I wasn’t irrecoverably disappointed, but I wasn’t blown out of the water.

The experience between a desktop and a tablet isn’t the same, and I think Windows 8 is trying to be everything to every device. It might have partially been the performance of the virtual machine I was running, but some of the gestures (dragging down from the top of the screen, exiting Metro apps, etc.) just weren’t intuitive with a mouse and keyboard. And yeah, you can switch back to Windows Explorer, but switching between two completely different modes shouldn’t even be necessary.

Much more conducive for touch instead of click.

I guess this comes down to the philosophy of differences in hardware – I’m not sold on the model of having one operating system for desktop and tablet. This is where I think Apple got it right with the breakdown between iOS and OS X. It’s a seamless enough experience, but they’re also different enough. And yes, the gap between those differences eventually needs to narrow, but the release cycle is doing that incrementally, not all at once.

That said, I’m excited about the potential for Windows 8 on a tablet. I’ve never used it on a tablet yet, but I can see things making a lot more sense in that form factor. I like Metro UI and I like Microsoft’s intentions, I just think they need to draw the line between desktop and tablet a little clearer.

Thoughts? Have you used Windows 8 on a tablet before?

The experience

Photo Credit: Paul Chin, Jr.

If you’re unfamiliar with the model, people pitched ideas on Friday night, then formed teams based on the ideas that were chosen to be developed. All during Saturday and Sunday, teams were hard at work making as much progress as possible, and that progress was shared to the judging panel on Sunday night when we picked a winner. A variety of speakers also gave talks throughout the weekend; mine was focused on my opinion of the correct way to go about doing a startup (touching on pitching, team, funding, and location).

Speaking was a blast, and I can say that as good of a time the judging process was, it was tough. There was no shortage of great ideas and no shortage of impressive executions, and while we ultimately had to narrow the field, my recommendation to everyone is to keep working on your idea, even if you didn’t get chosen or didn’t win.

So what does this mean for Norfolk?

For one, I was incredibly moved by their startup community. Most people wouldn’t initially associate technology entrepreneurs with Norfolk, Virginia, but I can wholeheartedly say that there’s tons of talent and passion. Even on opening night when people were pitching ideas, the energy and enthusiasm in the room was arguably higher than you’d see in Atlanta. There’s so much potential, and it was honestly a bit of an emotional experience for me seeing everyone come together.

And I know this is only the beginning. Drinks Downtown is looking to be an awesome way to bring the community together on a regular basis, a great coworking space exists in 757 Creative Space, and I’ve heard buzz about a second Start Norfolk. Not to mention that the awesome work that We Are Titans is doing proves both the need and opportunity for technology companies in the area. I get the feeling that I’ll be back soon.

Put on for yo’ city!

Wow, was I wrong.

Photo: Pleated Jeans

Fast-forward to late last week. I had a fascinating conversation with Georgia Tech’s Keith McGreggor about what Siri is beginning to do to the way we interact with devices. My initial thoughts were (and to a small degree still are) that it’s unnatural to talk to a phone for the purpose of voice commands. Granted, the same thing is essentially happening when you’re talking on the phone or on Skype, but in that case, you know that an actual person is on the other end.

But in the case of Siri, is there a person on the other end? We’re starting to see the personification of computing; you’re not talking to the “Voice Activated Command Module”, you’re talking to Siri. When the release first came out, I was a little confused as to why Apple didn’t rebrand Siri to something more Apple-esque, like “Assistant” or “Navigator”. But then I thought about the personal touch that “Siri” gives. There’s even a few people named Siri. It’s human, it’s natural, and it works.

To take it a step further, it’s really mind-blowing to think about what happens if (but more likely when) this voice interaction becomes not only natural and comfortable, but integrated with everything we do. Keith mentioned the idea of building Siri into Apple TV and being able to walk into the living room, sit down, and say “Let’s watch some football.” (I wouldn’t say that myself, but you get the point).

