HiTechEnergy

Back to writing

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It's been a while since I posted anything on this blog. Time has been scarce. But I did get around to some long form writing for my current employer - a white paper on the esoteric technology of Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS). Check out the paper at this link.

Competitive Strategy and the Growth-share Matrix

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Many of us are familiar with the BCG growth-share matrix used for product portfolio analysis. One shortcoming of the growth-share matrix is that it does not directly account for moves by the competition. And, that may may lead one to the wrong conclusion regarding a product in the portfolio.

Take for example a product that fits the definition of cash-cow. I.e. it is a product in a mature segment, throwing off cash and as per the matrix requiring minimal investment. The result - that a firm can harvest the cash-cow with minimal investment - only really holds if the competition doesn't rock the boat. If one of the competitors were to disproportionately invest in its product in the segment, the dynamic would change.

One dynamic of particular interest is where the dominant player in the product segment choses to increase investment even though its product in the segment is already a cash-cow. Since the player is already a dominant player, a small increase in investment (as a percentage of revenue) translates to a high dollar investment in the product, relative to the competition. This should have the effect of shrinking the market share of the smallest competitors, perhaps even driving them out of the market, since they can't keep up with the dominant players' investments. It should also force the not-so-small players to decide if they want to match the dominant players investment or ready the product for divestment - hopefully before it turns into a dog.

A dominant player ought to be interested in such an increase in investment, if the investment has the potential for a profit increase, greater than the incremental investment. Such a disproportionate increase in profit is possible, even likely, if some players in the segment teeter around the break-even point or have had problems with execution.

The general business literature that I have studied in business school does not treat this topic in much depth. However, the problem seems important enough that somebody ought to have studied it in detail. Anybody have pointers to such relevant research?

A rant on product architecture

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

There are any number of reason's for a technology product's architecture to be considered important. Long-term maintenance, performance, extensibility all come to mind when one thinks of "architecture". However, one reason that is not well understood and generally not well articulated is "product survivability".

In most technology companies, the average lifetime of a product that makes it to market is longer than the average tenure of the product's developers. This is especially true for enterprise (including service provider) oriented products (as opposed to those targeted at customers). Typically, the firms that make enterprise oriented products are themselves large enterprises. And large enterprises have attrition, re-orgs and new grad hires. Thus large technology companies making enterprise products have a dynamic where people float in and out of the product, but the architecture of the product remains largely constant.

Unfortunately most commercial products retain their original architecture for a long time. This makes sense because once a product is commercially deployed, the risk of revamping the product and hence hindering the revenue stream is considered too high. So if the original architecture of a product is not up-to-snuff, the product is forever crippled - nobody dares to mess with it.

When the next product refresh cycle comes around, and invariably there is one, the general consensus amongst those who have knowledge of the product is that "the product's architecture is broken". So of-course there is a need for a new product architecture which will of-course solve the problems of the old architecture.

Thus begins the mad scramble to put a new team together, develop a business case, obtain funding and so on and so forth. Then there is the competition which is of-course pulling ahead at great speed and defining a new product category that threatens revenues from the old product. The new architecture needs to be hastened for "time to market" reasons. Must-dos become nice-to haves, and nice-to haves become roadmap items.

Most of this one can learn to live with. But too often the founding principles of the new-architecture are themselves compromised. The new-architecure ends up no-better than the old-architecture. It merely powers a different product. And the cycle begins again.

A sane architecture is needed if there is any hope of breaking this cycle - i.e. if there is any hope of achieving "product survivability" across more than one generation of a product. People at large technology companies will float in and out of products. But the people who are currently working on the product will have no shot at improving it significantly if the basic architecture is not sane. They will spend their time chasing irreproducible bugs and tracking the severity-1 bug report rate in nice bar charts. The product will remain not-so-nice.

Such is life, I suppose. Unless you have somebody insane enough on your product to force a sane architecture. It's been known to happen.

Marketing enterprise products - impressions from RSA 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Last week I attended the RSA conference - a security focused trade-show - in San Francisco. There were upwards of 300 security vendors at the show, including several tens who sell network security gear - firewalls, intrusion prevention systems and the like. Each vendor was obviously on a quest to differentiate itself relative to the competition, at the conference.

Unfortunately all of the vendors in a category tend to follow the same industry analysts - e.g. Gartner, IDC - and talk to the similar customers - e.g. Fortune-500 companies for enterprise focused products. As a result, the vendors receive roughly the same input. And since they all want to be leaders [sic] in their market segment, the vendors market themselves as the best positioned along the axes that the analysts and the big enterprises have deemed important.

The end-result is that all the vendors in a market segment tend to sound the same. For network security products, all the vendors at the show spoke to virtually the same points - centralized policy, visibility into applications, high performance etc. There was no way for even an informed, but unbiased, person to tell the difference between these vendors based on the top-level product marketing message alone.

Few vendors were brave enough to proclaim themselves non-leaders. There are plenty of products that can profitably cater to a specific niche, and this is true of network security products as well. However, I barely noticed any vendor staking a claim to the niche role.

About the only strategy used that seemed to cut some ice with the audience was one of showing "how it is done". Thus vendors willing to discuss the specifics of how they have improved their products or willing to disclose the innards of their product's architecture, could rise above the din of the show floor, even if temporarily.

Yours truly was involved with one such effort. If you are so inclined, check out the architecture paper that I worked on for the conference: Cisco ASA CX delivers context-aware security.

Netflix DVDs still make some sense, but for how long?

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 01:27:00 +0000

I currently subscribe to both of Netflix's services: streaming and DVD-rental. With the recent price hike for Netflix's streaming + DVD customers, I wondered if there was a cheaper alternative to Netflix's DVD rental service. A colleague suggested I check out Vudu which advertises streaming video "rentals" - the idea being that one could replace Netflix DVD rental with the equivalent video streaming rental.

My streaming video setup includes the Samsung BD C550 bluray player which has had a Vudu app for a while. So using Vudu without buying any new devices was eminently feasible. I picked the top two items from my Netflix DVD queue - "Its always sunny in Philadelphia, season 6" and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" - to test for availability on Vudu. It turned out that neither was listed as available. However, Vudu did have season's 1, 2, 3 and 5 of "It's always sunny..." but not season's 4 or 6. And the price seemed right at $2 for a two night rental.

