TheG2.NET - Your guide to life in the Internet age.

XBOX Media Center, Kinect + Bing, and Smartglass pack quite the punch!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:47:00 +0000

Today on Tech News Today they were talking about smart TVs, the limits of their user interfaces/remote controls, and the ability to easily find content across multiple applications. They said the Apple and Google TV products had some issues, but I was surprised that nobody mentioned the XBOX with Bing search and Kinect voice controls. I have been using the XBOX 360 and a Windows 7 Home Theater PC (with Cable Card tuner) as my DVR of choice for over 4 years now and it still consistently meets or exceeds my expectations when it comes to having a "smart television":

CableCard+Centon multi-stream tuner records up to 4 full HD shows at once directly from Comcast
Integrated TV Guide (with free updates) makes searching and selecting TV shows very easy
XBOX 360 as a "Media Center Extender" lets me watch in multiple rooms
Multiple input options: standard remote control, XBOX wireless controller, or Kinect for hands free control of XBOX video and search features (no support yet in Media Center however)
New SmartGlass application for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone provides "2nd screen" content and some limited remote control options (works well with the new IE browser on XBOX)
Unlimited storage on HTPC and it can stream ripped DVDs, movies, music, and pictures too
Bing search provides exactly the content search feature that Tom was asking about (See video below)
Microsoft has recently added many of the popular online media services to XBOX Live (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Flixster, MTV, HBO, FOX, Slacker Radio, Vimeo, Youtube, etc)
XBOX Music and Video marketplace has a large selection of TV and Movies available for purchase (I have often used these if my DVR misses an episode)
Windows Media Center has a very high Wife/Girlfriend Acceptance Factor and requires very limited support once it is setup
The recently released Internet Explorer app on XBOX 360 works very well for watching TNT and other TWIT shows on the big screen :-P

For Tom's example of finding where to watch "The Following", I was able to use the Kinect and simply say "XBOX Bing The Following" to quickly find episodes on XFinity (Comcast's online Video On Demand), Hulu Plus, Xbox Video Marketplace, VUDU, and even directly from the Fox App (although this requires a Verizon or Dish Network subscription to work on XBOX for some reason). I recorded a video of the process and uploaded it to http://youtu.be/79nodciALrU (Best viewed in HD)

I will admit I usually use a normal remote control or XBOX controller with chat keyboard instead of Kinect, but there are times that using voice control can come in handy (and some of the games are still wicked cool). Sadly Windows 8 now requires that you purchase Media Center as a separate add-on from the Windows Store, but hopefully that means they will invest more resources into adding new features and better integrating it into the next XBOX console.

Windows 8 Preview at D9: An innovative blend of desktop, tablet, and phone designs.

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 06:22:00 +0000

Today was a pretty slow news day, up until a few interviews at the All Things Digital D9 conference started lighting up the social networks this afternoon. The conference opened yesterday with Actor Jane Lynch setting the mood, followed up with Eric Schmidt talking about privacy and the “Gang of four” platform war. Today there were interviews with the CEOs of Twitter, HP, Groupon, Adobe, Netflix, Square, and Alibaba among others. Near the end of the day Walt Mossberg interviewed Microsoft Windows President Steven Sinofsky and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, which is when my twitter feed started to explode with interesting comments.
Sadly there was no streaming video, but I was able to follow along a bit using the live blogging from Ina Fried for the Microsoft and Nokia interviews. The thing that really caught my eye was the video that Microsoft released that previews the new features in the next version of Windows, codenamed Windows 8:

In the video they showed a new Start screen that looks a lot like the start screen in Windows phone but has been optimized to work in a widescreen tablet format with larger live tiles and a more vivid color scheme. They also showed off new multitasking gestures for switching applications or snapping them to the side of the screen, as well as a touch based keyboard with Ctrl and arrow keys and support for a thumb based layout. Microsoft also demoed the software running on a wide range of computers: everything from tablets to slates to laptops and devices without touchscreens:
There are still a lot of questions to be answered about the new features in Windows 8 that were not answered by Steven Sinofsky at D9, but Microsoft is saving those for their new Build Windows developers conference later this September. Many .NET developers will be very interested in learning more about the new HTML5/JS development framework (myself included), and I may even cough up the money to go to the conference in person. I really hope that they release a public beta like they did with Windows 7, so that I can start playing around with it before it is released sometime in 2012/2013.
The interview with the CEO of Nokia was also very interesting, although I wish they would release the full uncut version instead of just the highlights. Like the HP interview there was a lot of interesting tidbits, but you lose sense of the context when there are lots of quick jumps in the video/audio. All in all it was a great conference, and followed previous years that showed features in Bing (D7 2009) and Windows 7 (D6 2008) (Video: one and two). Makes me anxious to see what will be previewed at D10 and beyond.
Update: Looks like there was more Windows 8 coverage over at Computex 2011 in Taipei today. Engadget has great coverage on their live blog, with pictures of ARM based netbooks and tablets and a few more technical details about Windows 8.

Girl Walks into a Bar, Hollywood goes to YouTube, and lots of other movie cliché's

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 06:47:00 +0000

I just watched "Hollywood's first feature-length film created specifically for the Internet" on YouTube tonight called Girl Walks into a Bar. It has a marginally interesting plot (but a weak ending), a surprising number of notable actors, lots of cheesy/over-reaching dialog, and is pretty racy in both visuals and subject matter. It is estimated to have cost $1M, was shot in 11 days about a year ago (March 2010), and had over 250,000 views in it’s first weekend. This supposedly means it had more viewers than “some of the top 10 biggest grossers” at the box office that week, but it was free and had an interesting preview picture of a nude ping-pong bar, so I’m actually surprised it didn’t have even more views.

My recommendation would usually be "wait until it hits Netflix" so I'm not quite sure what to say in this case :-P It is labeled as an “Intelligent, witty movie”, but to me came off as trying to be a bit like Sin City without any fight scenes or Jessica Alba (although Alexis Bledel did play a minor role). It is currently available at the YouTube Screening Room, but only in the USA and is sponsored by Lexus (Six 15 second ad spots in the 80 min video) so at least you don't have to pay 8 bucks to go see it.

eBay apps highlight differences between Windows Phone 7, iPhone, Blackberry, and Android UI

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:59:00 +0000

Windows Phone 7 devices are officially on their way now, and the new tiles and hubs User Interface has a lot of people talking (good and bad). I’ve been working on an app for about a month now (more info soon at phrasememe.com or follow on twitter) and have gotten to play around with the device and have to say it does seem to flow pretty well. It is interesting to compare and contrast the approaches used when designing for Windows Phone7 vs iPhone, Blackberry, or Android. A great example of this is comparing the eBay application for different platforms.

The eBay application for Windows Phone 7 was added to the Zune marketplace today and features many of the new UI design patterns (Tiles, panorama, pivots, user customizations) and phone features (Messaging, real-time notifications, back button).

The iPhone eBay application has all the same features, and while it strikes me as a bit more polished than the WP7 version I do prefer the web style navigation in WP7 vs the various buttons/tabs used to navigate around the iPhone apps. Once you start using the hardware back/search buttons and Appbar icons you can easily navigate around any application on the Windows Phone 7 because things are very consistent.

The Android eBay application also has the same features, but looks a bit clunky, which is how I feel about most Java based user interfaces.

While the Blackberry application has most of the same features, the UI is designed to be used by the trackball or trackpad so it looks a bit different. It is still very functional, but I like the touch optimized UI better.

It also is interesting to look at the eBay iPad application and the Silverlight based eBay Simple Lister application for PC/Macs. They do a pretty good job of highlighting the strengths of each platform and are a great way to evaluate pros/cons of each. With the iPad you can really see why Live Tiles make sense over a “Sea of app icons”. I guess it could be worse. :-P

Anyway, I am excited to see more competition in the wireless space, as it will keep everyone innovating and creating better products.

Windows Phone 7 = Pocket-Xbox!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:44:00 +0000

I wasn’t going to post tonight, but Scott Guthrie said I had to, so here goes. You probably have figure out by now that smart phones are trying to replace all of the basic computer usage scenarios in our lives. Calculator… check, Music player… check, GPS Navigation… check, Recording studio… check. Not to mention more web browsing, social networking, and geo-location than you can shake a stick at! One area that I feel that phones have been lacking is hardcore gaming. Sure there are plenty of casual games (and fart apps), but give a 12 year old the choice between an iPhone and a PSP or Nintendo DS and you will quickly find out which one is the real gaming platform.

I think Microsoft has a chance to change this with their upcoming Windows Phone 7 line-up. The new phone will allow game developers to use the xna platform, which currently powers home-brew and indie games on xbox and windows, to easily build 3D games that would make an iPhone developer blush with envy. Microsoft sees this as one of their advantages and they already have more than a dozen big gaming titles scheduled for release with the launch of Windows Phone 7 later this year. Basically they want people to think of Windows Phone 7 as an xbox that fits in your pocket.

Not to be left behind… I plan on jumping on the mobile-phone-gaming-band-wagon myself in the near future. While I will not be creating a blockbuster 3D game, I will be exploring the world of social games that you can play using your phone with your real friends in real life, so stay tuned if you want more details.

Oh, and one side note: I have started using Google Buzz as a way of sharing videos and quick links that I find while browsing the web or my Google Reader feeds. Basically if something is hehe or haha funny it will probably show up on my buzz feed, where as if it is LOL or OMG funny I will still try and create a post here on my blog. If you want to see all of the things that I post you can follow me on Buzz by searching for Greg Bray: there are only 3 of us, and I am the funny (looking) one. :-P

Enjoy!

Natural User Interfaces on Mobile and Desktop Computers

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:34:00 +0000

Anyone who has an iPhone or Android handset can tell you that the standard method of using a keyboard and mouse for interacting with a computer is starting to be replaced with more natural and intuitive interactions. The iPhone has popularized the pinch-and-zoom and other finger based gestures that are commonly used on multi-touch devices, and Android has done a lot of work enabling voice based input to prevent having to enter text manually into the phone. Many smart phones use voice or touch for creating Natural User Interfaces on hand-held devices, but the transition to NUI in your home or office computer has been much, much slower.
On desktop and workstations I think that we won’t ever fully replace the keyboard and mouse, as they have proven to be highly configurable input devices with much better accuracy and precision and much lower cost than any alternatives. Over time though there are many cases where using speech or touch on a device larger than a phone makes sense. Microsoft started initially with their Surface device (aka the $10,000 coffee table), and has taken all that experience and added full multi-touch support to Windows 7 and Silverlight (when run on Windows 7).
It will take some time for the hardware to come down in price and be available in low-end consumer devices, but already you can find reasonably priced multi-touch desktop computers such as the HP TouchSmart line of all-in-one or laptop computers. These are designed to be used in a kitchen or as part of an interactive display in hotels and businesses where using a keyboard and mouse is not very effective. Microsoft hopes that lots of companies will start using these to attract customers or extend their brands, something that the Hard Rock Cafe has already done quite well.
Besides the hardware, another major factor holding back NUI is the ability for developers to create usable interfaces that compel users to let go of the keyboard and mouse and start using their fingers/voice instead. If you are a software developer, a UI designer, or just interested in seeing where human-computer interactions are heading I highly suggest watching this video from MIX 2010 about designing NUI on Windows. There also is a shorter follow up video on Coding4Fun where Brian Peek interviews NUI expert Joshua Blake.

Laser tracker to kill Mosquitoes and help prevent malaria

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:04:00 +0000

Using lasers to kill Mosquitoes. Wicked cool!

Google Chrome is WICKED FAST!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:25:00 +0000

Seriously... if you haven't tried it get go download it right now (preferably the latest beta).

Hollywood Green-Screens and Disney Copy-and-Paste!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:14:00 +0000

Just a reminder to not believe everything that you see. Here is a video about Hollywood use of green screens on popular tv shows.

The lies don’t stop there though, take a look at Disney’s blatant use of copy-and-paste :-P

Analog Computers are Wicked Cool!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 22:45:00 +0000

I spent some time this afternoon clearing out my bookmarks and found a Channel 9 video with Brian Beckman talking about his history with computers and the history of analog computing. The most interesting part was the links to some old training films that show the different mechanisms used to create analog computers to allow navy ships to compute bomb trajectories in real time. I grew up in an era of integrated circuits and TI-89 calculators, but it is absolutely fascinating to see how mechanical parts can be used to create multipliers, integrators, and differentials that can be combined to instantly calculate the launch angle and speed required to hit a given target. The videos come in Part 1 and Part 2 with each being about 20 minutes long and highly recommended. Check it out!

Anders Hejlsberg at TechDays 2010 in Belgium: Trends and future directions in programming languages

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 21:36:00 +0000

I watched a great talk by Anders Hejlsberg at TechDays 2010 today about how programming has evolved since he first created Turbo Pascal back in the 1980s. It is a bit long (1 Hour 9 Minutes) but it covers moving from assembly to managed code, the merging of dynamic/static/functional/declarative programming models, and new tools for tackling concurrent programming. Check it out:

AMD is releasing a dozen cores on a single CPU… now what to do with them?

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:14:00 +0000

We have all heard that multi-core computing is the way of the future, but with AMD announcing that production of their 8- and 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors are underway it won’t be long before you can have access to some very serious computing power all from a single server. In fact, AMD has a contest right now asking what would you do with 48 Cores on your server, which piqued my interest and got me thinking about the possibilities. Most general purpose computing can only utilize a few cores at a time, so aside from running a massive database/web server or consolidating a few dozen virtual servers into one physical machine it is difficult to think up a use case for the 105.6GHz of raw computation that would be available from 4x12 core CPUs. Even altruistic ideas like setting up thin-client learning environments for starving kids in Ethiopia don’t really fit very well, as that problem is much better addressed by other means (not to mention CPUs don’t taste very good :-P).

If you ask me, that kind of power is best displayed the same way it was in 1997 when Deep Blue won a chess game against a reigning world champion (Garry Kasparov). Deep Blue ended up losing 4-2 overall, but it still showed that computers were capable of completing head-to-head with a formable human opponent. Deep Blue was essentially a massively parallel computer with 30x120MHz nodes and 480 special “chess chips” that allowed it to evaluate 200 million positions a second and find the best move by brute force. Now days Chess is a well studied game with even mobile phones being able to compete at the grandmaster level.

I was never much of a chess player, but I have spent a fair amount of time working on computer software for Texas Holdem, which has a much more complex game theory with lots of unknowns and many different playing styles. I think that poker will be the next big arena for computer vs human competition, and while computers are already used for collecting and analyzing player poker hands and playing virtual tournaments they still are not quite up to the task of competing with human players.

With 48 cores though you would have the ability to run many sub-process that could make predictions and, once validated, be used to profile a player and quickly create an optimal offensive strategy for each hand. A full poker table may have up to 12 players, but considering there are 4 cores for each player, that seems like ample computing power to create neuro-networks that model each player to try and predict their next move. Each network is independent, and the four channels of DDR-3 for each AMD Opteron processor should give great bandwidth throughput. I have already been able to evaluate in excess of 20,000,000 hands per second on a basic quad core system, so the power of 48 cores is simply the next logical step!

Microsoft PhotoSynth: 2500 square feet of deliciousness!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:58:00 +0000

About 7 or 8 months ago one of my very good friends started his own Ice Cream and Coffee shop in Park City Utah. Ever since then I have been wanting to create a PhotoSynth of the shop to help drum up business and see how the process works. PhotoSynths have recently been incorporated into the Silverlight version of Bing maps, so you can literally go from a satellite view to bird eye view all the way down to a synth of someone’s living room. This weekend I finally went up to Yellow Snow Ice Cream and Coffee and took over 700 photos to turn them into a PhotoSynth. I think the results are pretty good actually! Check it out:

2010: The year of the eReader?

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:59:00 +0000

The 2010 Consumer Electronics Show is over now, but there were some pretty cool devices on display (best of CES awards). While many people are gawking at Google’s Nexus One phone or Apple’s tablet pc, I see eReaders as coming into their own this year as the technology matures, the prices go down, and more content becomes available. I almost bought one for Christmas, but just didn’t feel that they were quite ready yet (Non-color displays, limited books, no web browser, etc).

