jeffmcfadden.com

ESV API Gem

2012-01-23T16:00:00-07:00

This weekend someone tweeted me asking if esv.jeffmcfadden.com was down temporarily or permanently.

The site had actually been down ever since I moved my website off of PHP (a long time ago). I hadn’t bothered to bring the site back, mostly out of laziness/busyness.

Having a couple hours of free time I figured now was as good a time as any to bring the site back. From doing some research a while ago I knew I’d end up writing my own ESV API gem because what was already out there wasn’t really what I was looking for.

I wanted a gem I could easily drop into my rails app that wrapped all the methods in the API in a dead-simple and straightforward way. It needed to work with rails 3.1 on ruby 1.9. I wanted to be able to call the api and get html back that I could just drop into a view.

After a couple of hours I came up with esv_api. To test it out I threw together a quick rails app for the esv site and dropped it onto Heroku.

If you use the gem or find it helpful I’d love to hear from you.

Inexpensive Live Streaming For Your Church

2011-12-31T15:46:00-07:00

Last winter, from January through March, our church attendance was down nearly 30%. