each day. It goes to every appointment and travels anywhere I do.

There are a number of things I love about the Kindle:

• It's small and lightweight. Fits easily in a bag and the weight is negligible.
• It's got an amazing screen. I can (and have) read on this screen for hours without any eye fatigue. It looks like black text on light gray paper - not like a screen at all.
• It's convenient. I can have a new book, paper, or magazine on it in seconds.
• It enables me to read more. It lets me carry a number of different books in a single, small form factor.
• It's expandable. I could add 2GB of space to it via an SD card, which cost something like $.14. And given that any Amazon purchases can be deleted from the device and re-downloaded later, space isn't much of an issue.

Then there are some minor quibbles:

• The buttons for turning the page are too big and easy to hit accidentally.
• While the marketing materials tell you that it's got a web browser and an MP3 player, don't kid yourself. This thing is an amazing e-book reader, but a portable wireless device or MP3 player it ain't. The browser in it is rudimentary and not up to the task for anything other than very simple pages, and the MP3 player doesn't provide any controls - seriously, it can play/pause tracks in random order and that's about it.
• The relationship between my Amazon.com wishlist(s) and the Kindle's "Save for Later" list is non-existent. I can't add to the "Save for Later" list via the web, nor can I add a book to my wishlist via the Kindle.
• Technical content is best avoided. Between issues with monospace fonts and the disparity in pricing, it's just not worth the hassle. For example. at this time, "Essential WPF" by Chris Anderson (Addison-Wesley) is available in physical form for $31.49 and in the electronic Kindle edition for $28.34. With a savings of just $3.15, no monospace font support, and the inability to share among friends/colleagues, why bother? Compare that to the NY Times Bestseller from James Patterson, "Run For Your Life" - it's $16.79 in physical form and $9.99 in e-book form.

Based on the Kindle 2 product page, it looks like the only one of these that's been addressed is the button issue. The new model (shown above) does have smaller navigation buttons and it looks like holding it without pushing a button will be easier.

Then there's the major drawback. just one really: I can't share my Kindle content. More on this in another post, but this isn't addressed in the new version either.

So does the new version have any features that interest me? Just one: Text-to-speech . Apparently, it can read your book aloud to you using either built-in speakers (which are new to this model) or the headphone jack. This feature is compelling because there are times that I'm in the middle of a really good book and don't want to put it down - but life calls and I have to head to the office, an appointment, or somewhere else. At times, it'd be pretty slick to have the option of plugging the Kindle into the car's AUX jack and letting the story continue.

But are better-designed buttons and the text-to-speech feature enough to warrant an upgrade? Not to me. Maybe there is some class of Kindle user out there that REALLY can't stand the buttons or REALLY wants text-to-speech. But that seems like a pretty small niche, so I find it hard to believe that a large percentage of current Kindle owners will be scrambling to upgrade. The new version isn't yet shipping. so I guess time will tell.

Technorati Tags: kindle , amazon kindle , amazon

Among my resolutions for the new year, I want to get back to blogging regularly for the three or four of you still subscribed. My goal is to post at least once a week, which shouldn't be too hard as I've got a queue of topics and ideas lined up. This isn't exactly the first time I've said "I should blog more," though.

2008 had a few high and low points but was, thankfully, less eventful for us than 2007. Among the highs would be all the work we did and had done around the house over the summer. Everything came out very nice and a number of useful gadgets had sufficient WAF to make their way into the house as part of the upgrades. Lows, of course, would have to include those quarterly 401k statements.

I'll be posting some reviews soon of various gadgets, as well as some thoughts on the usual tech and .NET topics. I'm still doing the very occasional start-and-stop thing on Twitter and finally started doing something with Facebook in 2008 as well.

Now to follow through with these resolutions.

I don't post to Twitter all that often, but when I'm going to be at the computer for a while I will often open the timeline for people I'm following (either via the web or Twhirl) and see what people are chatting about. I looked at it in depth a few months ago as a possibility for ad-hoc chatter among my geographically distributed team (we ultimately decided to use Campfire instead). Since then, I've had occasional exchanges with people and posted the odd update to my feed.

As of this post, Twitter's down... again... it's pretty amazing that a business with this much buzz and hype around it has allowed itself to become so unstable.

The stories of its frequent downtime, complaints about scalability, and departures of technical staff are regularly cruising through my newsreader. There's even a site that tracks the various "We're down" images that they use when the site is unavailable (the one at right is from the current outage).

I can't imagine what the behind-the-scenes issues are or what sort of challenges their tech team is dealing with... but clearly there's a problem here that they need to resolve QUICKLY. You have to assume that, at some point, people will decide they've had enough and move on to alternatives like Pownce or Jaiku. Or, as Scott Hanselman suggests in this post, maybe an open and standards-based alternative pops up to fill the void.

Lots of people are looking to Twitter as an omnipresent option for quick communication of status info, marketing messages, news delivery, and as an entry point for simple API messages. Most businesses and web properties would kill for that sort of interest and traffic... to have all that opportunity pass by because of stability issues would be such a waste.

On the other hand, imagine the case studies (for both Business and CompSci)...

Technorati Tags: twitter , stability , web architecture

When the Kindle was released late last year, I was skeptical. I like the idea of an e-book reader, but it's so expensive. Eventually, a few things occurred that convinced me to order one:

• I contemplated having instant access to major papers like the NY Times and Washington Post each morning, as well as local papers like the Denver Post.
• I took a family trip and packed a bunch of books to take with me. I typically have a few books that I'm reading at once -- some fiction, a non-fiction, and a technical book. I can't two of the same type at once, though, lest I get facts or characters mixed up.
• I saw the screen in person.

So at the end of March, I placed my order and started the backorder wait. It arrived a couple of weeks ago and, since then, it looks like Amazon's manufacturers are caught up. My total wait was almost three weeks (18 days), but at this point, the Kindle product page on Amazon.com says that it's in stock and available for shipping... they're even showing photos of an Amazon warehouse with pallets of Kindles.

Short Review

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the device. I'm not yet 100% convinced that I'll always be a paperless reader (when content's available), but if I have a choice between paper version and Kindle version, I think paper will be a rare exception rather than the norm.

Longer Review

Some other thoughts (in no particular order):

• The design's general "look" an aesthetics are not terrible, but not great either. I'll call it "functional." Some of the reviews and feedback out there have really bashed the industrial design of this thing -- calling for Amazon to hire some Apple designers and that sort of thing. I actually don't think it's quite that bad. It certainly is smaller and lighter than I expected it to be (both are good things!).
  
• The design's high points are the screen (the e-ink is AMAZING. No, seriously... AMAZING!), providing an integrated keyboard (vs on-screen "soft" keys), and the main navigation element -- the scrolling wheel/button. The wheel is a very easy way to move through your library, look things up, bookmark, etc. I don't know what the material is they're using to indicate the scroll position along the right margin, but it's pretty cool and works well even in low-light (the Kindle is NOT backlit).
  
• The design's main low point is the fact that 75-80% or so of both sides of the device are dedicated to buttons for Next/Prev page. It's WAY too easy to hit those buttons accidentally. I'd have preferred to see the top 50% of both sides dedicated to buttons so that there are more ways to hold it without accidentally hitting them. Also, the device can play MP3 and audio books - but the volume buttons and headphone jack are on the bottom. If I'm reading in bed, I'm usually holding it from the bottom or resting it on my chest as I read. Also not great - the power on/off and wireless on/off buttons are on the back of the device, which make them hard to reach when its in the cover. On the cover front -- it's not bad, but lots of people seem to have flakey covers that don't really "grip" the reader as it should. Mine seems fine... I definitely prefer reading with it in the cover as that gives me more flexibility in how I hold it. I can see getting a different cover later, though, that holds the Kindle in place at all four corners.
  
• From a software/functionality perspective, I'm very impressed. With the wireless turned on, it's very easy to search and navigate the online Kindle store. You can buy material right from the device and it shows up within a minute or so. Very slick. When looking at a book's product page on the device, you have the option to "Save for Later" (essentially bookmarking the product page) or you can download a sample chapter. When browsing the Kindle store from your PC, you can send a sample chapter to your device with just one click. In either case, the sample is on the device in less than a minute. When viewing your library on the device, you can change how things are sorted and set filters for books, periodicals, or both. Personally, I'd also like the ability to organize things into folders and show/hide downloaded samples.
  
• The "lookup" feature is slick - you can choose "lookup" on any line of text and it provides quick definitions for each of the non-trivial words in that line of text. You can further dive into each word for a more in-depth definition, or search the web and/or Wikipedia for the word.
  
• Speaking of the web, there is an experimental web browser on the device... it seems similar in capability to the Pocket IE browser I have on my Windows Mobile phone. Plain HTML pages are fine -- but sites that use any sort of Flash, JavaScript, or fancier rendering will suffer. Still, it's good enough for occasional basic use.
  
• The keyboard is usable enough for searches and quick notes, but not something I'd want to compose long email messages with. Conveniently, it's got a dedicated "Search" button that calls up a context-sensitive search bar from anywhere (i.e., if in the Kindle Store, the Search bar will search the store for your criteria). There are also shortcuts you can use in the search bar to search other contexts - @wiki searches wikipedia, @store searches the Kindle store, etc. There are a few other shortcuts, such as ALT+T, which displays the current time in the corner (humorously, it often shows it in plain English ("six minutes till four").

There are some things I'd like to see changed down the road, either through firmware or in a later hardware generation:

• It seems there's no relationship between my on-device "Save For Later" selections and an Amazon wishlist. I'd much rather have a Kindle-specific wishlist that I can add to and manage from both the device and the Amazon.com site. Even if I create another Wishlist on the site and force myself to use it just for Kindle books, I don't see a way to get at that wishlist from the device. And while I can use the "Send Sample Chapter" option from the site, I can't add something to my "Save for Later" list from the site.
  
• For subscriptions, such as the New York Times, I'd like to be able to tell it how many days I want to keep on the device by default. Currently, it stores several days of periodicals... choosing NY Times from the "Home" list displays all of the publication days so I have to make another selection. Since all of my Kindle content is backed up and available from Amazon (should I delete it from the device), I'd like an option to only keep the most recent issue of a periodical. It's rare that I'd want the Saturday paper on Sunday... so delete it when Sunday arrives and I can manually download it if the need arises.
  
• I want to see more content, particularly with magazines. The list of available magazines is pretty slim... I'd love to see Wired, Esquire, Inc, and a few others become available. I recognize that the lack of color and quality photos would be a sacrifice for magazines, particularly for something like Wired, but I'd forego that for the convenience of having the article content with me all the time.
  
• No "Chronicles of Narnia" in Kindle form?! There's also little in the way of Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and classic Stephen King (if you're into those authors).
  
• You can subscribe to blogs on the device, but most of them are $1.99/month. Not a freakin' chance, Amazon. Between Newsgator Go on my phone, FeedDemon on my PCs, and the basic web browser built into the Kindle, I can't imagine paying for content that is available for free in so many other ways.
  
• The price has GOT to come down... I thought long and hard about this purchase. Ultimately, I figured I could Ebay the device if I decide I don't like it and recoup most of my cost... so I went for it. If it were $100 cheaper, though, I think it'd be more of a no-brainer. I suspect a lot of the cost is tied up in the "Whispernet" wireless service (provided by Sprint) - which doesn't cost the customer anything after the initial purchase.

Again, I'm very happy with the purchase and haven't had any buyer's remorse at all. The Kindle has been with me constantly over the last couple of weeks and... so far, at least, the convenience of having lots of different reading material on me all the time is worth any of the drawbacks I've run into.

Technorati Tags: amazon , kindle , amazon kindle , ebook , review

Looks like Amazon is starting to shorten the delay on Kindle orders... when Jeff Bezos posted this on their front page apologizing for the long shipping delays, the typical wait was six weeks (with some reports of almost 8 weeks!).

In his open letter to customers, Bezos promised they were ramping up production and hoped that, within a "few weeks", they'd be able to announce enough stock for same-day shipping... and backorders would be a distant memory.

At the time, I hadn't yet ordered one... but I had been considering it for weeks. I have to admit to not (yet) being 100% convinced that an e-book reader will be for me. However, I typically have a few things I'm reading at once (fiction, non-fiction, a tech book, magazines, etc)... so the idea of having all of that (along with some reference material) with me all the time is very intriguing. After taking a trip last month where I brought a few fairly thick books (and wanted to bring a couple others), I figured I'd give it a shot. What's the worst that can happen -- I hate it, put it on Ebay, and possibly take a slight loss on it (though Ebay sales are currently closing for well over the Amazon retail price). So we'll see.

Anyway, I pulled the trigger and went for it. I ordered on March 31, settled in for a 6 week wait, and was surprised to get this email tonight (2 weeks to the day from my order):

We now have estimated delivery dates for the Kindle order you placed
on 3/31/08, #XXX-XXXXXXX-XXXXXXX. We are now estimating that
your Kindle will arrive between 4/22/2008 and 4/29/2008. We'll contact you
again to let you know when your order is shipped.

Based on the Kindle forums, Amazon's shipping then slightly earlier than their estimates - so with some luck I'll see it early in the week after next.

Technorati Tags: amazon , kindle , ebook

Regular readers of this blog will know that my background is primarily in the Microsoft development world, with the odd foray into Java (and more recently, experiments with Ruby and Processing). So when Microsoft announces some new tool or framework, I'll pay attention and see what's up.

Right now, there's a good deal of hype and excitement around Silverlight... which sounds great to me in theory, but in practice has been largely a disappointment.

And I saw that as a user, not a developer. I can't even think about using it for development at this point because, frankly... it simply doesn't run for me as a casual web user.

Rich Ziade nails some of the issues in his post from Friday, called "Microsoft-Centered Design":

So I'm perusing the various blog posts that have streamed out of the MIX 08 conference and some interesting talks are available online. So I head on over to the MIX 08 site to view some sessions and I run into this:  [image of the "You need Silverlight" placeholder] ..  Yep, I need to download Real Player, I mean Silverlight to watch these videos. Silverlight, for the less enlightened, is Microsoft's foray into streaming video, rich media and rich apps on the Web (aka Microsoft's Flash).

I agree with Rich's premise that Silverlight apps (or at least the demos we've seen so far) don't really provide much reason to use it over Flash -- a time-tested, well-supported platform for rich web apps.

But I find the problem with Silverlight to go even deeper:  For me, it simply doesn't work.

I use Firefox as my browser... and despite lots of examples and statements about Silverlight being not only cross-browser, but also cross-platform, I can't get it to run in Firefox. On any machine I've tried. To date, that's five machines. All of them are running similar setups:

• The most recent production version of Firefox (currently 2.0.0.12), with extensions:
• del.icio.us Bookmarks (for quick access to my bookmarks)
• Firebug (for debugging and development)
• Flashblock  (to block Flash content from loading until/unless I want to see it)
• Google Toolbar  (because... well... because it's the Google toolbar)
• Remember the Milk for Gmail   (because seeing my tasks right next to email rocks)
• Tab Mix Plus  (because I want to choose how/when/where new tabs are opened in Firefox)
• IE Tab (see below)

Note that what I'm NOT running is the NoScript extension, which reportedly causes problems for Silverlight in Firefox.

I can't tell you how many times on these machines I've gone to download the various versions of Silverlight and see if maybe... just maybe... THIS TIME will be different. So far, no joy.

The issue isn't made any easier by the various versions floating around... Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight 1.1 Alpha, some sort of refresh/CTP version for 1.1, and now Silverlight 2.0 as of Mix08. This thing's been around for just a year now and there are already more SKUs of Silverlight than there are of Windows XP.

Of course, things do appear to work fine in IE7. But I don't want to run IE7 as my browser. I've got Firefox and its extensions tweaked to be exactly the way I like it.

The only way I'm able to get Silverlight content to run inside of a Firefox window currently is via the "IE Tab" extension -- which loads the IE rendering engine inside of a Firefox tab. In doing that, though, I lose the integration with the rest of Firefox. And it's only cosmetically different from having two browsers open to begin with. I don't want that.

I would like this to work. I really would. So far, it seems that the newer Silverlight 2.0 will run inside of Firefox -- however, the vast majority of the Silverlight content out there (which, as Rich points out, could be provided in Flash without losing any functionality) is NOT targeting Silverlight 2.0. It seems to mostly be in 1.0 or 1.1.

So until Microsoft gets this working correctly in Firefox, I find myself having to make a decision every time I come across that drives-me-up-a-wall "Get Microsoft Silverlight" badge -- do I really care enough about this content to deal with the frustration and go outside my normal workflow to view it?

More often than not, the answer is "no," which is a shame because there are some interesting videos out there in Silverlight format (the screenshot above is from Jon Udell'sPerspectivesvideo audio interview on MS Robotics).

As a developer, the notion of using XAML to build applications that can be run via Silverlight as well as via a WPF rich client sounds really cool. But how can I get excited about a new developer platform that's completely broken for me as a user?

Update: In the comments, Jon Udell clarified that the Perspectives link above is audio and not video and I've since downloaded the MP3 version. The "Get Silverlight" badge made it look like a video to me and seeing that badge repeatedly without being able to get it working in Firefox prompted the post. Thanks, Jon!

Technorati Tags: silverlight , mix08 , firefox , microsoft , web development

The other day, I posted some thoughts on why I think data visualization has recently become more popular. Among the reasons I mentioned was the fact that visualizations have become more familiar and accessible. Along the way, lots of creative people have begun to create visualizations for things that aren't typically displayed in charts, maps, or other graphical representations.

Things like song lyrics. Or video games. Or the minutiae of their lives. Seriously.

Let's start with song lyrics... over the last few weeks, lots of people have begun to upload charts that represent the lyrics from popular music. I caught wind of it via some blogs posts a while back and have cracked up at some of the charts people are creating. As always, a picture is worth a thousand words (or a hit song).

The chart above (from Flickr user Nusm) is a graphic representation of Bill Withers' song, "Ain't No Sunshine". The one to the right (from user jrgkgb1) is from "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" by the Police.

There is a Flickr Photo Pool called "Song Chart" where some very creative people have been adding more and more examples. Some of them are obscure songs that I don't recognize, while others are from popular music and instantly recognizable.

The pool appears to have been started by Flickr user "boyshapedbox", who is himself responsible for dozens of great examples. The first one I came across, was a Venn diagram of "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics. Instantly familiar.

One awesome response to the "Sweet Dreams" diagram came from commenter "elizaday418":

"well. who am i to disagree?"

If you're familiar with the song, that's hilarious. If you're not... trust me, it's still hilarious.

As you might guess, the goal with most of these is not necessarily to create "academically correct" data representations. The goal is simply to entertain, which I think is an important part of raising an awareness and understanding of modern data visualization.

Most readers and consumers of information are familiar with basic chart types -- lines, bars, and pies. What people are not always aware of are which types of charts and diagrams are best for what they want to communicate. Newer, less traditional charts are also starting to be increasingly used - such as the treemaps used in utility programs and this timeline-based area chart used last week in the New York Times to show box office receipts over time. As the art and science of visualization advances, expressing humor in visual form is a great way to maintain interest among readers.

Graphic designer Joel Friesencreated a slideshow of charts and diagrams as a way to express why a woman should date him. Pie charts are used to express the number of people who think he's nice versus the number that think otherwise. A line chart is used to represent the levels of his wit, sexiness, and charm over the years. Potential dates will be glad to see that the "number of puppies kicked" chart remains a flat line at zero. Unfortunately for Joel, the woman he created the charts for left ultimately left him. And stole his rice cooker. Thankfully, he had an awesome set of charts he could turn into a humorous "letter to shareholders  for Joel, Inc." (included at the above URL).

Projects such as “online dating” have opened up entire fields that were, up till now, totally ignored. I have increased personal appearances in dating activities such as “the pub”. Meeting one on one with potential clients has increased the likelihood of acquiring dates.

Similarly, Craig Robinson has created a series of pie charts to serve as an "audit of my life so far." Some of them are hilarious, such as "% of life living with a beard" or "% of neighbors I've been friends with", while others are more somber, such as "% of life that my father was alive". The top of the presentation features small photos of Craig, taken throughout his life at 4-5 year intervals.

Nicholas Felton has created a "personal annual report" for the last three years (see 2005, 2006, and 2007). These incorporate more than just pie charts, though and, in addition to being humorous visualizations of data, they're also wonderful pieces of art. Given the detailed tracking in the content, they also leave me wondering how Nicholas manages to log some of this information throughout the year. His reports have included number of flights taken (including their relationship to distance to the moon), average temperatures throughout the year, house plants killed, museums visited, date of discovery for first gray hair, quantities of taxi and subway trips, and restaurant visits by food type. Awesome.

One other talented designer to point out is Jessica Hagy, who creates small charts and diagrams at her "indexed" blog -- each entry is simply an index card with a humorous visualization. How she manages to put one or two of these up each day and keep them so fresh and entertaining is beyond me. A collection of her work is now available in book form. For example:

Some other miscellaneous examples:

• The infoshetics blog, mentioned in my previous post, also recently had an entry pointing to some very funny examples of humor in visualization.
• Wall Street Fighter, a humorous blog about making money, posted a list of other examples back in December (including one of the earlier examples I've seen from the song chart meme).
• And finally... one of my all-time favorite "chart-jokes" (found via "Boing Boing", but I've since seen examples of it in a number of places -- not sure who the original creator is):

Ok readers (both of you)... which ones have I missed? Make me laugh.

Technorati Tags: humor , data visualization , infoporn , charts , jokes

Data Visualization (or "Infoporn" as I like to call it) has been a passion of mine for many years. Most of my career as both a developer and manager has been in the development of software that visualizes large sets of data. For the most part, my work has been around energy industry data but I'm often up late into the night tinkering with data sets I find online.

Over the last couple of years, the visualization of data has taken off and become much more popular than in the past. What used to be the exclusive domain of formal textbooks and students in specialized design programs has become accessible to a wider audience. As I think about it, I suspect the reason for this growth in popularity is the convergence of several factors:

• There is a TON of public data available online. Over the years, I've collected a variety interesting large public data sets, such as AOL search data, Enron email messages, and Netflix movie ratings. Peruse the "publicdata" tag on del.icio.us and you'll find more data than you can shake a chart at. In addition, the popularity of web services and public APIs for data has exploded in the last couple of years. These are ideal for fetching current, dynamic data including weather, stock prices, and other financial data. There are also web sites that catalog the wide variety of web service APIs available online. The popularity of online "mashups" (the combining of two or more web services to create something completely new) has grown very quickly, particularly with the arrival of online mapping services like Google Maps and Virtual Earth. These days, popular web sites that don't provide an API for programmatic access quickly catch heat for their omission.
  
• Data has become "social" -- though in a "Web 2.0" world, what hasn't? Seriously, there have been some great "social data" sites cropping up over the last couple of years. These sites let anyone upload, visualize, browse, and share their data. Don't like the way some data on these sites is represented? Chart it yourself. The hallmark examples here are Swivel (blog) and Many Eyes (from IBM, also with a blog), though there are other similar sites as well.
  
• Visualization tools have become more commonplace. In addition to Microsoft improving the charting tools in each new version of Excel, nearly every programming language out there has 3rd party graphics and charting libraries available for it. For many developers, adding basic charting capability to an application has become a fairly simple, plug-and-play affair. That said, it's still too easy to create charts that are ugly and do a poor job of communicating information. In the same way that the rise of desktop publishing tools in the 80's and 90's made for a lot of horrible newsletters and brochures, the increasing number of charting and visualization tools means we're seeing a lot of really bad data presentations. Go ask Edward Tufte (a "founding father" for modern data visualization) about PowerPoint or Stephen Few about BusinessObjects to see what I mean (Few refers to the charts from one Business Objects product as "data visualization Happy Meals" -- not a compliment). Still... it's an exciting time right now for this field.
  
• Development tools have improved greatly in their handling of data. Most development platforms/environments have some sort of abstraction layer or availabledata-access tools to easy the querying and manipulation of data. For dealing with local data, it's rare to have to write new code from scratch to ingest and parse data -- most tools have libraries for standard formats like XML or CSV, as well as straightforward APIs for working with relational databases. For remote data, there are lots of tools that quickly generate a local proxy or wrapper around standard web services.
  
• The development tools for creating and manipulating graphics have similarly improved. Writing code to create on-screen graphics used to be something that an elite few programmers could do -- it typically required very strong C++ skills, in-depth knowledge of complex graphics libraries, and a background in physics and 3D modeling. Now, most modern platforms have relatively approachable APIs for drawing points, lines, regions, and text on screen - as well as simplified APIs for 3D manipulation.
  
• Also on the graphics front, there's Processing - a development environment designed and developed specifically for visualization. It's built on top of Java, but its creators (Ben Fry and Casey Reas) and collaborators have done a great job of balancing approachability (for designers or those new to programming) and power (for those who want to create advanced, interactive visualizations). If you're interested in checking out Processing (which is free and open source and a lot of fun and so you totally should), I'd recommend Fry's book, "Visualizing Data" (published last year by O'Reilly)... Jeff Atwood calls Fry "Edward Tufte armed with a compiler" and I've found the book to be an excellent walkthrough for Processing. Additionally, it's good introduction to the thought process involved with creating an effective visualization.
  
• Computing power and storage are cheap and plentiful. It takes a lot of processor cycles to render graphics and a lot of storage space to keep all that data. Thankfully, even a "low-end" machine these days has a ridiculous amount of processing power and 250GB hard drives are a common starting point for hard drive sizes. I recently purchased a 750GB drive for my Windows Home Server machine and its cost was roughly $.20 per gigabyte. While marveling about that the other day, it occurred to me that my very first hard drive (a 10MB noisy beast given to me in the late 80s by a generous uncle) would be insufficient to hold even ONE raw photo from my new camera (a 12-megapixel Nikon D300). Insane. Thank you Mr. Moore and Mr. Kryder.

Given all of the above, it's a great time to be a data geek. Even if you're not interested in designing visualizations of your own, there are lots of blogs and sites that catalog the best infoporn from across the web. It's amazing to see so many projects coming out that are both informative and aesthetically pleasing. The thumbnail below is an example from this week - it's essentially an interactive "area chart over a timeline" showing the Box Office Receipts for movies from 1986 to 2007, designed and built by the New York Times data visualization team (they've been doing some amazing stuff recently).

In addition to checking out my del.icio.us "infoporn" links, you might want to look over some of the feeds I've subscribed to:

• http://infosthetics.com/
• http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/
• http://flowingdata.com
• http://www.neoformix.com
• http://www.visualcomplexity.com
• http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/
• http://visualmethods.blogspot.com/

In coming posts, I'll link to some of examples of visualizations that I find to be the most impressive, informative, and even humorous.

Technorati Tags: data visualization , visualization , infoporn , processing.org , ny times

A couple weeks ago, I set up Windows Home Server in the house, opting to go the DIY route rather than with an out-of-the-box solution like the HP MediaSmart. I saved a bit of money in the process, though it wasn't without some issues getting started.

For a machine, I turned to the Dell Outlet site, which I've used in the past and haven't had much trouble with. I've purchased a bunch of machines via the Outlet over the years and only one has ever had issues (blogged about last year). Odds are that it would happen at some point with a non-Outlet machine at some point, so I wasn't worried about ordering another box that way.

The machine is an Inspiron 531 desktop, with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB drive in it. It also has a DVD burner, mid-sized tower case, and the standard integrated network and video (the latter isn't needed by WHS). It was $249. Dell had sent me a coupon the week I was watching the Outlet, which basically took care of the shipping and tax. I spent another $150 or so at NewEgg to add a 750GB -- Roughly $400 total for that machine with 1TB of storage. (Note: looks like the only option now is to get a 530 rather than a 531. The difference is that the 530 uses an Intel CPU while the 531 has an AMD processor).

The setup started off fine, but I ran into issues later when I had to put drivers on the machine (after installing WHS). The Inspiron had shipped with Vista Home Premium, which I didn't need, but WHS is based on Windows Server 2003. The drivers that came with the machine (and available via Dell Support) were Vista drivers and didn't fly with WHS. Some Googling and experimentation led to trying the Windows XP drivers, which seem to be working just fine. The main holdup here was the network card's driver... with no network, I had to use sneakernet to get the drivers on to the WHS box.

So I saved money over going with an off-the-shelf Home Server... but paid a DIY tax with an hour or two of setup time and tinkering around with drivers. I'm happy with that.

Once set up, the experience has been awesome. The machine is running "headless" at this point, but the client software is on a few different machines now and works great for managing the server. In a pinch, I've used Remote Desktop a couple times to look at the server's control panel.

The features I like the most:

• Access to the file shares on the server just plain works. There's no futzing with ACLs, Windows firewall, or anything else. Each user account on the server has its own private share, there's a public share for general use, and dedicated shares for music, photos, videos, and software. An admin account can control access to those in simple fashion -- each user account gets no access, read-only, or read-write. From the client perspective, it's just \\SERVERNAME\SHARENAME and you're good to go.
• Backup is solid and runs seamlessly ... it takes a while when you initially run it (go wired for that first backup!), but after that, the incremental updates aren't really noticeable.
• There's a Tivo add-in that hooks write into your music, photos, and videos. That adds access to our Tivo Series 2 (Home Media Option), along with the Xbox 360 Media access that just works out of the box with WHS. I don't need to publish photos and music from a spare desktop machine any more. As an added bonus, the machine's faster than that spare was so scrolling through images and music is way fast.
• Related note... remotely installing an add-in is dead simple. Copy an MSI into a share on the server, run the remote management client, and tell it to run the MSI for the add-in. Removing an add-in later looks just as easy.
• Remote access to the server over the internet is very cool . The WHS setup process gets you a subdomain under the homeserver.com domain and you can log into the server from any web browser to get at the files stored there. That's already proven handy when I wanted to show someone in the office a photo that we were talking about.

A few things I'd like to see improve or change:

• I still think that Microsoft needs to make WHS available via MSDN . I've got a few different ideas for add-ins I'd like to develop, but I'm not interested in doing development and debugging on the home server that's actually in "real world" use at the house. Unless they change this decision, it'll mean I need to purchase a separate WHS license if I want to get serious about add-in development. Incidentally, they've received a LOT of feedback on the issue, but currently say it's not available on MSDN due to some "valid logistical issues"... who knows?
• It doesn't seem like there's a real great solution yet for managing our music via an iTunes library . Aside from WHS add-ins, installing software on a WHS machine is discouraged... so iTunes has to be on a separate machine. But honestly, the only time iTunes gets used is for syncing our iPods (and related playlist management). Playback in the house is done via the Tivo or Xbox 360. So all the music is in two places now -- WHS and that spare desktop machine (with iTunes) that we plug the iPods into. I think (but am not certain) that I could have the iTunes library on that machine simply reference the files on the WHS box -- but haven't tried that route yet (mostly for fear of hosing up the iTunes metadata and "device awareness" for our iPods). Need to do more research here.
• Obviously a big issue that MUST get addressed soon is the widely-reported corruption problem. Thankfully, we're not editing files directly on the server shares (and won't anytime soon). The editing/manipulation tends to happen on our client machines, with the results being backed-up or simply stored for shared-access on the server.

I suspect that corruption issue is THE top priority for the WHS team in Redmond... once it's resolved, my next hurdle will be to figure out the best way to set up Lightroom catalog(s?) for the 7+ years of photos we have stored. Currently, I use fairly "transient" catalogs with Lightroom since all the photo files (both RAW shots, XMP sidecars, and JPG images) are being stored up on the server. But in doing that, I miss out on many features of having everything in a catalog.

All in all, I'm very happy with the WHS experience thus far. If you can live without the option to remotely edit files (to avoid the corruption problem), I'd recommend it.

Technorati Tags: windows home server , whs , msdn , dell , inspiron , tivo

Via the Infosthetics blog, I learned of the "Human Brain Cloud" - a massively multiplayer "word association game". It's pretty addictive in a "what will it do next" kind of way.

The idea is that you're shown words or short phrases on the screen and you want to quickly type in the first word that comes to mind - a typical word association. It showed "chess" and I typed "checkers". It showed "never cease" and I typed "to amaze". You get the idea... but be forewarned: once you start blazing through some words, it makes you want to keep going to see what it displays next.

The coolest part of the site is actually on the next tab: View the Cloud.

Here, you see a set of balls, each with a word on it, and as you type in a word the balls begin to disappear - revealing only the balls that match what you've typed. Having narrowed down to one or more manageable balls in the display, you can click on one of them to expand it into a network diagram. The ball you click then "explodes" into a set of balls that match words people typed in during the the word association process. The thicker the line connecting the two, the more common the association between the two balls (i.e., between the words on the connected balls).