Today on channel9 there was an interview with Ray Kurzweil, who has been working on electronic reader technology for a long time now and is pretty good at predicting where technology will take us in the future. His company is releasing an eReader platform, but instead of focusing on the hardware they instead built software and algorithms that utilize existing hardware to provide a great electronic reading format. It is based on XPS (Microsoft’s competitor to PDFs) and can be used to merge audio, video, and interactive content into a electronic book format. The Blio software is set to be released in February, but I highly suggest checking out this video to see what’s coming:

Nova video about evolution, genetics, and nature

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:51:00 +0000

I had the day off from work today and decided to catch up on some of the TV shows recorded on my DVR. There was a new Nova episode called What Darwin Never Knew that was 2 hours long, but it really did a good job at covering Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as the advances that have been made in the last 150 years from analyzing DNA, genes, and “switches” (I believe this refers to the Epigenome). Anyone interested in science, genetics, or nature should really enjoy this episode. I also couldn’t help but make correlations with many computer science topics (flow control statements for one) and was tickled pink when the final segment talked about using computers to statistically determine what makes humans different from other species. I highly recommend watching the full video online here:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1372073556

Computer Science at the University of Utah: a look back at team software projects

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:30:00 +0000

Joel Spolsky wrote a piece today about Capstone projects and time management for Computer Science students and the new UCOSP program to help get undergraduates more involved in open source projects. While I completely agree with the inefficiency of long term deadlines and the UCOSP program sounds great, I feel like I need to write a bit to defend my recently acquired bachelors degree from a top 50 ranked university. About 18 months ago I graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in Computer Engineering (CE), which is basically a combination of Computer Science (CS) and Electrical Engineering (EE). It took 6 years to complete (also worked part time), and during that time I was exposed to many different programming languages (Scheme, Java, C, C++, C#, SQL) and a diverse array of subjects ranging from Survey of Jazz and the History Rock and Roll to Discrete Mathematics and, yes, Linear Algebra. While not all of the coursework was directly related to real-world work conditions I firmly believe that the mix of theory and practice made me well prepared to work in software development anywhere from embedded systems to “cloud computing”.

While other universities may not emphasize team programming, many of the CS faculty at the University of Utah tried to simulate real-world situations as often as possible. The Team Software Engineering class that I took from Robert Kessler in spring 2006 was my first experience solving a non-trivial problem using Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server. In that class teams used source control and project tracking to design and create a location aware communication library for PDAs, laptops and desktops using WiFi and IP network rule-based location detection. I also learned a lot about MSDN, web services, the software development process, and systems integration, and it was probably one of my favorite classes. The courses have changed a lot since I took them, but it is my understanding that the concept of building software in teams using real tools is still very much a part of getting a CS or CE degree at the University of Utah.

When it came time to complete my degree I had the option to do a theses or a personal project, but like most students I ended up doing a team based capstone project in cooperation with industry sponsors instead. CS students take a semester long Software Engineering Laboratory class in which they submit bids for projects sponsored by local companies. For the CE capstone experience students can team up with EE students to be part of the Engineering Clinic Program. Both projects start with a semester long class dedicated to project planning with a faculty advisor and improving professional written and verbal communication skills by working with the CLEAR group from the College of Humanities. The Engineering Clinic then has a team of 4-6 students spend a full 2 semesters working with an industry sponsor to solve a real world problem using real world tools. The project culminates in a 15 minute presentation for each student at the ECE Open house and a team written paper to be submitted to the IEEE student paper contest. The team that I worked with had a Google Code project site and even ended up presenting at the 2008 Flash Memory Conference in Santa Clara, CA.

The CS department also has an Industry Forum class that is “designed to expose students to topics that are not discussed in depth as part of the normal curriculum, but that are likely to be important after they graduate.” Each week they bring in speakers from software development companies or large industry players to help prepare graduates for the real world. They also have the Organick Lecture Series and various Colloquiums that bring in distinguished members of the computer science community. While these classes and events are not part of the normal curriculum, most ambitious students will recognize their value and attend as many as they can.

