This is really nice.

Having had the opportunity to play around with the device I think I’m going to hold on to my iPhone for the time being. The Droid is really nice but it’s simply not appreciably better than the iPhone therefore it’s hard to justify switching.

My first concern, having seen the Droid only in press photos, was that the build quality was suspect but I’m happy to report that those fears are unfounded. The Droid is solid and conveys a sense of quality when held in your hands. The slider is smooth and the touch screen is crisp.

The camera is one area where the Droid excels compared to the iPhone. While it does have some latency that could disrupt your ability to get a shot “in the moment”, the quality of the images more than makes up for this negative. The flash and picture controls, white balance and color effect, are nowhere to be found on the iPhone.

I am not so enthusiastic about the keyboard, for several reasons. First of all, I’m not a big fan of the iPhone virtual keyboard but I do appreciate how it can be reconfigured for the app, such as offering a different layout when in the email address field as opposed to the body text, and when spun in landscape mode the virtual keys are plenty big enough even for folks with big fingers like me. You really do get used to it.

The Droid keyboard will no doubt please many and also be subject to the “you’ll get used to it” clause, but there are several design elements I just don’t like. The keys are flat, reminiscent of the laser etched keys on the old Razr handset, and while they do offer some tactile feedback (and in all fairness the iPhone keyboard offers no tactile feedback) it still isn’t enough to comfortably type without looking at where your fingers are going. The spacebar key is too small, which makes no sense because there are two unused key positions on the lower right and lower left of the keyboard; certainly they could have made that space bar larger by moving the ALT key left and right (there are 2 ALT keys, one on each side).

I found the keyboard keys to be really small for my fingers, and ironically I discovered that my typing speed and accuracy were greatly improved using the Droid virtual keyboard. This may be a simple transition issue for me, coming off an iPhone, that my wife who uses a Blackberry and never got used to the iPhone keyboard doesn’t experience.

The Google App Market needs some work, and this is probably the single dominant reason why I would not switch off the iPhone just yet. My favorite apps (e.g. Evernote and Tweetie) were not available and while promised I have long ago learned to judge application offerings on what is available rather than what is promised to be delivered.

I also found it interesting that many of the featured apps in the Market were priced in € and UK£. This is probably not a big deal from the standpoint on handling the transaction but is it really too much to ask that the storefront merchandizes every app in USD$ for customers who are clearly entering it through a U.S. carrier?

Aside from a couple of annoying usability issues (I still can’t figure out how to wake the device without opening the slider) the Droid is nicely designed and well appointed. The build quality is impressive and it feels substantial, and perhaps most importantly my first impression of it as an actual phone are pretty good although I would have to use it for a couple of weeks to really get the gist of integration of phone features in the apps (e.g. click on a phone number in an email to make a call).

In the final equation, the Droid is impressive for a v1 handset but it’s not enough to make me switch… yet. The openness of the Android platform is a big strategic advantage for Google and handset partners, providing they don’t allow the carriers to dictate what the handset can and can’t do from an app standpoint, but if allowed to develop momentum I could see this putting real pressure on Apple even among the hardcore user base.

On Sunday, 92 percent of workers at Ford’s Kansas City Assembly Plant voted against proposed contract changes. The vote there came after a stormy meeting at nearby Winnetonka High School where UAW Vice President Bob King, head of the union’s national Ford section, made an appeal to workers to support the agreement, which was negotiated by the UAW and Ford earlier this month.

[From Ford workers in Sterling Heights reject concessions | detnews.com | The Detroit News]

The main issue that workers are objecting to is the no strike clause in the proposed agreement. This same clause was instrumental in securing the Chrysler takeover by Fiat, which the UAW now owns 55% of, and ensures that Fiat will not face union work stoppages until at least 2015.

This brings about an interesting question, can the UAW be both an owner of car companies and a representative of the employees at the same time? The entire UAW strategy to date has been to establish a common labor agreement across all U.S. car companies (no foreign company has a UAW plant except for the joint venture between GM and Toyota in Fremont, Nummi, and that is going to shut down, according to Toyota).

With the UAW ownership stakes in GM and Chrysler, the pattern agreement strategy appears to be thrown under the bus and if so would the labor agreements with GM and Chrysler put Ford, with no UAW ownership, at a competitive disadvantage? It’s not like this administration is going to do anything under the guise of antitrust given their complicity in the current state of affairs, but one has to wonder if this is ultimately an anticompetitive scheme set up by the UAW and government that will be applied against Ford in the name of leveling the field.