In the image to the right, I typed "sql" - which narrowed down to just one ball - and then clicked on it to expand the associated words. The thickest lines are to "database" and "query", followed by "my" and "server". Slick. You can follow the word association visually by clicking on any associated ball to reveal its associations... and so on. To make the display manageable, balls begin to shrink and fade out over time as you drill down into other associated words.

Aside form being a bit addictive, it's also an entertaining visualization. Pure infoporn.

It comes from "2D Boy", a two-man indie game studio whose "swanky San Francisco office is whichever free wi-fi coffee shop they wander into on a given day."

Their blog has a great entry with some funny stats and insights from the word associations people have entered (at this point, about a half million words with over 6 millions connections).

They're working on a game called "World of Goo" that (from a preview video) also looks like it'll be pretty cool.

Technorati Tags: 2d boy , word games , visualization , infoporn , infosthetics

Five months it's taken to get to this point... but it looks like I can finally say that the Xbox 360 DRM issues I've complained about in the past are currently resolved. First, a brief summary.

• In August, my Xbox 360 died and needed to be sent in for repair.
• In October, I got a replacement console (different serial number), which Microsoft sent in lieu of having me wait for my original console to be repaired. Plug the hard drive in and it looked like we were good to go.
• In early November, we realized that other profiles on the console (for my wife and older daughter) couldn't play the Xbox Live Arcade games we purchased. They were stuck in trial mode... further, my profile (with which the games were originally purchased) could only play them when logged in. I called the 800 support number and was told that they needed to "re-associate" my console's serial number with the licenses for those games -- and that it would take 2 to 4 weeks. I was (and still am) stunned that it wasn't a quick, 10-minute fix but didn't have any choice. So I waited.
• Around the holidays in December, it still hadn't been fixed so I called again. This time, I was told that it would be fixed but that there was NO timeframe at all provided. "Hopefully soon" was all the support person would tell me... that is, until he hung up on me. This was the low point, as the Xbox Live service was offline a LOT over the holidays, which meant that NOBODY in the house could access those games.
• In January, I emailed Major Nelson about it (as he requested people do in a thread on the Xbox forums). No response. Oh, and to apologize for all that downtime over the holidays, Microsoft gave away a free Xbox Live Arcade game. Ironic, huh?

A few days ago, I checked back in on a MASSIVE thread over in the Xbox forums. As of this post, the thread's up to 150 pages - PAGES! There were posts that kept track of who had been hosed by this issue for the longest period of time. Lots of people were in the same boat as I am, waiting several months. But over a period of a few days, some of those people were reporting that they had suddenly been able to access their Xbox Live content. They simply had to re-download it to their console (which re-fetches the license info), after which it worked as it finally works as it should have all along. That re-download step is something I've done just about every week since August - it's what the support techs said "should" resolve the issue. Until this week, it didn't.

As of Thursday, though.... it looks like it's working as it should. And an 8-year old little girl can FINALLY get back to her quest for Marble Blast Ultra achievements. A hardworking housewife can wind down in the evening with a little Bejeweled.

Throughout this saga, it became clear that this was a big problem for a LOT of people. If the failure rate for the 360 is truly 16%, then that's nearly 3 million consoles that have failed (based on Wikipedia's figure of 17.7 consoles sold). Even if you assume that just a third of those has ever been used to purchase Xbox Live content (Arcade games, TV shows, movies, etc), then that's almost A MILLION people who could be affected by this problem. Clearly, this is a major failure on the part of Microsoft.

How SHOULD it be handled? Ideally, the content wouldn't be DRM'd at all. My opinion is that DRM punishes the people who want to do the right thing, while the IP thieves are always going to find some workaround.

But if being DRM-free isn't an option, then it should be handled the way it's handled on my iPod. I can choose to "De-Authorize" my iTunes music on my computer and my iPod. If I get a new computer or iPod, I simply Deauthorize the DRM'd content on the old device and that frees it up to be played on the new one. If a hard drive on a computer fails, or an iPod simply dies, and you don't have the ability to Deauthorize that device in advance -- well, a quick email/call to Apple resolves it IN MINUTES as they re-set the authorized playback devices for you.

Ideally, that should have been done right away when Microsoft sent me a replacement console. By the time it showed up in October, my content should already have been associated with the new ID. Worst case, it should have been handled quickly when I noticed it and called in November. Apple can do it... and they're not even a database company.

Jeff Atwood wrote about the issue earlier this month, when he realized that the DRM content he'd purchased on an Xbox 360 at his office couldn't be used on the Xbox 360 that he bought at home. To get access to the content he'd already paid for, Jeff opted to purchase it again -- to the tune of $140 worth of content. I disagree with his solution, as I think it punishes someone who's simply trying to do the right thing... but a guy with a Rock Band addiction might be forgiven for overpaying to get his fix.

The "Official Xbox Magazine" site named this issue the Number One thing for Microsoft to address in its 2008 New Years resolutions. Couldn't agree more.

Consumer advocate site "The Consumerist" posted an item on it this month as well, detailing the story of "Kevin." This guy has apparently been told by an escalation tech at Microsoft that he can "hopefully" expect it to be resolved "some time in 2008"! Unreal.

And there are noshortage of individualblogsdetailingsimilarstories.

Understand - I'm pretty much a Microsoft guy. A fairly happy Windows user. A very happy Windows Home Server user (gotta blog that experience still). A .NET developer. A development manager using Microsoft tools (by choice). I know there are lots of horror stories out there and no shortage of anti-MS vitriol, but most of the time, I'm pretty happy with things.

It's unbelievable to me that this issue has allowed to get so big... and that the frontline support technicians aren't able to resolve the problem during a quick phone call.

Now that it's fixed, let's hope the replacement console isn't in the 1-in-6 that will fail the way my first one was. In the meantime, if you need someone to beat up on in Guitar Hero III, my gamertag is OneLeftyFoot.

Technorati Tags: xbox 360 , xbox live , drm , oxm , codinghorror , major nelson , consumerist , customer service , itunes

According to the New York Times (via Consumerist.com), the president of Salesgenie.com has apologized for his company's Super Bowl commercials. The animated ads depicted panda bears speaking in Chinese accents and a main character (named Ramesh) who spoke in an Indian accent.

The thing I find really funny is that the company president, Vinod Gupta, apparently developed and wrote the commercials himself. It's funny to me for a couple of reasons -- first is that the guy spent more than $2 million for EACH 30-second ad, but couldn't be bothered to get professional ad people involved (the animation was done by an outside firm, but not the writing/development). The second reason I find it funny is that the Monday commercial wrap-ups across the web universally panned the commercials as lame, ineffective, and offensive. It's one thing to go your own way and not bring in professionals... it's another thing to fall on your face in the meantime.

Salesgenie is actually a part of InfoUSA and Mr. Gupta is the Chairman and CEO of InfoUSA. He wrote the company's ad spots that run in last year's Super Bowl as well. That's right, the chairman of a company whose market cap is nearly $500 million decided to write his own commercials, two years in a row. So he did. Poorly.

The commercial for Salesgenie during the Super Bowl last year was poorly received, but in that instance the complaints were about what viewers perceived as low production values and a hard-sell style.

The Salesgenie commercials were poorly regarded in many surveys, polls and reviews of this year’s 54 Super Bowl ads.

 

For instance, in the 20th USA Today Ad Meter survey, the pandas spot finished 44th and the salesman spot finished 49th.

 

In a survey of blog posts about Super Bowl spots by Collective Intellect, the Salesgenie commercials drew the most negative discussion.

 

Personally, I think Mr. Gupta should apologize to the viewers who have had to watch his commercials. They're horrible.

They are spending some big-time money, though, as one of the Fox pre-game shows was sponsored by Salesgenie and there have been print ads running recently in various national business magazines. And while the stock market's been fairly volatile across the board the last couple of weeks, it doesn't look like Wall Street was too hip on the ads either. Here's the financial equivalent of some Monday-morning quarterbacking earlier this week:

The whole premise of their ads is "100 free leads for your sales peoples." And, for some reason, that just cracks me up... I know the InfoUSA model is to have giant databases of people and businesses, with attributes assigned to that data so they can slice it and dice it based on demographics.

Nonetheless, the idea that a sales group would get value out of some generic "leads" database makes me wonder... doesn't the value of those leads depend on what I'm selling? Suppose my niche is high-end lizard-care products for exotic reptiles? Software aimed at meteorologists who monitor currents in the North Atlantic? USB sushi flash drives? The InfoUSA business has obviously done well, and I'm certainly no salesperson... so maybe it's just me that finds the whole "100 free leads" thing kinda funny.