Amazon video, which does not have an app for my Samsung player, did have "It's always sunny..., season 6". But Amazon had the title available only to buy - $18 for the equivalent of two DVDs or alternatively for $2/episode - not to rent. Even season 7 was available at $2/episode - Netflix doesn't have season 7 yet. Amazon's pricing is somewhat steep compared to Netflix's $8/month for One-DVD-at-a-time, even though the Amazon service is more convenient given that one doesn't have to wait for the DVD to arrive in the mail.

Unfortunately, "Tinker, Tailor..." was not available at Amazon video, the same result as Vudu.

The investigation above suggests, that Netflix's DVD rental service still has a leg up over alternatives, by way of breadth (over Vudu) and pricing + app availability (over Amazon). However, Vudu could blow past Netflix DVD with some library expansion. Amazon could too, with a more widely available app and by continuing to bundle more titles with Amazon Prime.

Vudu's library shortcoming notwithstanding, I am tempted to stop Netflix DVD (but keep Netflix streaming) and use Vudu for my video rental needs. I wonder how many other Netflix DVD subscribers are going through the same calculation...

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What we got here is ... failure to communicate

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:37:00 +0000

Netflix started its streaming service as an add-on to its DVD rental business. As streaming became more and more accepted and desirable by consumers, Netflix decided to separate its DVD rental and Video streaming businesses - streaming had gotten too big to be treated as an add-on. This seems like the right move. Why then the huge backlash against Netflix splitting the two?

The overlap between Netflix's DVD rental and streaming businesses is likely still significant, but declining.

Consider the back-end costs that are common to the two services. The DVD rental costs are likely dominated by the cost of acquiring physical DVDs, running the DVD shipping/receiving operations and US Postal Service charges. Whereas the streaming costs are dominated by the streaming infrastructure that Netflix has built in the last few years and the cost of acquiring streamable content. The only overlap that I can see is the netflix.com website (recommendation engine, queue management, billing and the like). As Netflix spends more money on expanding the content and the reach of the streaming service, the cost overlap of the two businesses decreases further.

Next consider the competition. In the DVD rental business, competition comes from the surviving mom-and-pop video rental shops, the remaining Blockbuster and Hollywood outlets and kiosks from companies such as Redbox. In streaming, the competition includes some of the same companies - Blockbuster in particular - but also heavy-weights such as Amazon, Apple, YouTube (Google), Hulu, Vudu (Walmart) and Yahoo! Video. Add to that new streaming offerings from CableTV and SatelliteTV companies and you have a competitive landscape that looks very different from the competition in DVD rentals.

Finally, consider the customers. Netflix's original customer base was DVD renters in the US. As the streaming service became popular, it likely attracted streaming-only customers who had little interest in DVD rentals. As Netflix expands the streaming service to countries outside the US, all the customers that it gains will by definition be streaming-only customers - since Netflix does not offer DVD rentals outside the US. Thus the overlap between DVD rental customers and streaming customers can only decline over time.

The backlash to Netflix's recent moves - a net price hike for DVD rental + streaming customers and separation of the DVD rental business under a new brand-name (Quickster) - must (by definition) come from customers who use both services. Why are they so worked up?

Strategically, Netflix is doing the right thing by gearing up to fight the streaming battle and shedding its DVD rental roots. However, the backlash demonstrates that Netflix is going about this change in too abrupt a manner. DVD rental customers have been tireless advocates for the company over the last decade. These customers must feel jilted now - not only do they pay more, but the DVD service is not going to be from "Netflix" any more. Would these customers really promote Quickster with the same zeal as they did Netflix?

Perhaps Netflix would have been better off, taking more incremental steps towards separating the two businesses, thereby preserving the goodwill from its loyal DVD rental base for longer. Netflix could communicate the direction that it is headed in, but give its DVD rental + streaming customer base, more time to adjust to the coming change.

And finally, Netflix should leave the Netflix logo (and the brand) on the DVD mailers alone. Nobody needs a reminder that they are getting old.

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Better Together: Time Machine and WD Elements

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:30:00 +0000

A few days ago, I switched to a MacBook Pro for my work machine. Unfortunately Macs are not as robustly supported by the IT staff, as Windows. As a result, I was left without a backup solution. Fortunately, Mac's "Time Machine" and Western Digital's Elements portable hard drive together provide an effective backup solution.

Setting up Time Machine is pretty idiot proof - connect an external drive to the Mac and Time Machine takes care of the rest. It formats the hard drive to work with the Mac, and automatically and periodically backs up files. About the only trouble I had with Time Machine was figuring out how to exclude certain folders from being backed up - it wasn't obvious from the user interface, but Apple's support pages tell you exactly how. Recovering files is pretty intuitive as well - Time Machine tells you what versions of files it has, and restoring an older version requires just a couple mouse clicks.

One the hardware side, the 1TB version of WD Elements portable external hard-drive at $80 (Amazon.com) is a good complement to Time Machine. It is small, light and powered entirely over USB. Not needing an AC adapter is a nice plus in my book. Relying on a non-IT supported backup is only as effective as one's discipline in keeping the hard drive connected to the laptop. And I am more likely to connect the hard drive to the laptop if the action is dead simple and does not clutter my desk. Further, not having the AC adapter reduces the probability of accidentally powering down the drive. One can of-course leave the hard drive permanently hooked up to power on one's desk, but I feel better about getting the drive out of sight, outside regular business hours. I just lock it up in my drawer when I leave work.

Lack of encryption, however, is a problem with this solution - the Western Digital hard drive doesn't support hardware encryption and I didn't find any Time Machine option that enables software encryption. But then again, when the backup drive is not in my sights, it is locked up in a drawer in a secure building, reducing the need for encryption to begin with.

Now to go solve the home back problem - the one that I had originally wanted to tackle.

Secure home back-up and file-server solution?

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:45:00 +0000

For a few years now, I have relied on portable hard-drives for my home back-up solution. My current version of this solution is cheap ($80 for a 640GB Western Digital hard drive in October 2010), simple (powered over USB so no cable besides the USB cable to worry about) and secure (it is not online, when it is not connected to my laptop; so a small window for a hacker to break in).

However, this solution is not without its problems. For one, my (manual) backups are infrequent and irregular. For another, my files on the hard drive are not readily available - since the drive is mostly powered down and stashed in a closet. To remedy this problem, I am considering buying a consumer file server such as Western Digital's Personal Cloud Storage Drive.

The cloud storage drive has a lot going for it. It is high capacity (upto 3TB in a small form factor), and relatively cheap ($180 for 3TB) but with a CPU slapped onto the drive. Thus it is always on and can incrementally backup multiple computers over the network. And the backed-up files are always available since the drive is always up and running.

But this solution is not without its problems. Since the drive is always on, the drive is more vulnerable to breakins over the network. I run a firewall on my DSL/wifi router but that by itself may not be adequate protection for essentially all of my personal data.

Further, the drive has a remote access option, which when turned on, allows a user to access the files on the drive remotely (i.e. even when the device accessing the files is not on the local network). Even if the option is turned off, a hacker who has managed to get access to the drive can just turn it on. Given that the drive does not offer encryption, there isn't really much that I can do on the drive to safeguard my data.

So the choice seems to be between getting this drive for its cost and convenience (but beefing up security on the firewall, to the extent that I can) or looking for a similar drive that offers more (say encryption) in terms of security. Anybody have suggestions?

Sears phone and online store should die

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 13:25:00 +0000

Having tired of my 3-hour round trip commute, I recently decided to move down closer to work. The (prospective) new place would not have a washer / dryer by the time I moved in. A friend tipped me off that Samsung washer and dryer models with decent reviews were available from Best Buy at $425 a piece. If I ordered the same models from Sears, I would get 10% off the difference between Sear's original and Best Buy's price. In addition, I would get free delivery and installation. Big mistake - it took me an hour and a half to order the washer and the dryer and another hour and a half to cancel the order. And I am still not sure if the order canceled.

When I first called one of Sears' local stores in the Bay Area, the phone system transferred me to a national call center. The rep - "Daniel" - at the national call center was nice enough to help me set up the delivery date, find the appropriate power cord for the dryer and verify Best Buy's price. But then he hit some unspecified snag with the order system and said he would have to transfer me to someone who could fix it. Before I could ask for a confirmation number, I had been routed to what turned out to be a local Bay Area store. The local rep who took the call, did not have access to the National call center's system - he said that the National rep's transferred to him all the time, even though he didn't have a way of helping the customers who came his way. He also did not know Daniel.

So I called the National call center and asked for Daniel. Who of-course couldn't be found. So I went through the process of order the same washer and dryer all over again. This time around the order went through, seemingly smoothly. But when I got the confirmatory email from Sears, the price on the washer + dryer was ~$400 more than what I had agreed to and the washer model was slightly different from what I had ordered. At this point I decided that the Sears phone/online was not competent enough to reliably complete this offer. Instead of fighting this further, I decided to go into full-reverse and cancel the order.

I called back into the National call center. The rep who took the call said she did not have the authority to cancel the order and transferred me to another number which rang and asked me for telephone number to pull up the order, but then greeted me with mocking silence. I hung up, called the National call center again, asked for the answering rep's supervisor who said she would transfer me to appropriate person. This person happened to be the same local store rep that I had called earlier. The poor guy recognized my voice from earlier in the day, repeated that he couldn't help me and gave me a toll-free number to try. He still didn't know Daniel.

I called the toll-free number and punched in my phone number. Silence. I waited for 90 seconds. Nothing happened on the other end.

I looked up the email that I had received from Sears regarding my order. It listed a number for Delivery that I thought might be helpful. I called the number, punched in my phone number. Silence.

At this point, I was getting pretty desperate. I called back the National call center, and chose the option for new orders. When I got a helpful sounding rep - Amanda - on the phone, I told her my sorry story. Fortunately she decided to help me. She attached a note to the order indicating that the order should be canceled. She did not actually have the ability to cancel the order. Amanda requested that I call the Delivery phone number - one of the ones that had gone silent on me earlier - and ask the Delivery folks to cancel the order too.

I decided to call Amex instead, to stop payment on the Sears charge.

Acquisition targets for TV manufacturers

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Several hardware manufacturers are currently in the fray to become the TV vendor of choice for the future. The list includes Samsung, LG, Vizio and Sony amongst others. All of these companies realize that the TV of the future is going to have to be smart - i.e. have a fairly powerful computer and sophisticated software and services embedded inside it. The critical question for these manufacturers then will become: "Do we have the wherewithal to develop and maintain the software that will do much of the heavy lifting on Smart TVs?"

Some of the TV manufacturers - Sony, Vizio - have concluded that they are better off partnering with another player - Google TV - on the software. On the other hand, Samsung only has a prototype integration with Google TV and no product. Samsung seems to be actively debating a "go it alone" strategy vs "partner with Google TV" strategy. Finally LG seems to have decided to do much of the work on its own while partnering with smaller players such as Brightcove to provide some of the "smartness".

And then there are other major TV manufacturers Panasonic, Sharp, Tcl, Viewsonic and Philips. All of these manufacturers (along with LG) will need a solid software platform to build their next generation TVs on. Some will no-doubt go it alone and invest in their own software platform. Others may align with Google TV - especially if their in-house efforts fail to gain traction. The remaining may find themselves bidding for Boxee, which already does much of the software integration that makes TVs smart. Or for one of Boxee's competitors such as Roku or Sezmi.

Multimedia search on Smart TVs - a bit different from web search

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:00:00 +0000

Many new service providers and hardware manufacturers (Roku, Boxee, Google TV, Apple TV, Samsung, LG amongst them) are vying to bring consumers all manner of multimedia content from a diverse set of sources. Multimedia - video, audio and images - is computationally harder for devices to deal with as compared to plain old text documents. Regardless media (content) consumers are looking for relief from the barrage of content that comes their way constantly. Multimedia search offers a partial solution to the consumers' problems.

Imagine that you heard of an interesting movie on your commute home. That evening when you sit down in front of the TV, you want to investigate the movie that you heard about. Ordinarily you would open up your laptop, search for the movie, read some reviews and add the movie to your Netflix queue (if you liked what you read). If the movie wasn't on Netflix, you might buy and download it from Amazon or iTunes. Then you would make sure that all your equipment was correctly connected. Finally, you would sit down to enjoy the movie.

The above scenario is a lot more appealing than waiting 2-3 days for a Netflix DVD or running to the local Blockbuster only to find out that the store doesn't have the movie on hand. However, the coming generation of Smart TVs will do better - if the TVs have a well implemented multimedia search engine. With a Smart TV, it ought to be possible to do away with the laptop and simply search on the TV, read the reviews, subscribe/rent/buy the movie from Netflix/Amazon/iTunes and start seeing it within a couple of minutes. All without fidgeting with multiple gadgets or interfaces. Multimedia search is key to making this work.

A multimedia search engine needs to worry about many different properties of the content that it searches including:

Professionally produced vs user generated
Live vs catalog / archived
Video vs audio vs static images
Short vs TV-show length (~20 to ~45 minutes) vs movie length
User bookmarked/queued vs other
Payment model: subscribe vs rent vs buy vs free (or Ad supported)
Source: Netflix vs Hulu vs Cable/Satellite etc

A well implemented search engine would exploit these properties to surface better quality search results than those that a plain vanilla web search engine might produce.

In search engine literature, search engine quality is determined by the ranking, freshness, comprehensiveness and presentation of the results. Lets look at each of these in turn with an eye towards the context - that of a lay user wanting to quickly find consumable content on a TV.

Ranking:While many of the traditional measures of ranking such as "mean reciprocal rank" likely apply equally well to multimedia search, professionally produced content probably has more reliable signals to algorithmically determine ranking. This is because most professionally produced content has associated structured meta data and (likely) good quality anchor text by way of reviews and citations. As such a multimedia search engine is better off trusting signals from professional content over those from user generated content, and thus ranking professional content higher.

Freshness: In watching TV many consumers likely think of live TV as a category onto itself. This is especially true for Sports events, breaking news and shows airing for the very first time. A multimedia search should have special provisions for ingesting live TV guides and crawling web-sites of TV stations, TV networks, Sports teams and News sites such that search engines results are kept "almost live" fresh.

Comprehensiveness: A multimedia search should vie for comprehensiveness, but it needs to prioritize multimedia content over plain old text. As such in crawling web-sites, a good multimedia search engine would seek out sites which have video, audio and images (in that order) over text.

Presentation: Given the properties discussed above, presenting the results in straight linear form as web search engines currently do, hardly seems appropriate. I am not going to cover detailed user-interface/interaction-design here, but it seems beneficial to call out some properties of the search results in a visually appealing fashion. Perhaps live content, content from the users bookmarks (or queue) and professionally produced content could be surfaced separately from all other content. Further, content could be marked as video, audio or image/picture so that users know what to expect before they click. Finally, the length of the material (or the number of images) along with the payment model (subscribe/rent/buy) and source (Netflix/Hulu/Cable/Satellite) could also be surfaced - just so that the user can make a more informed decision regarding the appropriateness of the results vis-a-vis their intent, before clicking.

Several people that I have talked to are skeptical about search as the interface to discovering TV content - especially given that web search results seem to be less and less satisfying. Personally I believe that there are are a handful of use cases (including the one described above), where a well executed multimedia search engine would come in handy.

Potential usability improvements for Google TV

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:00:00 +0000

I spent a bit of time recently playing with Google TV. As I have documented before, I am a cord-cutter - I primarily watch video via Netflix on a Samsung Bluray player and via over-the-air broadcast TV. So while Google TV is capable of bringing together both Cable/Satellite content and online content together to the TV, in my experiments I only had access to the online conent. This took away a bit of shine from Google TV, but the experience was meaty enough to extract some useful product improvement lessons.

Google TV is the first (?) "mainstream" attempt to get professional and amateur (user-generated) content from disparate sources, including Cable/Satellite, onto the best screen in the house. However Google needs to simplify the interface to make it accessible to the the lay audience. I lay out some problem areas and potential solutions below.

Unified experience: Google TV sits on top of multimedia content from a huge number of unrelated websites. Whenever a user navigates to a web-site via search or via one of the "applications" on Google TV, they are presented with an experience that is likely different from what they saw on a previously visited web-site. Such a difference in experience from web-site to web-site is pardonable when one is on the computer, but on a TV consumers are used to a somewhat more seemless experience - the user experience doesn't change much when a consumer switches channels. At some level, switching between web-sites is like swithcing between channels, but the experience on Google TV is nowhere near as uniform. One way to solve this problem is by imposing a certain presentation on all web-sites. Another is to encourage multimedia web-sites to use the same uniform design template. Recent news from Google TV suggests that they are going down the latter path.

Fewer metaphors: Google TV has a notion of bookmarks (similar to bookmarks in a web browser) and that of a queue (similar to a Netflix queue). For the lay TV watcher, having both metaphors together on a single platform requires more thought and comprehension than the user may want to deal with. Perhaps a single metaphor would be less confusing and therefore more appealing to the lay user.

More relevant search results: Searching for "Rudy" on Google TV lists "Girlfriends", "Fired Up" and "Garrison's Gorrillas" as completion suggests. Clicking the search shows these titles as search results along with "American Logger" and "Rudy" the movie. Only "American Logger" - which has a character/participant by the name Rudy Pelletier - has an obvious connection to my search keyword (besides Rudy the movie). Netflix's results by comparison (see post on this here) seem more satisfying. Netflix obviously has an easier problem than Google TV - since the former only deals with professional content. Even, so Google needs to solve the search problem well to make search useful. One potential solution is to recognize the likely intent of the user and to prioritize results with certain characteristics over others. For example, in the case of Rudy, the Google TV search engine knows that Rudy is a professionally produced movie. Thus Rudy (the movie) should likely be the first result for the search and the first completion suggestion. Similarly on encountering a search term such as "NFL Raiders", the search engine can intuit that the user is looking for the football team Oakland Raiders and return any live or recently concluded games as the first result. Intuiting intent in this manner is difficult but between mining previous queries across Google TV users, the user's history and attributes associated with a returned result (ie. attribute "movie" associated with movie Rudy), it ought to be possible.

Better remote: Most TV remotes are too complex to begin with - too many buttons, un-intuitive modes, hard to read text (in low light) and the like. Even so most people are used to the form factor and to one handed operation of the remote while watching TV. The Google TV remote that I used (from Logitech) was a full-on keyboard. While this may be work for those coming to the TV to browse web content meant to be consumed on PCs, it doesn't quite work for the lay user wanting to watch TV. To make matters worse, the heavy use buttons from a regular TV remote are not that easy to find on the keyboard. For example, the mute button is at the top left of the keyboard. Far away from the up/down navigation pad on the right hand side of the keyboard. For a right handed user, used to operating the a TV remote with just the right hand, the mute button is simply too far away from the right thumb. Either Google TV hardware vendors need to rethink the form factor of the remote, or they need to make a portion of the keyboard remote look like a regular TV remote.

Google TV has a lot of promise as a platform that can unify all forms of multimedia consumption on to the big screen in the house. However, Google TV needs to get over the usability challenge before it can fulfill that promise.

Netflix's response to headwinds - become ubiquitous (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
TV today: way too complicated (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
How does Yahoo! Connected TV fit in the new TV world? (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)

Netflix's response to headwinds - become ubiquitous

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Netflix has successfully changed its business model from a pure DVD renter to a DVD renter and provider of (professional) streaming video content. Netflix recently introduced a streaming only subscription plan ($7.99/month) highlighting its intention to, at some point, switch a majority of its business to video streaming, permanently. However, Netflix faces some serious headwinds. Primary amongst these are competition and the increasing cost of acquiring professional content. Netflix has responded to the pressure by attempting to become a ubiquitous "app". It will likely need to do more if it wants to build a sustainable video streaming business.

Competition: When Netflix started streaming video in 2007, competition in the streaming video space was not quite as fierce. Back then there was no Google TV, Apple TV and Hulu were just getting started and people didn't spend quite as much time on Facebook and Twitter watching video clips hosted on YouTube.

Content: While Netflix scored a major coup in 2008, when it obtained 2500+ titles from Starz entertainment for $25M (the likely market value for the content was $200M+), content acquisition has gotten much tougher since. Content owners learned from Starz's mistake and in a more recent deal charged Netflix $200M/year for content from MGM, Lionsgate and Paramount. Subsequent content deals are likely to be as pricey, if nor pricier.

Netflix acutely understands that to win in the streaming business, it has to both expand its audience and increase its leverage over content owners. Netflix's response thus far has been to expand its audience by becoming ubiquitous on video streaming devices - atleast in the US. Currently Netflix can be streamed on 200+ devices, including many Samsung and LG DVD players, Boxee, Google TV devices and Apple TV. Of course, the larger the audience, the stronger Netflix's hand in dealing with subsequent content owners - it has few other means of influencing them.

Netflix could improve its industry clout by becoming a more direct part of social conversations on Twitter and Facebook in the US. I.e.by becoming ubiquitous in online culture. Such ubiquity helps in convincing non-consumers to sign up and prevents existing consumers from leaving the fold. It is also defensive - for any number of other video content providers could get to a solid social network integration first and take the conversation away from Netflix. In the past netflix.com had a community / friends feature as well as an integration with Facebook. While both of these were discontinued, I now hear that Netflix is making a new push for integration with Facebook. To the best of my knowledge, Twitter remains untapped.

In addition, Netflix could target its content acquisition to segments that are not yet served by the other mainstream streaming video players. One example is Indian Americans interested Bolywood fare and soap operas. People in this segment currently use local mom and pop DVD stores or sign up for Indian cable channels available in some US metro areas.

All said and done, Netflix has a chicken-and-egg problem. If it had a large stable audience, it could deal with the content owners. On the other hand, if it had all the content, it could build a large stable audience. Breaking through this loop is not impossible and Netflix is off to a good start, coming off the momentum from its DVD rental business. But Netflix does need to keep spiraling up - get a little more content to get a few more subscribers, and use a few more subscribers to get a little more content.

TV today: way too complicated (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
How does Yahoo! Connected TV fit in the new TV world? (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
Netflix streaming over a Samsung setup gets a B+ (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)

Sources:

TV today: way too complicated

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:00:00 +0000

The TV value chain can be broken up into three distinct, even if generic segments: content creation, content distribution and content consumption. In the the early days of TV, content creation (movies, TV shows) was mostly done by the the large studios and broadcast network. Content distribution was almost entirely left up to the large broadcast networks. Finally, content consumption was through a single device - the TV with an antenna. Since there were only a handful of TV channels, consumers had a relatively uncomplicated life - buy a TV and get access to the all the content that networks were broadcasting. That's it.

In recent years, all three segments of the TV value chain have been "democratized". Thanks to video phones (eg iPhone, Android based smart phones), video cameras (eg Flip) and SLRs with video capability (eg Nikon D90), amateurs are producing mammoth quantities of video content that adds to the professionally produced content from various studios. Distribution has expanded to cable, satellite, internet (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Flickr) and video stores (Netflix, Blockbuster), besides broadcast TV. Finally, content that was formally consumed only on TVs, is now consumed on phones, tablets, computers and TVs (with assistance from set top boxes).

Thus a consumer today has to invest significant time and/or money to decide which content to view, via which distribution channel and on which device. There are impedance mismatches between all segments of the value chain. For example, a consumer who wants to see a movie recommendation from a friend may find out that the movie is unavailable for Netflix streaming but is available on iTunes. The consumer knows how to use iTunes and wants to see the movie on his/her big screen TV but doesn't have AppleTV. The consumer is stuck - not only is he/she prevented from accessing the content, he/she has to spend brain cycles evaluating AppleTV.

The holy grail of TV (or content, video or otherwise) is to have the ability to watch any programming, any time on any device without jumping through technology hoops. Unfortunately, given the fragmentation (aka democratization) of the value chain, this is far from possible today. However, the arena is not without progress. Various companies are pursuing two broad strategies in search of an acceptable solution: "the killer app" and "the killer platform".

Netflix and Hulu fall into the "killer app" camp. They don't make all content available to a user - only the professionally produced content with some time delay. They don't work on all devices, but do work on many - especially Netflix. GoogleTV falls into the "killer platform" camp. GoogleTV wants most content - both amateur and professional - to be available through most distribution channels (cable, satellite, internet) onto a GoogleTV enabled device. For the platform to succeed, GoogleTV needs to be enabled on most devices where video/TV content can be consumed. It seems to me that, that is the general direction GoogleTV is (or should be) headed in. AppleTV, while harder to place, is closer to the "killer app" end - the AppleTV solution brings specific professional (Netflix) and amateur (YouTube) content through the Internet distribution channel to a specific set of Apple devices. It is as yet unclear if Apple wants to maintain this positioning, or push in the direction of becoming a "killer platform".

While all this sort itself out, consumers will just need to muddle through either by over paying with time and money (eg by getting cable + Netflix + AppleTV + DVD player) or satisfying themselves with narrower choices (eg by getting Netflix + networked DVD player). Personally, I have opted for the latter.

Netflix iPhone search interface: decent but could use improvements

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Staying up with a newborn can be challenging. If you are lucky, the newborn may sleep as you rock back and forth with an arm free. This is the situation that I found myself in a few days ago. And since I had a hand free, I decided to watch a movie on my iPhone... or atleast a portion of it. Since time was at a premium, every keystroke counted. Netflix's search interface helped out.

I ended up watching "Rudy" - a movie that I had vaguely heard about before. As I searched for the movie on Netflix iPhone app, I was happy to see that the top result for the search "Rudy" was for the movie I wanted to see and it was available in Netflix's streaming library. Netflix listed another 12 items as "completion suggestions" while I was still on the search bar. Of these 12 items, the bottom 11 were also visually different from the first 2 suggestions - a hint that I could not play them instantly. When I hit "search", the same 13 results were listed with a little more information and the DVD cover for each result.

While usable, the Netflix iPhone app misses a couple of items from its search interface. First, there is no way to search for an actor or any other personality or keyword associated with a movie (or other programming). Thus, searching for "John Cusack" returns no results. Somewhat inconvenient if all that one remembers of a movie is the lead actor/actress. Further, there is no way to order a disc from the iPhone app. If I wanted to order one of the 11 results for "Rudy" that were not available for streaming, I would have to leave the Netflix App and go to Netflix's web-site - not easy when your mobility is limited. Finally, I noticed that the same search on netflix.com yields ~400 results. Many of these results are for terms similar to "Rudy". Netflix clearly clearly has more "results" for my search but it appears that it doesn't yet have a good way to display the results on a mobile device. What if I wanted a title outside the top-13 that the Netflix App showed me, but in the 400 results I could get on netflix.com?

Overall, while search on the Netflix iPhone App worked pretty well, it did leave me thinking that it could do more while maintaining most of its existing ease of use.

How does Yahoo! Connected TV fit the new TV world?

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Lately there has been a bit of press around Yahoo! Connected TV. Having had some experience with it as a consumer about a year ago, I thought I'd review the concept briefly.

Yahoo! Connected TV (YTV) is an Application that runs on specific TV and set-top boxes that have integrated this application. It is also an Application Framework using which third parties can write widgets for TVs and set-top boxes that support YTV. For example, the Flickr widget on YTV displays your's and your contacts' photostreams on the TV - nice if you want to share photographs with friends and family on the largest screen in the house.

Further, YTV is aware of the programming that a viewer is watching at any point and can use the information to make useful suggestions such as extracting statistics relevant to a sports event currently being watched or prompting a user to "buy now" if the user happens to be watching a shopping channel.

At some level, YTV looks similar to Google TV (GTV). For example, GTV has a notion of applications (widgets) that run on top of the GTV platform. However, the GTV platform is much "thicker" compared to YTV. GTV includes a full-on web browser and purports to combine all of programming/video available on the web with all of the programming available from traditional TV/Cable/Satellite channels. YTV on the other hand is a much "thinner" platform aiming to provide a neatly integrated experience via widgets layered on top of traditional TV programming.

GTV is thus a bigger initiative with many more moving parts and greater risk and reward than YTV. That said, the current incarnation of YTV appears to be gaining traction with some viewers and Industry analysts.

Related articles

The brave New-TV world (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
Netflix streaming over a Samsung setup gets a B+ (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
Networked DVD players' interfaces need work (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)

Sources
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703419104576068351674875680.html (Jan 2011)
http://searchenginewatch.com/3641733 (Jan 2011)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10217972-1.html (Apr 2009)

Note
While I currently work at Yahoo!, I have no inside information regarding the Yahoo! Connected TV product, My impressions are based solely on the sources above and my experience with the Yahoo! Connected TV widget on ATT U-verse's cable box circa Q1 2010.

YouTube private video sharing - a bit frustrating

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:41:00 +0000

Recently I shot a video clip with my iPhone. I wanted to share the video with a handful of friends and family members, but I wanted only specific people to be able to access the video. I decided to try out YouTube's Private Sharing, which allows one to share private videos with upto 50 users.

In theory, the solution looks great. But in practice it is a bit frustrating. First, a private video can only be shared with other YouTube users - i.e. a notification will only be sent to an individual, if he/she is already on YouTube. Email addresses (including Gmail addresses) are not accepted. Second, a Gmail user cannot reuse his/her Gmail user name on YouTube. In fact one's Gmail user-id may be taken by somebody else on YouTube. Third, the username selection criteria on YouTube is different from Gmail! For example "." is not allowed in the username on YouTube, whereas it is perfectly fine on Gmail.

Overall, identity on YouTube is not the same as identity on Gmail, More generally, identity on YouTube is not same as identity on the rest of Google, even though Google owns YouTube. Thus the bar for a Google user, who does not have a YouTube account, to receive private video notifications, is artificially high. And since the sender of a video does not have access to his/her Gmail address-book on YouTube, he/she has to recreate an address-book on YouTube and learn the YouTube IDs of the address-book contacts.

YouTube is the goto place for user generated video. So it is a bit of a shame that the user experience for private video sharing is not smoother. Anybody know of tricks or tools to get around the YouTube identity problem?

The brave New-TV world

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:30:00 +0000

I have been pretty happy with my HDTV solution thus far: Samsung HDTV + Networked Blu-ray player for Netflix + OTA Antenna for occasional broadcast TV. However, given recent major announcements in this space, I thought I'd atleast track the new solutions that have hit the market. I looked at four currently available solutions - Apple TV, Google TV, Sezmi and Boxee. My initial take below...

With Apple TV, a viewer is restricted to applications / web content that Apple chooses to integrate onto the Apple TV box. In return the viewer gets a slick user interface that runs on a HDTV via the $99 Apple TV box. Content available today includes videos rentable from Apple, Netflix streaming as well as YouTube, Flickr, Podcasts and Apple Radio. Any content that a viewer has previously purchased through Apple is playable through the Apple TV box on the HDTV. In other words, the Apple TV strategy is that of "content curation combined with tight integration with the rest of the Apple eco-system".

Google TV instead has taken upon itself the task of combining all the disparate streams of content onto a viewer's HDTV. Technically a viewer can "search" for and play any content out on the internet or available through his/her cable/satellite provider on the TV (though some networks have blocked access to their web content on Google TV). The plethora of content types and content sources pose some interesting usability challenges for Google TV - I suspect that it will take some work to avoid search results overload. In addition, such a "wide" approach likely requires multiple years of building the ecosystem before the solution comes into its prime. Google TV itself runs on a $299 Logitech set top box although it can run within an adequately equipped TV as well (eg some Sony TVs).

The Sezmi solution can be characterized as "Cable over Internet. To use Sezmi, a viewer buys the Sezmi set top box ($299) and a special antenna. The set top box enables the viewer to access the Sezmi web store from where he/she can select content for a fixed monthly subscription fee ($5/month). In addition, Sezmi broadcasts certain cable channels over-the-air to the TV - hence the special antenna to receive these broadcasts. However, one cannot access the general internet over the set top box. Thus the service appears to be a cheaper Cable-TV service.

The Boxee solution is geared towards those who want to access internet content though their TV. The Boxee set top box itself is a sleek looking $199 device made by D-link. It is essentially a computer that hooks up to a viewers TV and gives the viewer open access to content on the Internet. In addition, several well known content sites such as Netflix, Digg and the like are pre-integrated into the Boxee user interface to allow easy access to these portals. Finally, the Boxee user interface has a social element to it: "Friends" within the Boxee system can recommend content to each other and play recommendations that they have received.

In addition to the solutions mentioned above, there any number of alternatives including Roku, Vudu and Yahoo TV widgets. Just given the number of players, this space will likely stay murky for a while. But, there is clear opportunity for one or more parties to (a) deliver all available content to a HDTV (b) organize the content so that it is easily accessible.

Related articles

Netflix streaming over a Samsung setup gets a B+ (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
Networked DVD players' interfaces need work (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
Streaming Netflix to TV: requires more research than you would expect (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)

The Printer is in the building

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Earlier in November 2010, I had written about requirements for a new printer that I was planning to buy. At the time a $250 Brother laser printer seemed to hit the mark. However, after a bit more research, I decided to go with a $50 Canon Inkjet.

I had wanted my new printer to be space efficient, wireless accessible and fast with both printing and scanning. The Canon Pixma MP495 meets all these requirements. At ~12in x 15in x 6in, the printer is quite small, occupying less than a third of the space that my (separate) printer and scanner occupied before. The MP495 comes with built-in wifi, and while one needs to faithfully follow the manual in setting up the wifi connection, the setup is not terribly complex.

Printer speed at ~9 pages/minute for black and white is adequate for my use case of printing the occasional document at home. The scanner is pretty speedy too with a wireless initiated scan taking ~20 seconds: much faster than my old scanner which would take ~60 seconds for a single scan.

Black and white print quality is pretty good, but not as good as the laser printer I replaced - not an unexpected result ofcourse. On the plus side, the new printer can do color - not a deal maker for my use case, but since I have been shooting more photos lately, this feature might actually see some use from me. Apparently, one can even print to the printer from a smart-phone - I haven't tried this yet but I can see myself printing documents in a hurry directly from the phone. Again, not a deal maker, but pretty nifty.

There are a couple of things that the printer could do better, but doing so would probably require space or cost compromises. For example, the scanner tray won't take a legal sized paper. And there isn't an autofeeder for the scanner on this machine (although there is one on the $140 PIXMA MX870). Neither is a deal breaker - I expect that I will only occasionally struggle with legal paper scans or more than ~2 pages worth of scans at a time.

Overall, a nice and complete home use package for a very acceptable price. And 1/5th the cost of what I was contemplating in November. We'll see if the package holds up under actual use.

Note: A good friend recommended the Epson Workforce 610 which he managed to get refurbished for $40. A new price of $140 (Amazon) seemed a bit steep compared to the Canon MP495, so I went with the latter.

Thumbs up for Photoshop express on the iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 22:41:00 +0000

Over the past few days I have been experimenting with photo editing software on the iPhone. I had heard of all Instagram and PicPlz and tried them both. However, Photoshop express seems to do better for my specific use case - that of editing a photograph that I have already taken on the iPhone, without uploading the photo to another site and without relying on internet connectivity - than either Instagram and PicPlz.

PicPlz, in its current incarnation on the iPhone, does not allow editing of a photograph directly on the phone. Instagram on the other hand gives the user the option of editing without uploading - an important attribute of the app, given that it simplifies my workflow (i.e. eliminates the upload to photo-editing site step.)

However, the only editing that you can do with Instagram right now is cropping and applying pre-canned filters to your photos. In comparison Photoshop express, allows you to not only crop and apply pre-canned filters, but also to change exposure, saturation and contrast (amongst other settings) right on the phone without any uploads.

Overall, Photoshop express is a far more complete package for the serious [sic] iPhone photographer than Instagram and PicPlz. I am a little bit surprised that this neat little app has not received more press compared to Instagram and PicPlz. Perhaps I am reading the wrong press when it comes to in-phone photo-editing applications.

Note1: compare the photograph at the top, edited with Photoshop express, with the one at the bottom, edited with Instagram. Photoshop express' greater editing flexibility allows for better final images - atleast to my eyes.

Note2: You can find larger versions of both these images on Flickr.

Indo China impresses with wifi

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 06:06:00 +0000

I have been traveling through Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam the last few days. I had gotten along my iPhone to keep in touch with friends and family while on the road. 5 days into my trip, I am pleasantly surprised at the abundance of free wifi hot spots that have allowed access to my iPhone.

In Kuala Lumpur, both the airport and the train to the city center had wifi. So did the Siem Reap and Saigon airports. All the hotels have wifi as part of their service, even the small ones. I am at the train station at Danang right now and have connectivity enough to post this. All without paying an extra dime.

Not bad eh?

In-camera photo editing - more than a gimmick

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 01:48:00 +0000

When I started exploring my DSLR camera (Nikon D90), I thought that I would not have much use for the in-camera editing options. I had invested in Lightroom and figured that Lightroom would cover all my photo editing use cases. A couple of web searches indicated that many in the Nikon / photo community considered the in-camera photo editing to be gimmicky.

However, I have found the in-camera photo editing to be handy for quick retouching and emergency use. I was recently on a trip with my sister who took some shots of me using one of the pre-set modes (Portrait) on the camera. Since my camera is set to RAW, there was no JPEG version of the images available. On returning home I wanted to show one of these images to some friends and family on something larger than the camera's LCD display - Nikon's RAW format wouldn't display on the computer at hand.

The in-camera editing options came in handy. The original of the photo displayed above was somewhat underexposed. And since I had used a "neutral" white balance setting, the colors of the head dress were muted. I was quickly able to fix the underexposure and change the white balance so that head dress colors popped, right on my camera. I was also able to crop the image and eliminate some of the distractions in the background with the in-camera photo editor. Finally, I could convert the image to JPEG and upload the same to Flickr.