To summarize, during my 6 years at the U of U I can think of at least 4 significant team based projects that helped introduce me to standard software development techniques such as system design, source control, project management, team collaboration, and end user documentation. Some classes such as team software engineering or database systems provided the infrastructure for students to use (IE.. TFS, SVN, Oracle, Wiki, File server, Virtual Machines, etc) but others took a DIY approach and let students choose which technologies they wanted to use. I gravitated towards DotNetNuke, SVN, and Google Code, but I would have jumped at the chance to use hosted products like FogBugz if cost and implementation were not prohibitive. Also there was a very large emphasis placed on written and verbal communication skills, for which I will be eternally grateful! The more time and energy that you put into the education, the more you are likely to get out of it, but at the University of Utah there is ample opportunity to get a world class Computer Science education.

IronPython Texas Holdem Poker Spreadsheet and other .NET Poker applications

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:04:00 +0000

Earlier this year I created a Monte Carlo Texas Holdem Simulator using an IronPython powered spreadsheet in Resolver One. The main goals were to learn IronPython, test how well it worked for creating complex spreadsheets, and enter a few of those spreadsheets into the Resolver One competition. Well I can honestly say that I exceeded even my own expectations on all three accounts, and it didn’t stop there either. After learning IronPython I started using it for the occasional random “Hey could you ...” tasks that get assigned to me at work, and I found a few other interesting uses for Resolver One as well.
I also found that I really like coding contests! After the Resolver One competition ended, I came across another .NET coding contest sponsored by the International .NET Association (INETA) that was trying to promote reusable components from various vendors. I submitted Windows Form and Windows Mobile versions of the Texas Holdem hand evaluator, along with a short video clearly showing why my younger brother is a professional radio DJ and I am not :-P I didn’t have enough time to get everything that I wanted to into the new versions, but it was still enough to get an honorable mention and score a few free licenses for .NET components from the sponsors.
Shortly after the INETA contest, I found a Silverlight contest sponsored by Telerik. Since I learned IronPython in the Resolver One contest I figured that this was a great excuse to spend a week or two learning Silverlight, WPF, and XAML. While I didn’t end up winning the contest, I did get a license for their Silverlight controls and was able to create a pretty cool Silverlight 3.0 Texas Holdem Monte Carlo simulator that runs entirely in the browser. I also organized all the source code and various versions of the application into one website for all your Poker needs.
I have had a few people ask about how to modify the poker spreadsheet for different purposes, such as analyzing the outcome for specific hand groups or being able to include multiple hands in the player’s pocket card set. The original spreadsheet was designed to show the hands in a specific layout so it is not very easy to customize. Instead I made a new spreadsheet that uses a standard column layout and lets you enter hands using the Hand Query language that is integrated into the C# HandEvaluator library. This new spreadsheet lets you customize the opponent hands and allows you to define multiple hands for the player (ie: What would my odds be if I had AK offsuit or AQ offsuit?). It also lets you specify the number of trials to run for each Monte Carlo simulation and is smart enough to enumerate the cards if you specify more trials than it would take to go through all possible board cards.

If you want to try out the new poker spreadsheet you can download it from the Resolver Exchange. The free player license for Resolver One will let you open and run the spreadsheet, but you will need a commercial license or research license if you want to make any changes to the code. I would like to add multi-threading and a hand win type breakdown table, but there is another coding contest deadline coming up, so I have to work on another project for a little while :-P
Enjoy!

Hi-Def video from the edge of space (Motion sickness bag not included)

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:16:00 +0000

High altitude balloons have been used to perform experiments and collect data from the earth's stratosphere for over 200 years now, but recently with the availability of cheap consumer electronics some universities and amateur radio groups have started using them to take pictures or videos at "near space" altitudes. For about $150 you can assemble a balloon, prepaid cell phone with GPS, and a used camera to take some pretty cool pictures from pretty high up. If you want better tracking and the ability to shoot video you can spend a bit more to get some truly amazing pictures and awesome videos, not to mention gobs of data that would make even the Mythbusters jealous.