Or maybe it's funny because it reminds me of Glengarry Glen Ross and the complaining the sales guys did about "the leads". They didn't have "the good leads"... 'cause Mitch and Murray sent them the crap leads! Man, it's time to watch this movie again.

Technorati Tags: super bowl , commercials , glengarry glen ross , sales genie , marketing

An item on TechCrunch this morning pointed me at the official Google blog, where David Drummond (Google Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer) commented on the Microsoft bid for Yahoo. I think it's fair to say that a Google corporate officer blogging on a Google property (Blogger) constitutes their "official" response.

For an official response, it's pretty idiotic. For starters, Drummond twice refers to the letter sent to Yahoo's board by Steve Ballmer as a "hostile bid". Hmm. Is this a hostile bid? A hostile takeover? Let's look at that.

The president of one company sends an open letter to the board of another company, offering to buy that company at a significant mark-up over its current share price. Doesn't seem terribly hostile to me. But I'm no lawyer, so let's go see how others define "hostile" bids for acquisition...

Had Drummond used his own company's search engine's "Define: " syntax, he'd have found this:

Note the key element in there: without the approval of the target corporation's board. What was Ballmer's letter to Yahoo, if not a proposal for the board to consider? Had he searched Wikipedia, he'd have seen this:

A takeover which goes against the wishes of the target company's management and board of directors. opposite of friendly takeover.

... but that topic (Hostile Takeover) links to the "Takeover" topic. A key portion of that (from the Friendly and Hostile Takeovers section within the topic) is [my emphasis]:

When a bidder makes an offer for another company, it will usually inform the board of the target beforehand. If the board feels that the offer is such that the shareholders will be best served by accepting, it will recommend the offer be accepted by the shareholders. A takeover would be considered "hostile" if (1) the board rejects the offer, but the bidder continues to pursue it, or (2) if the bidder makes the offer without informing the board beforehand.

Seems to me that neither of those conditions were met. On (2), the bidder (Ballmer on behalf of Microsoft) did inform the board beforehand. And until/unless Yahoo's board rejects the offer and Microsoft continues to pursue, then condition (1) won't be met either.

Drummond's not totally alone, though... it seems that some in the media are also joining the bandwagon. ABC News has a story that refers to the bid as "hostile" several times... and quotes Kara Swisher as saying "Yahoo had been rebuffing Microsoft's overtures for the past year"... and "You don't tend to try to do a hostile takeover in the Internet space because people just leave," Swisher said. "So it's very unusual Microsoft is attacking Yahoo in this way.""Attacking"? Hyperbole much?

However, Swisher's perspective on the matter is hardly without bias. Just three weeks ago, she was writing that there was no way that Microsoft would acquire Yahoo. She called rumors of Microsoft looking at Yahoo "a tad ridiculous" and, when referring to discussions between former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel and Steve Ballmer, she has this to say [my emphasis]:

It never happened then and will not now.

So how do you get from "it never happened then and won't now" to "they've been rebuffing overtures for the past year"? Then again, I suppose telling ABC News that she frankly doesn't know and was completely off the mark just three short weeks ago isn't the shortest route to a juicy soundbite.

For their part, Yahoo makes it clear in their own official response (published late Friday) that they're reviewing the "unsolicited" bid. Not much else they can see for now, I suppose.

Earlier today, Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief counsel, posted a response to Google's statement. It's a fairly short statement, with the investment relations boilerplate being longer than the statement itself, but these numbers are worth noting:

According to published reports, Google currently has more than 65 percent search query share in the U.S. and more than 85 percent in Europe. Microsoft and Yahoo! on the other hand have roughly 30 percent combined in the U.S. and approximately 10 percent combined in Europe.

It would be nice to know which "published reports" he refers to, but certainly Google's domination in search query share can't be argued. They're a verb at this point (and for good reason... Google's search does rock!).

So now it'll turn into a war of the words... cue the rhetoric and grab your popcorn. Should be an interesting ride.

Technorati Tags: google , microsoft , yahoo , acquisition , techcrunch

I have to be honest... When Twitter was first released and the hype was deafening, I was among the skeptics who questioned the point of the service -- why would I want to constantly update the world on 'my thoughts'? Where I am? What I'm doing, eating, thinking, saying, wondering... or worse? Who would want to read that? And why would I want to read those types of updates from others?

The fact that there was so much emphasis on using SMS/text messages for everything only added to my skepticism. I'm getting these updates on my phone? I only have 140 characters to use?

So I stayed away and chalked it up as one of those "silly web 2.0 fads" that gets announced, hyped, and then drops off the radar while still in perma-beta mode.

Recently, though, a few different things got me to take a look and (finally) create an account:

• A few services I'm using have Twitter "Bots" that I can use to communicate with the service. "Remember the Milk," for example, lets me use Twitter to add things to my task list. The "I Want Sandy" service lets me use Twitter to set reminders for some point in the future. This type of service automation has been around via IM for a while, but the user experience through Twitter seems better to me.
  
• The authors of severalblogs I subscribe to have begunputting links to their Twitter streams in their blog templates and sidebars. Maybe they've been there for a while and I'm just now noticing them? In any case, I see subscribing to a blogger's Twitter stream in the same way as subscribing to their del.icio.us bookmarks. If I enjoy reading their blog posts, it stands to reason that I might enjoy their "smaller" thoughts (via Twitter) and the bookmarks they're creating (via del.icio.us). The benefits here are more passive -- I can drop in, read what I like, and then move on -- but they're benefits nonetheless.
  
• My team at work is distributed between Colorado and Tennessee. In addition, we have a fairly flexible environment that allows for telecommuting when necessary (snow days, waiting for the cable guy, and general "life happens" stuff). We use IM and email pretty heavily, but have found that those don't always work well for certain scenarios. Specifically, there are times when we'd like to have some ad hoc group communication. People thinking out loud, asking general questions of the group, or even coordinating around things like issue tracking items, builds, and more. In these cases, IM is a bit too "point to point" because those conversations often turn into "let's email the group and get some more input". Email isn't great because of the latency between arrival, reading, replying, and sending... during which people start to reply on top of one another. It's great for many things... but sometimes you just need a "chat room" for the in-between stuff that happens all day.
  
  So I thought Twitter might be useful for this and created an account... it's easy to use and that ad hoc "one-to-many" style of communicating updates and status is its strong suit. I discovered later that the downside of this is that there's a lot of other noise going on as well -- so unless I subscribe ONLY to my team members' Twitter streams, I'm sifting through other people's updates to get the ones that are work-related. For now, we're going with Campfire from 37Signals and it seems to be working well. Kinda like "private Twitter with file attachments"...

So with these thoughts in mind, I've been giving it a shot and posting occasional status updates. I'm not yet totally convinced - but neither am I as skeptical as I once was. And while the value's not there for work-related team communications (the original point of the exercise), I definitely think the "bot" services are useful and I've enjoyed seeing the updates from others whose blogs I follow...

In using it for a week or two now, I've been "following" (in Twitter's parlance) a few streams that are really worthwhile. One of those is Merlin Mann, the guy behind the 43 Folders productivity site... his Twitter stream seems to be used for stream-of-consciousness thoughts he has throughout the day. And they're usually hilarious... You know how most people have that filter that stops them from saying all the hilarious/cynical/disturbing/obscure things that come to mind throughout the day? I think Merlin just piped his filter to his Twitter stream. One example, recently posted as I type this on Super Bowl Sunday, demonstrates his ability to turn a phrase [say it in the voice of an NFL player]:

"I'm just so humbled that my freakish physique and tolerance for head trauma can be leveraged to sell lite beer. I also wanna thank 'God.'"

In addition to bloggers, I've found other types of streams to be worthwhile - including New York Times (which streams headlines throughout the day as news articles are posted), Woot (which publishes the daily Woot bargain), and TechMeme (which tracks hot topics in tech news).

There's a pretty good "fan wiki" going that provides some other ideas for using the service, including collections of Twitter mashups, "Non Human" streams, organizations, weather for various cities, and even airport status (e.g., Chicago O'Hare)!

So... for now I'm sticking it out to see how it goes. Time will tell whether the value I'm getting now lasts or if it's just short-term novelty.