Even cooler would be to see this tie into an Internet of Things – walk into your kitchen, say “Huh, I’m feeling like some toast”, and have two slices of bread drop from the celling into a just-activated toaster. Slight joke, but the idea stands. When Siri opens up and becomes a platform, a medium for other devices, that’s where it gets big.

And we’re only at the beginning of the beginning.

Let’s circle back around later

When first setting up your account, you’re encouraged to set up “circles”: groups of people that you can use to control who sees what. A really cool UI powers the dragging and dropping of people into different circles…it feels familiar, but I can’t quite place it. You can add people to your circles and they can add you to their circles, but the person on the receiving end can’t see which circle they’ve been added to. It took me a while to fully grasp the level of mutualism; in this sense, it’s a lot more like Twitter than Facebook. It’s not zero sum – adding someone to a circle doesn’t require them to do the same with you.

Once circles are set up, entering profile information is pretty straightforward. Integration with your existing Google Profile is nice, and from here on out it’s essentially what would be expected of a standard social network.

Similarity to Facebook

It’s tough to describe functionality without using the word “Facebook”. The core of the app, especially the news feed, is very reminiscent of Facebook, but there are a few differences. With Facebook, segmentation of your friends is a hard-to-find afterthought, but in Plus, it’s one of the first things you do. Collaborative video chats (“Hangouts”) are something that Zuckerberg has yet to fully implement, but that’ll be changing soon, likely as a response to Plus. The user interface, although a little cleaned up, mimics Facebook in many ways, from the layout of a sidebar on the left to the indented format of comments. It almost reminds me of the Microsoft Store to Apple Store comparison.

A lot of things are awesome

Based on search queries and the potential for data collection with +1′ing, Google can have a much better idea of who someone is than Facebook does, and it’d be really cool to see some integration of that into how you’re connected to people. The fact that the Google header follows you around in Gmail, search, maps, etc. is also helpful.

But why could this be better?

Google does have a few advantages in terms of a userbase and ties with existing products, and is definitely better positioned to have a social network. But the timing’s way off. They’re putting up a brand-new silo right next to Facebook, and I’m not sure the segmentation will be a good thing. Photos are especially an issue – the inconvenience could be huge to have some photos on Facebook, some photos on Flickr, and now some photos on Plus.

And although it’s a small problem that’ll likely be taken care of in the future, there’s a significant delay between when you get a notification in Plus and when the email is sent. Not a huge deal, but it does throw you off when getting an email that’s notifying you of something that happened a few hours ago.

The bottom line

It’s a cool webapp. But when it comes down to the sandpaper, they’re not solving a real problem or filling a real need – they’re just trying to keep up with everyone else.

Windows 8 Start Menu

At AllThingsD’s D9 last week, Microsoft showed off a preview of Windows 8. Wow. It’s obviously a radical departure from previous versions of Windows, and is somewhat similar to what Mac OS X was to Mac OS 9. The UI is moving towards Windows Phone’s Metro UI, although the revealed screenshots of the new Start menu look more like a different implementation of Windows Media Center than an actual operating system. On the whole, I like where Microsoft’s heading. I’ve always been a fan of Metro, and even though it gives off a little bit of a bare, unfinished look, the emotional response of cleanliness is good.

I’m slightly concerned that this might be too big of a change, though.

I don’t want it to be. I really don’t.

But it all comes down to the ability for developers to adapt. And if such a heavy emphasis is being placed on touch, hardware has to be both ready to support Windows 8 and widespread enough to make it worth the investment. That brings us to the classic Apple argument – it may be a bit stale by now, but it’s true: they control their own hardware. If they want to migrate OS X over to a touch interface, it’s much easier than Microsoft having to wait around on manufacturers to catch up. Yes, there’s a legacy mode to run apps Windows 7-style, but the end goal shouldn’t have to be dependably held up by backwards compatibility that’s used more than the new features. However, I suppose the argument could be made that by working closely with OEMs, revealing early (as they did), and forcibly delivering by a certain date, the OEMs will be forced to keep up.