Some balloon projects use multiple cameras so that they can take pictures both downwards towards the ground and sideways to see the curvature of the earth. Last month the Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio group launched their BEAR-4 balloon with an Hi-Def camera. They got over 4 hours worth of wicked cool video, even though the camera was spinning like a top over Canada half the time. Check out the highlights:

The only thing cooler than seeing one of these things rise and then drop from the sky would be to see the Entry, Descent and Landing of a rover on Mars :-P

Microsoft Translator throws it’s hat into the ring!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:54:00 +0000

Microsoft is stepping up their game in the translation market with the new Microsoft Translator service. While it does not have the community feedback system like the Google Translator Toolkit, it does offer the ability to translate documents directly in Microsoft Word or a webpage in Internet Explorer 8 and display the documents side by side. The JavaScript widget also lets you embed the translator directly onto a webpage so that users can view the content in different languages. Checkout this short video from Office Casual that outlines the new features. As a plus, it includes silly hats!

How to be number one: Make people happy, Make it pretty, Make it cool

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:58:00 +0000

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are just a few of our "inalienable rights”, but if you are anything like me then you probably focus the majority of your time on pursuing happiness while letting your elected officials manage your liberties and your subconsciousness manage keeping you alive. If you are an entrepreneur or master of marketing then you might have come to realize that the success of your product may be directly related to the happiness that it subconsciously brings to your users. No matter how far we have evolved, we are still but simple creatures.

Today Joel Spolsky released a video of his talk at the 2008 Business of Software conference, in which he discusses what it takes to become a market leader. He recognizes that it takes more than simple technical superiority to become number one, which is an issue that has baffled me many times. I personally dislike the iPhone, but I do have to admit that Apple does a very good job at paying attention to all the little details that make the overall use of a device more appealing to their users (thereby Apple-ing the user :-P). By spending extra time on the aethstetics and appearance of a device and building an aura “coolness” that the community associates with them Apple is able to consistently deliver products that become market leaders even if there are other devices with more power for less price. The video of the talk is about 46 minutes and is a great example of how to keep people interested during a long presentation:

The 2009 Business of Software conference is coming up on November 9th and I really wish that I could go if only to see Don Norman’s talk. He wrote The Design of Everyday Things, which is an excellent book about the functional and visual importance of design that I would highly recommend to anyone designing a building, writing software, or trying to create the next cool gizmo. Reading a book that was written in 1988 but still very applicable in the age of Web 2.0 gave me a new respect for the design process. He also has other books on the topic of design, and I would love to hear his advice applied directly to the design of software.

Laziness, Google-Apple-AT&T respond to the FCC, and heartburn in space!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:48:00 +0000

I've been pretty non-productive at work these last two days and have spent most of my time cleaning, day dreaming, playing with a new phone, setting up mouse traps, or getting lost in the interwebs. This tends to happen every once in a while, where I just can't seem to concentrate or get anything done (polar opposite from the 12-24 hour cram sessions). Usually after a day or two it goes away, or I start feeling depressed about not getting anything done and start working again (laziness can cause depression for a work-a-holic). My hope is that a round of golf, a good bike ride, and some quality time with friends/family this weekend will cure me, otherwise I might need some help to get me focused.

I wouldn't say that these last few days were a complete waste though, as I do now have a wicked new phone all customized, and I am sure that mouse in the office will have packed his bags and left come Monday morning. I also read up on the Google-Apple-AT&T issue regarding the rejection of the Google Voice app from the iPhone app store. The FCC thought that AT&T, exclusive licensed provider of the iPhone in the US market, may have had a bit of a hand in the decision, but now that all the details are out it sounds like Apple acted alone and that the application hasn't officially been rejected yet. This kind of reminds me of the post mortem datacenter reports and reading through each company's filings with the FCC is quite fascinating.

Or if that doesn't float your boat, check out this video of an Astronaut playing around with water, air bubbles, and Alka-Seltzer in space. Either way you are bound to learn something new!