You can check out the results on a larger copy of the image here. Not bad for 60 seconds of work eh?

De-mystifying Lithium Ion Battery Care

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 02:00:00 +0000

While reading "Mastering the Nikon D90" recently, I came across a recommendation in the book that asked users to recharge the battery whenever it went down to 25% power. Since the recommendation ran counter to the urban legend of "completely discharging and recharging" a battery, I thought I'd investigate the topic a bit. I came up with the following do's and dont's that some of you may find useful.

Do's

Lithium Ion batteries do not suffer from the memory effect. So you can charge them anytime without waiting for it to discharge down to 20% or less of capacity.
Use the battery regularly. As a corollary, you may want to buy batteries only when you are ready to use them, rather buying and storing them for possible future use.
Keep the firmware on your device updated - developers may have optimized your device to draw less power. (The last two recommendations are from Apple's iPhone page.)
Fully discharge (~0%) the battery and then fully recharge (~100%) approximately every 30 cycles. However, do not fully discharge the battery and then store it for an extended period of time. You may not be able to recharge it!
If you are storing a battery, keep it at 40% charge in a cool place, say in a refrigerator - but not the freezer! (The last two recommendations are from Battery University.)

Dont's

Don't continuing charging a battery after it has attained a full charge.
Don't expose the battery to extreme heat or direct sunlight. Be aware of the green house effect in your car or home.
Keep the batteries warm on cold days. When you are ready to use the battery on a cold day, you will have more of the battery charge left if you have kept it warm. (The three points above are from page 249 of the Nikon D90 user manual).
Don't frequently discharge the battery completely.
If possible, don't charge or discharge the battery at a high rate. For example, you may be able to avoid a high discharge rate in a camera by reducing the use of the LCD screen. (The last two recommendations are from Battery University.)

Related Articles

Nikon under-documenting the D90 SLR (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)

Nikon under-documenting the D90 SLR

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 14:45:00 +0000

After years of shooting with a film SLR and a "point and shoot" digital camera, I finally graduated to using a Digital SLR late last year with my purchase of the Nikon D90. However, given that modern day digital SLRs are significantly more complex than their point and film SLR brethren, I ended up using the D90 as a very expensive digital point and shoot. The myriad configuration options on the camera seemed to be a complete mystery. The stock manual that came with the camera explained all the buttons and menu options but rarely helped me take better pictures. My confidence in my ability with the camera could not be worse.

A year after my purchase, I decided to buy a book to help me figure out the camera - in the hope that the effort would lead to better pictures. I bought and quickly read "Mastering the Nikon D90" by Darrell Young. This books is a guided tour of the Nikon D90 with suggestions on getting the best of the camera for specific situations. Having read the book, I have a much better understanding of the D90's capabilities, than I did from reading the manual. Consequently, my confidence in handling the camera has sky rocketed. Initial results are encouraging (see here for a larger version of the shot accompanying photo).

I finally understand how best to setup the camera for a post processing work flow with Adobe Lightroom, how to shoot pictures using the histogram displays for correct exposure, hot to use the advanced AF system for static and moving objects and how best to reduce vibration for sharp photos. I even ended up experimenting with shooting video using the D90 - while I already knew, that the D90 could shoot video, I didn't think that getting the video to display on my Samsung HDTV would be as easy as it was - it literally took just 30 seconds to set it all up!

Given how versatile and effective the Nikon D90 is, and how efficiently beginners like me can ramp up on its features with a little bit of hand holding, I am surprised that Nikon does not include "Mastering the Nikon D90" (or similar book) as part of its standard kit. I have to imagine that customer satisfaction would be way higher if consumers had an easier time unlocking the various camera features.

I wish I had realized the need for a book other than the manual a year ago when I first bought the camera. So many memories inadequately captured...

Netflix streaming over a Samsung setup gets a B+ (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)
Streaming Netflix to TV: requires more research than you would expect (hitechenergy.blogspot.com)

In search of a printer

noreply@blogger.com (Rohit Dube) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 02:30:00 +0000

I have finally decided to replace my home printer and scanner setup. The old printer got jostled in the last move and no longer prints cleanly – so the replacement has been forced upon me. As is the case with purchasing most electronic items today, the multitude of options is overwhelming. I thought it would be useful to document my annoyances with the existing setup and my likely usage of the new setup before sifting through the solution options.

First, I want to save on space. I currently have a separate black-and-white laser printer (Dell P1500) and HP flatbed scanner that sit on a two-tray trolley. With the new purchase I want to replace these two units with a single-unit compact multifunction printer/scanner. This would allow me to free up the bottom of the trolley.

Second, I want the printer/scanner to be wireless accessible. Fighting the cables under the desk is problematic enough when my laptop is located close to the printer/scanner. A pending room re-arrangement will pull the printer/scanner further away from work desk and make the cable situation worse.

Third, I want the scanner to have respectable speed. My current scanner (purchased used in 2006 for $5 at a garage sale and probably 10+ years old) takes upwards of 30 seconds to warm up. Further, each document scan takes ~60 seconds (one scan to preview and a second to actually register the full image), not counting the time it takes to save the image on a hard drive. The slow speed dissuades my wife from using the scanner as much as she otherwise would (for example to scan purchase receipts.)

Fourth, I want a fast and reliable printer. Color is not a requirement. Most of the time, my wife and I print out text documents – either for reading (example interesting articles or papers) or for submissions to a third party (example documentation required for insurance). We don’t print pictures at home and that is unlikely to change in the near future. Our expected print usage will be in the ~100 pages/month range.

Fifth, given that I have largely replaced using a fax with scanning and emailing, and that I don't actually have a landline, having a fax option on the scanner is not a requirement.

The above “constraints” seem to imply that I should get a multi-function wifi black-and-white laser printer with a built-in scanner. Looking around on Amazon.com, I discovered the Brother MFC-7840W for $250. Print speed at 23ppm is plenty. But at 25lb and ~21in x 21in x 21in it looks bulky and it comes with a built-in FAX that I probably won't use. The printer also comes with wifi but Amazon.com customer reviews indicate that configuration and operability through a wifi router is problematic. Scanning can’t be any slower than my current scanner, but to test the scan speed and file size for a basic text document, I will probably need to find a floor model in a local store.

Any other alternatives that I should consider while I am out shopping?