I certainly hope that’s the case.

What could have been better

Remind you of anything?

Boy, were they trying hard. Even down to individual elements, design inspiration from Apple was very obvious. Pricetags next to each machine looked very similar to the inclined plane-esque placards that used to grace the Apple Store (before the iPads), and the screens wrapping around the wall were probably the exact same dimensions as their upstairs counterpart. I could go on about the similarities – everywhere you look, the physical design screams Cupertino.

The music inside was also a little too loud; I couldn’t hear much outside of the blasting of Ke$ha. Hopefully that was just a little first-day overzealousness, but that extended past the decor. The employees were really aggressive in approaching people; walking in felt like being in a gauntlet of being asked how I’m doing, if I needed any help, or if I knew that “this computer is touchscreen!”. At the Apple Store, the employees are bombarded by the customers, but at the Microsoft Store, the customers are bombarded by the employees.

What they got right

Even if the idea was far from original, there’s an interesting twist on the wraparound wall displays: they’re actual screens, not just sheets advertising products. Information about different products is rotating marquee-style, and even cooler, Xboxes are connected in certain areas and can be played on the screens.

Two Microsoft Surfaces were also sitting out - if nothing else, this is the one element that makes the store unique. Most of the people that’ll come in from foot traffic will likely have never seen a Surface before, so at least for a while, it’ll be a good way to generate buzz.

Big picture

Over time, the idea of the store will come to settle with people, and if you’re genuinely looking to buy a PC, it’s one of the better environments for buying a PC that I’ve seen. I doubt it’ll convert many Mac users, but it’s a great option for the existing base of Windows fans who are itching to buy a new machine.

As of yesterday, Twitter’s rumored to go through with a $40-50 million acquisition of TweetDeck.

While this makes sense considering Twitter’s position on having more control over their third-party ecosystem, it’ll be interesting to see how they’ll handle the extreme split in user experience between TweetDeck and Twitter for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. As an idealistic user, I hope they’ll split the two clients into “Twitter for Mac” and “Twitter Pro for Mac”, although it’ll still be pretty disjointed – Twitter for Mac is only for one platform, and TweetDeck runs on both Windows and OS X. Not to mention how Twitter’ll feel about the dependency of Adobe AIR.

The rumor‘s also been thrown around that Twitter made the acquisition simply to shut down TweetDeck. If that ended up going through, that’d show a complete disregard for users, not to mention all the brands that have TweetDeck firmly integrated into their marketing processes. And that’s a pretty hefty purchase for the sole purpose of exercising dictator-like control. Is strict control of the platform really worth upwards of $50M?

Nonetheless, I wouldn’t take a crack at developing the next big Twitter client right now.

Most of the interface elements make perfect sense, but take a little time getting used to. Pinching columns out for an overhead view works great, but it’s not intuitively obvious. It’d be great to see some kind of overlay when first signing in that shows an example of the gesture. It’s the same problem that plagues Twitter for Mac and Twitter for iPad. They have some awesome three-finger gestures that work brilliantly, but they’re tucked away far too deep.

The inverted scrollbar is a little strange at first; most apps use the center of the bar to indicate your position, but TweetDeck uses the bottom of the bar to show where you are. And when you scroll up, the bar shortens instead of moving. Again, once you get used to it, it’s a great experience. I love the way that column headers are represented when viewing, though – the shadow of the notification light when viewing unread tweets looks really slick.

Performance is also vastly improved – even on my iPhone 3G, scrolling is smooth, and the app locks into your swipe between columns much better. No one enjoys highlighting a tweet when you’re intending to switch columns.