Farewell Vonage... Hello RingCentral!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:14:00 +0000

The company that I work for has been a Vonage customer for almost 2 years now (ALMOST!), and while we never had any complaints with the service, it really isn't designed very well for a growing small business like ours. I would still probably recommend it for personal VOIP or single phone line (their ATA adapter with built in Caller ID is top notch and the website is pretty easy to use), but if you want more business features I would recommend looking at www.RingCentral.com instead. They offer features such as an Auto-Attendant (i.e.... press 1 for Sales or 2 for Support...), an optional PC based call controller for answering/forwarding calls, hold music, extensions on toll free or local lines, custom ring schedules (business hours, after hours, Morning/Afternoon shifts), Company Directory, and a lot more advanced options regarding how, when, and where each phone line and extension rings.
So if you are looking to setup a new phone system for a small business, save yourself some time and money and go with RingCentral from the get go. We started with two Vonage lines, expanded to three, and then finally decided to switched over to RingCentral when we got our fourth line. It then took almost 3 weeks and 3 phone calls to port the numbers over from Vonage to Ring Central (Vonage had to manually remove the numbers from their database...) and it cost us $160 to cancel the Vonage account because we hadn't quite reached the end of our 2 year contract yet.
For more info on how RingCentral works check out this video:

Next up: Getting my RingCentral extension to work with Google Voice :-P

SIGGRAPH 2009: New displays on display!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:04:00 +0000

The 2009 SIGGRAPH conference is going on this week in New Orleans and there are a lot of cool audio-visual and input technologies being demonstrated. The most interesting ones to me are still very early on in their research stage, but they do give a gimps at the type of human-computer interactions that we might see become more common over the next decade or so. The MIT Technology Review has covered 5 interesting user interfaces and displays being shown this year at SIGGRAPH. My favorite is the Hyper-Realistic Virtual Reality system called Virtualization Gate. Check it out:

Virtualization Gate: Siggraph 2009 Emerging Technologies
by InriaGrImage

It uses cameras and a green screen to create an immersive 3d environment that a user can interact with. The technology is still very much in its infancy and requires a lot of computer power to make the whole thing work, but the same thing was true for facial recognition, full body gestures, and motion capture, which will soon make their way into the XBOX using a simple webcam codenamed Project Natal. God bless Moore's law!

Photo Stop Motion Video: I'm rooting for the wolf!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:52:00 +0000

I love stop animation videos. If you haven't ever seen a stop animation video before, there are plenty of great examples on YouTube. Stop motion has been around for a while, and it is basically a digital version of the flip books that we use to make as kids. A new variant is the photo stop motion video, which uses 3x5 prints laid out in an expansive workspace to give a timeline of the story. I first saw this technique in a great video by Takeuchi Taijin posted on a friend's shared feed in Google Reader. The video is called "A Wolf Loves Pork", Check it out:

This is a cool new twist to stop motion videos, and one that the Olympus camera maker thought would make a great marketing video. Both are good videos, but I still like the wolf story better.

Enjoy!

Data center issues: Now is a good time for a pre-postmortem review!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Bray) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:20:00 +0000

In the past week there have been a handful of significant issues at a few large datacenters, including an 11 hour outage at Authorize.NET that left thousands of websites unable to process credit card transactions. The company that I work for narrowly missed the 45 minute outage at Rackspace, but it looks like Justin Timberlake wasn’t quite so lucky:

Since it is my job to make sure that the servers that run our software stay online as much as possible, I enjoy reading about problems with hosting providers and making sure that I would know what to do to if/when it happens to us. The new cloud services offered by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft aim to give everyone the scale-ability and reliability that use to only be available to large companies with thousands of servers, But these new computing services are still in their infancy and have had more than their fair share of down time recently as well.

I very much enjoyed reading Dyn Inc’s analysis of the Authorized.Net outage, as it gave a good mix of the gory details of the failure and the best practice techniques that could be used to prevent or mitigate this type of extended outage from occurring. Usually you have to learn these kinds of things first hand, having gotten burned by it once and swearing to never let it happen again. Instead I prefer to try and learn from other people’s mistakes, as you usually spend much less time in the hospital that way!