Who knows... maybe in another 12-18 months, I'll look into this whole Facebook thing. ;-)

Technorati Tags: twitter , social networks , im

A few months back, probably after deleting my daily allotment of 100+ spam messages per day, I decided to look into a better way of handling email. The hosting company I use for my domain (Server Intellect) provides a web-based mail client (Smarter Mail) that I often used when out and about. On my machine at home, I used Outlook 2007 to fetch that email. And while Smarter Mail's UI was fine for a web-based mail program, the spam that made it through the filters was ridiculous.

In addition to my personal email, this affected a few other family members who also use email on the domain... and let's face it, no guy wants to hear from his Mother about "how to get rid of all that male enlargement spam."

So I went in search of a better way... as a listener to Scott Hanselman's podcast (and reader of his blog), I knew that he'd recently moved his domain's mail (and other services) over to Google Apps for Domains. His recounting of the tale in the podcast sounded pretty painless, so I went to check it out.

I was very impressed with how seamless and easy the whole thing was. Google provides excellent instructions for how to make the transition, including walkthroughs for the control panels used by many web hosting companies. The process amounts to just a few steps:

1. You prove to Google that you own the domain. The easiest way to do that is to put a file at a certain URL that contains some data they provide. You create it with a text editor, upload it to your site, and let Google know you're done. Google looks for that file and then reads the contents... if it matches what they provided, you're good to go.
2. You decide which services you want to use -- GMail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Start Page, and public pages -- and you can turn them on and configure them as you like. This was great because I could turn on calendar, docs, and start page right away, but figure out how I wanted to transition email later.
3. You use Google's instructions for your hosting company's control panel to make some changes in the routing of traffic in your domain. For me, this was as simple as logging into the domain, adding some A records to indicate where traffic should go (i.e., sending it to special Google URLs where the apps live), and then hit that URL in a browser to see the result.
4. With email, I was originally worried that there would be an awkward transition period... not at all. First, I created all of our accounts in the Google Apps interface so that there were mailboxes in place. Google even gives you a temporary URL you can use to check that mailbox before transitioning to the URL you want (e.g., mail.domain.com), as well as a temporary email address that goes to each mailbox. Google gives nice step-by-step instructions for handling mail transitions in particular.
5. With those in hand, I logged into SmarterMail and set up Forwarding rules on each mailbox -- so that mail sent to me (for example) would automatically be forwarded to my mailbox's special email address over on Google's system. With those rules in place, I changed the MX records with my hosting company so that mail traffic would start to go to Google's servers rather than Server Intellect's.
6. After that change is made, there's a brief transition time while records get updated and the tubes get re-routed. With the forwarding rules, though, nothing is lost or in limbo. Within hours, it seemed, everything was being processed through Google and we were good to go.

That all sounds a little more involved than it actually was... someone moderately familiar with their hosting company's control panel could get the whole thing done in a couple hours in the evening. Maybe more if you had a bunch of mailboxes to go through and set up forwarding rules on.

In addition to Scott's podcast, he also had a few posts on his blog that were helpful when I looked into this. Unlike with Scott's situation, I didn't have a bunch of email to transition UP to the Google mailboxes. I do still have a large Outlook PST file locally, but I'm not convinced I'd get a lot of value out of pushing it all up to my mailbox on the server.

For now, I'm pretty much just using GMail as intended (e.g., leave it all on the server), but I take advantage of the IMAP capability occasionally to move things into some Personal Folders that I want to archive. I do see that, over time, I'll likely start using labels and the "archive" feature of Google Mail and keep more and more info on the server... but that will be a transition that occurs naturally over time rather than jamming all of my current archives up there at once.

Others in the family are using the new setup the same way they used the old one -- use the web interface to handle mail when traveling or when using a different computer, but then let Outlook slurp it all down via POP when they're on their personal machine... but they're increasingly seeing that it's useful to leave it up on the server for convenient access.

It's been a few months since the transition... and overall, we couldn't be happier with it. The service is free, fast, and has added a lot to the way we're tracking things. My wife and I frequently share Google Docs for various things (Christmas shopping lists, chore charts, etc) and we're just starting to use the calendar to keep track of household schedules.

And that spam problem? It's pretty much licked... Google's filters are great. I think the number of spam messages I've seen in roughly three months can be counted in the single digits. I did keep an eye out on the Spam folder to watch for false positives and there were a few. But those could be counted on one hand and, more importantly, I understood why Google wanted to filter them -- mostly they were messages that mentioned poker, a pastime of mine but a frequent topic for spammers.

Bottom line:

Pros

• Virtually no spam.
• Couldn't be easier to setup.
• Uptime and stability of Google services.
• Access to Google's "search" for email.
• Other services we can grow into.
• Free (unless you have more advanced needs)

Cons

• It does require familiarity with your host's control panel... but if you have one of the many standard interfaces they support, that's an easy hurdle.
• I know people will say "use labels!" and "use search!", but I still wish Gmail had folders.
• Some of the Google Apps For Domains services get new features and capabilities slower than their "regular" Google cousins. As Scott has pointed out, it's clear they're not running the same codebase in both places... so things like IMAP support, colored labels, and lots of iGoogle add-ins don't work in Google Apps until weeks after they're generally available elsewhere (if at all).
• Those differences mentioned above also mean you need to be careful when looking at 3rd-party add-ins or tools. Some that work fine with regular Google tools may require hacks, or may not work at all, with the tools available via Google Apps.

Highly recommended!

Note:    This post is the first in a series of posts about moving more of my personal data and productivity tools on to web-based services (i.e., "the cloud"). It's a process that's largely on-going (only mail is "fully" transitioned for us), but I'm working on transitioning my tasks (which Google doesn't yet support), my calendar (both home and office), as well as personal data (important docs, photos, etc) to web-based services.

Technorati Tags: google , google apps , productivity , web services , gmail

I'm seriously contemplating a Windows Home Server solution and am pretty much at a fork in the road. On the one side is the HP Media Smart Server (which includes hardware and the OS), while the other side is the option to buy an inexpensive machine (perhaps via Dell Outlet) and then buy the OS separately.

No decision yet, but the cost difference is negligible... so it boils down to "Do I want something that works out of the box, or is this something I'd enjoy setting up as a project of my own?" Who knows... I'm also considering just going with a more basic NAS style solution.

There are many things to like about Windows Home Server, but one feature that intrigues me is that it has an SDK for writing add-ins (via .NET). I can think of a few add-in projects that would be fun to build.

Unfortunately, the MSDN Subscriptions blog announced today that WHS will not be available to subscribers. They don't comment on why they opted not to make it available... but it's a disappointing decision regardless.

First of all, I should point out that I'm wearing two hats here... The first is as a consumer who will likely be purchasing a WHS license for use in my home (unless I go the pure-NAS route). Because MSDN makes licenses available for development purposes only, I'd be buying a WHS license either way (separately or with the HP server). The second hat is as a developer with an MSDN Subscription who appreciates that the subscription gives me access to the licenses I need to build solutions on Microsoft's platform.

I've seen arguments in MSDN forums that "home" products aren't available via MSDN Subscription. However, I can have a Vista Home or Home Premium install up and running in a couple hours or so using media and/or downloads from MSDN. So there are "home" products on MSDN.

Another argument might be that that it's not technically aimed at developers... sure, but neither is Office, Exchange, or Project -- and each of those is available because developers can build tools that supplement and enrich those products. Home Server doesn't seem any different in this regard with its much publicized add-in model.

Clearly, Microsoft's success over the years is based on the popularity of its platform with 3rd-party developers. Without a rich ecosystem of 3rd party applications and tools, particularly in the business world, would Windows have become the dominant desktop OS? With many agreeing that is the first product aimed at a potentially huge and largely untapped market (small, wireless home networks), why treat Home Server differently in this regard?

In some ways, Home Server is a solution to a problem that many of its target customers don't know they have -- lots of people have small networks at home but no idea that they should be looking into automated backups, remote access to their files, and shared storage for their growing libraries of music, photos, and other data. It's certainly possible that a 3rd-party add-in to Home Server could become the "killer app" that convinces people that it's a "must have" solution.

But if developers on the Microsoft platform don't have access to WHS in the same place they get their other development, testing, and deployment tools, why would they bother?

I must be missing something... what's the downside to Microsoft including Home Server in MSDN?