Aside from a few quirks, this app is much more polished than the previous iteration. Hit up the download!

iPhone location tracking

In a blowup that we’ve all heard about, iOS 4′s been discovered to store a file, consolidated.db, that contains latitude and longitude coordinates of its location history.  The issue’s hit the mainstream news, and a good amount of people are now freaking out that “Apple knows where I am”. It’s important to understand that the file is stored locally, not on Apple’s servers. Maybe I’ve been conditioned by the use of Foursquare and the like, but I don’t see a huge cause for concern. The lack of user consent is a little disconcerting, but as long as users act with responsibility in the security of their device, there shouldn’t be an opportunity for anyone to snatch the file. That means don’t jailbreak, install OpenSSH, and leave the default password.

iPhone 5 (4S) buzz building

It’s been pretty well-circulated that the iPhone 5 won’t be coming until after June, and if Reuters is anywhere near the mark, it looks like September is the magic month. The next-generation phone’s also being rumored to sport an A5 processor; BGR somehow picked up a T-Mobile test device which backs up the theory. Deetz on the naming scheme weren’t given, but I’d hope Apple continues with “iPhone 5″ for the sake of consistency, although my bets are on the rumored “iPhone 4S” based on the history of “3G” and “3GS”. Both are consistent in their own right, though, depending if you compare it to numerical progressions or past devices.

Apple sues Samsung…and vice versa

Apple’s suing Samsung based on allegations that TouchWiz has too many user interface similarities to iOS.  I’ve never used a Samsung device full-time, but I’m not sold on the similarities between the two platforms, especially when a lawsuit’s in play. The whole idea of skinning Android has never been something I’m fond of, but Apple’s taking the wrong approach in granularly comparing color schemes and icons. An OS shouldn’t be defined by textbook UI elements, but by the overall feeling that washes over the user when using the device. In that respect, TouchWiz can’t *touch* iOS; unfortunately, that “overall feeling” is extremely difficult to quantify. So let’s just sue each other.

Phat beats in the cloud

Reuters is at it yet again, claiming that Apple’s positioned to beat Google to market in rolling out a cloud music storage platform. Regardless of internal progress, I doubt Apple will announce anything too soon, even at WWDC. The scenario that makes the most sense to me would be an expansion of their typical September music event to include the unveiling of the iPhone 5/4S in conjunction with the music service. The race to 1.0 probably won’t be as huge of a deal as it’s being made out to be, though – both Apple and Google have a solid base of users, and each platform’s users will end up using the respective service independent of the other.

Thoughts? Nervously looking around and taking a hammer to your iPhone? Supporting Apple or Samsung in the series of lawsuits? Comment away!

After a pretty decent run in the portable video space, Cisco‘s finally admitting defeat to smartphones. They’ve just discontinued the Flip line, cutting a good 550 jobs. The entire purpose of the Flip was to be quick and portable, but now that cameras in phones have finally caught up, it’s losing in its own category. Bound to happen at some point.

Re-Kindle your love for cheaper gadgets

Really dying to get your hands on a Kindle, but short $25? Amazon’s running a promotion where Kindles will go on sale for $114 with banner ads and sponsored screensavers. It’s interesting to see the ad-supported model sneak into the hardware space, although it’s not too different with what usually happens with bloatware-loaded PCs. The potential for equivalent jailbreaking might be possible, as well; I’m sure that someone along the way will figure out how to disable the ads. Not that I’m condoning that or anything.

Sony settlement reached in a Hotz minute

As of March 31, Sony’s settled with George Hotz. As part of the terms, Hotz will have to remove all of his PS3-hacking shenanigans from the Internet, although he never claimed to support piracy. The full terms weren’t released, but I’m glad to see this finally come to an end. Let’s just move on and start pumping those dollars back into developing better products, instead of targeting those who could, if correctly channeled, be a huge asset to the community.

Windows on ARM

The idea of Windows running on ARM processors has been floating out there for a good while, but has just now been confirmed. The strategy from Microsoft’s end seems to be an effort to keep up with the onslaught of tablets in the market, but I’m not sold on that alone. Windows isn’t the answer for tablets – they need to find a happy medium between Windows Phone 7 and Windows 7 that works well specifically for a tablet form factor. Perhaps “Windows Tablet 7″?