According to a new study, if HDDs continue to progress at their current pace, then in 2020 a two-disk, 2.5-inch disk drive will be capable of storing more than 14 TB and will cost about $40 (today, a typical 500 GB hard drive costs about $100). Although flash memories have also become popular - with advantages such as lower power consumption, faster read access time, and better mechanical reliability than HDDs - the cost per GB for flash memories is nearly 10 times that of HDDs. In addition, flash memory technology will reach technical limits that will prevent its continued scaling before 2020, keeping them from replacing HDDs.

[From What Comes After Hard Drives?]

As we look to a future with smart grids/cities, digital medical records, lifestreaming, and things we haven’t even thought of yet, the one constant is that we are overrunning our capability to store all the data that is being generated. I am not talking about the physical requirements for storage because we can simply keep building bigger storage arrays that constantly catchup to what our requirements are, but the problem that remains is overcoming the mechanical limitations of a hard drive in order to serve up the piece of data that is required when it’s required.

So there is a physical performance issue and most likely a schematic issue as we come to terms with the limitations of data storage models for accommodating 10, 50, 100x the amount of data that we deal with today. Just building cheaper bigger hard drives is not the solution, it helps but it’s not the primary problem that requires solving… data storage models, the digital detritus problem, and data performance are the problems I foresee.

With Thursday’s vote, the five-member panel began the process to move forward with the regulations announced last month by the agency’s chairman, Juilus Genachowski. His proposal would formally codify the FCC’s four existing principles, intended to prevent Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to certain content and services. He also proposed two additional principles: one to ensure providers do not discriminate between applications; and another to require Internet companies to disclose their network management practices to consumers.

[From On 5-0 vote, agency moves ahead in push to regulate Internet - TheHill.com]

If I am incorrect I would appreciate hearing about it, but to my knowledge all regulatory action to date involving the internet has been specifically targeted at commerce activities that are potentially fraudulent, data privacy (or lack thereof it would seem at times), technical aspects, and specific speech, such as SEC regulations on company disclosure. VoIP has been another focus of regulation but that would appear to be an extension of their traditional focus on telecommunications more so than Internet regulation.

I am a proponent of net neutrality but in the pit of my stomach I have a strong fear that now that the FCC has determined they can broadly regulate the relationship between internet technical service providers and content providers that they will have a reflexive desire to overreach much like the FTC did with their much maligned “guidelines” for bloggers and advertisers. There is one absolute truth about Washington D.C. and that is the desire for turf knows no bounds and once authority has been established it is fully exercised and rarely relinquished.

I simply hope that now that we have achieved what has long been desired with net neutrality that we won’t ultimately regret it.

Those who are not customers of Optimum Online or the newspaper - both owned by Bethpage-based Cablevision Systems Corp. - will have to pay a $5 weekly fee. However, nonpaying customers will have access to some of newsday.com’s information, including the home page, school closings, weather, obituaries, classified and entertainment listings. There also will be some limited access to Newsday stories.

[From Newsday.com moves to subscriber model]

In reality this is a lot of talk about something that will actually have very little impact on revenue because if you are a Newsday subscribers or a Cablevision cable customer you will have access to the Newsday.com site for no extra charge. Given that Newsday is concentrated on Long Island and Cablevision has a virtual lock on that region, what the online pricing plan is doing is not increasing revenue but defending revenue that is under assault by adding the online service as something extra subscribers get.

In the final analysis, this is exactly why it will fail. By creating a pricing plan that defends rather than attacks a market the company is conceding defeat in print and this strategy will have the effect of slowing audience growth online in the one segment that the paper requires, young people. I am willing to give Newsday and Cablevision some credit for being creative with a multichannel strategy that covers TV, print and online, but this pricing plan is a throwback to a subscription model that simply doesn’t work anymore.

The way it works is you install their iPhone, Android or Blackberry app (no signup required, just load the app) and when location services on the device is turned on you will get notifications of merchants offering coupons or promotions in your area. Merchants have to be signed up for the service in order for their promotions to run through the network but that’s not surprising.

From what I can gather the only time that mobiQpons gets paid is when a coupon is redeemed by a customer. This is good because it’s true performance based advertising but it has a potential downside if the merchant in question already has a pretty good online promotion capability, in which case advertising that would normally reach the customer through free channels, like email, will be shifted to the mobiQpons service in which case the merchant is paying not just for the value of the coupon but the fee to the network as well.

It is still a great convenience and I love the fact that the geolocation capabilities filters out the offers that are available to me based on my physical location. Despite the strength of the product and service offering, the key execution variable for mobiQpons will be their ability to promote their merchant partners and for their merchants to promote their mobiQpons offerings… I found out about the service not from a tech blog, press release or the tech press but because Sigonas Market emailed me about it as part of their normal customer outreach. I probably would not have taken the time to download and try out this app were it not for a merchant I already rely upon endorsing it.

Kimball is correct that he should be better defining his brand and proving his worth — that’s what we’ve been saying all along. But you can do that without insulting the riff raff, as well. You can do that while embracing the “bottom up” process. You can do that without being a total snob that has no time for the people who actually pay your salary. [From Cook's Illustrated Editor: I Wish All Those Amateurs Out There Would Just Shut Up | Techdirt]

The underlying issue that Kimball is pointing out is that the internet has become one great big !%$@$^ book club… everyone has to have an opinion about everything (don’t think I don’t realize the irony of ME writing THAT sentence). Kimball’s point is that real expertise is acquired through great effort, not just through the ability to peck away on the keyboard and hit publish, and that authority directly correlates to the relationship you can expect with your audience.

The second point that Kimball is right to make is that advertising has been the seed of destruction for magazines in the food space, but more broadly I would say across the board. Taken online the display advertising model deployed by the vast majority of publications is simply unsustainable and in the process they are destroying the delicate balance between content and advertising.

Case in point is the restyled Bon Appetit magazine, which has gotten really light on content and really heavy on advertising in all forms; if it takes you more than 15 minutes to read the last issue I would be very surprised, and color me shocked when advertiser products are rated “top 5″ out of, say, 7 tested products. It’s almost as bad as automotive magazines where no product is ever rated “don’t buy this piece of shit” because every possible product is being advertised in the magazine.

The fascination with lifestyle has also distorted Bon Appetit and alienated their core audience… who I cannot imagine are really that interested in celebrity chef interviews. The remake process for Bon Appetit probably resulted in a more intense discussion of what type of typefaces they would use than what type of content they would be providing their subscribers.

Cooks Illustrated goes into excruciating detail about food and how the process of preparing is affected by the chemistry of food. I have subscribed to this magazine for years and marvel at the lengths to which they will go to find the ideal process, ingredients, and tools, all the while challenging the conventional wisdom about what is the proper method. When it comes to presenting food expertise it is without question that serious foodies, professional and amateur alike, will agree that Kimball has earned his stripes in the expertise department.

Secondly, Cooks Illustrated does not have any advertising, it’s entirely content driven, and what that means is that Kimball’s interests are completely aligned with that of his readers. His is the only publication that I know of that actually has a “not recommended” category for product reviews, and they don’t hesitate on recommending products that are cheap grocery store staples if in fact they are the best ingredients based on taste.

Mike is right to point out that Kimball comes across as a petulant snob with nothing but disdain for food blogs and websites, but Mike fails to acknowledge the broader point that Kimball is making, which isn’t just about defining your brand, that the internet has devalued authority. This is a point I think we can all agree is an issue to be resolved (the measurement of authority).

Where we end up is at an interesting intersection triangulated at by both pieces, which is that the internet has not destroyed traditional publishing but rather exposes the vacuous nature of many established publishing brands. This leveling of the playing field has followed the path that many technology dependent industries have followed, which is that distribution and gatekeeping is increasingly not the dynamic that your business relies on but rather the ability to engage and sustain a valuable audience. Given Kimball’s resume and actual experience in building Cook’s Illustrated, I think he is exceptionally well qualified to opine on the state of affairs but like Mike I would appreciate a little more humility in the process.

Lastly, this is a very interesting discussion because with newspapers dead set on charging for online content we are going to see in realtime what the relationship between newspapers and readers really is.

There is also something primordial about art that centers on the vessel form. The earliest human artifacts found to date are vessels, often featuring decorations of some form and I never grow weary of vessels, whether pottery, wood, or glass. Though the days of relying on them for function is long past, I can still admire these pieces for the effort required to create them.

William Hunter is a Palos Verdes based artist who is exceptional in skill, a resume stretching back 25 years featuring numerous gallery and museum exhibitions.