Technorati Tags: Microsoft , MSDN , Windows Home Server , WHS

Eric Sink has a blog post about his experience in trying to get pricing information out of a vendor whose products he was looking into. Their prices weren't listed on the web site (strike 1), so he had to fill out a web form to request a price. The response he got back was a request for his phone number so that a salesperson could call him (strike 2). Specifically, they wanted to talk about his application and how he planned to use their product (strike 3).

I've run into this several times with development tools and components and it typically tells me one key thing about the vendor involved... you want to jack up the price based on my ability to pay. More succinctly, you want to find out my "price sensitivity" which is just a fancy way of saying, "What it's worth to you?"

That tells me the vendor isn't sure what their product is worth in the market. And that they don't think my time is worth much either (not to be an ass, but I'd like to avoid 30-minute phone calls when the topic could be covered in a 3-sentence email). Finally, it says that you (the vendor) want to dictate to me (the customer) the nature of our relationship.

"How I plan to use your product?" -- What if I'm a rich, whacked out philanthropist who buys software component licenses, reads the Quick-Start Guides to my kids at night, and wants to use your install media as the basis for my Chinese throwing star? What's the price then?

My experience with this is typically in dealing with the vendors that make UI components and other development tools. Doesn't matter if you're talking about Java, .NET, or anything else. One vendor I dealt with recently didn't have any pricing on their web site. Instead, you have to contact a salesperson via email and request a price. The response back was along the lines of this (paraphrased, but not by much):

Before I can give you a price, I really need to find out more about your product and your company. We like to look at ourselves as not just a tools vendor, but also as a partner in your business. Knowing more about the pricing of your products and services will help us craft a relationship that benefits you and ensures that you get the most out of our product.

Pretty amazing, huh? In truth, the conversation was more about him asking me questions than me asking him about licensing their product. He wanted to know how many licenses to our products are sold each year. How many end-users does that represent? What's the pricing of our product? What do our sales forecasts look like?

It's probably worth noting here that the vendor I'm referring to makes exactly one development tool -- a UI component for .NET. And I tried to explain it as simply as I could -- "Look, we already license UI tools from companies X, Y, and Z. I can go to their web site and immediately see how much I have to pay per-developer for their tools, and what the deployment licensing is for those tools (royalty-free distribution, named users, etc)."

But trying to get that information from this vendor was nearly impossible. In the end, I ended up on the phone with the president of their North American business, playing a game of 20-Questions. All so he can make an educated guess at how much I might be willing to pay for the use of his product.

By the way, when I finally got a proposed price (after multiple emails and a long phone call), it was about 8-10x what we were willing to pay to license the component. So much for the analysis of our price sensitivity... We went another direction.

Now, I don't even bother. If I go to a site and can't find any sort of pricing information, I move on.

Technorati tags: development tools, pricing, software, marketing

My last post, on whether non-geeks care about DRM (short: they will), focused on the Apple iTunes Music Store. In it, I mentioned that I've purchased plenty of music via the iTunes store. I also explained the various hoops I have to jump through to get that music into a standard format (MP3) for use elsewhere (Tivo).

What I didn't mention is that my most recent several purchases have been much easier to deal with... not because Apple's making it easier for me, though. In fact, it's Amazon.com that I've been using recently when I look for music. The Amazon experience is really very nice... and while it's not as integrated and seamless as the whole iTunes/iPod world, it's pretty easy to navigate nonetheless.

• First, you download and install the Amazon MP3 Downloader.
• Next, you shop for music. When you find something you want, you choose the "Buy" link.
• Once you confirm the purchase, the Downloader starts running and downloads your tracks in the background. As an added bonus, it will automatically add the new songs/albums to iTunes for you.

The Downloader seems to be a pretty well-behaved piece of software. It runs well and has options for iTunes integration (that auto-add feature), where to store music files that are downloaded, and more.

Ok, so it's nice... but is it better?  I actually think it is a better place to buy music for a few reasons.

• The first, most obvious reason is that you're getting MP3 format files -- they'll play anywhere.
• Second, the audio quality (bit rate) of those files is higher than with the files you get from iTunes.
• Finally, the prices are cheaper. Most songs are $.89 each and albums are typically $8.99 (some are even $7.99).

When I first looked into it, the selection on the Amazon store seemed pretty slim. There were a lot of artists that it simply couldn't carry because they hadn't yet worked out deals with the major record labels. Within the last month or so, though, Amazon has signed the remaining "Big Four" companies and the selection has grown considerably.

Now, the only challenge is to remember that I need to check Amazon first before I click "Add Album" in iTunes!

Technorati Tags: amazon , mp3 , drm , itunes , apple , digital music

The Read/Write Web blog put up a post yesterday asking if DRM-free music matters to consumers. Their point was that if most customers purchasing music on iTunes (with DRM) are using it on their computer or their iPod, then they never really "see" the DRM and don't much care. The music plays in the places where they want it. It's a good point, but I think the number of people whose music is consumed entirely on an iPod or their computer will only diminish.

That's not to say that the number of people using iPods will go down or that I predict the demise of Apple's portable music devices. To the contrary, I have had an iPod for a few years and I love it. If the new iPod Touch were available with capacities larger than 16GB (even at the expense of a few additional millimeters in size), I'd purchase one pretty quickly. I've also purchased many albums/songs through the iTunes Music Store and use it extensively for podcasts.

What I am saying is that I think the number of places and contexts in which we consume music will grow and that those places will increasingly not involve a iPod.

For example, we have a Tivo Series 2 in our family room and it's connected to our home network. The Home Media Option on the Tivo lets me point it at our library of music on a computer in the basement and play back that music through the TV or stereo. The Tivo remote and a full-screen TV are a decent way to navigate a large music collection (though there are many improvements I'd love to see) and the convenience of all our music available that way is great.

The catch is that Tivo's Home Media Option will only let me play MP3 music files. Apple's DRM-protected files aren't recognized at all. There are a variety of similar options for piping music throughout a house and their adoption is likely to rise. As prices come down and digital distribution of content is more widely adopted, it's reasonable to assume that more people (non-geeks) will want the convenience of their music anywhere, anytime.

But for music purchase via iTunes Music Store, you need to jump through several hoops to get the DRM-protected files to play back on those systems. Here are the steps I go through to make it available to our Tivo's music system:

• In iTunes, I have to make a playlist with the songs from the album I purchased.
  
• I then have to burn an Audio CD of that playlist... in terms of content, this gives me a CD similar to the disc I could go purchase in a brick-and-mortar retailer. I say "similar" because Apple's music has compression on it that means the audio on that CD is not as high-quality as on a true, shrinkwrapped CD.
  
• Note also that this disc is now also a reasonable backup to my music. If something disastrous should happen to the computer or the iTunes ecosystem, I've got a regular CD that can be played anywhere.
  
• Now I have to use another program (I like CD-EX) to "rip" that CD into MP3 files. This is the same process you'd go through with any retail CD and is something I did a lot of when initially converting our CD collection into MP3.
  
• Now that I have MP3 files, I also like to use MP3Gain to process those files and set the audio levels. This non-destructive process helps to set the volume levels in MP3 files consistently, which helps fix the problem of playlists that get very loud and then very quiet.

At the end of this, I've got my purchased music in three places and three different formats -- the iTunes DRM-protected files from Apple, the physical CD I burned, and the non-DRM-protected MP3 files that will play through the Tivo.

Clearly, a better option is to purchase my music without any DRM on it. I can burn a disc if I want to (and I do make sure to have a backup of some type either way), but I don't have to jump through all those hoops to play my music where I want, when I want. The MP3 file format is so ubiquitous that I know it will play on any portable player, through all sorts of CD/DVD players and stereos, and through playback systems like the Tivo that stream the music on demand.

So... even if a consumer doesn't care about DRM today, I'd argue that they will. I can easily see a situation where a non-techy (say, my parents) get an iPod and enjoy the convenience of purchasing music through iTunes. Down the road, though, they'll have cheaper, more prevalent, and less-geeky solutions for playing their music somewhere other than that iPod.

Only THEN will they realize what the DRM has "cost" them... and they're unlikely to be in a position to do anything about it. The whole burn-then-rip two-step described above isn't something my parents would work out or stumble across.

They'd simply be locked in and stuck. And it will matter.

Technorati Tags: drm , mp3 , digital audio , ipod , itunes , tivo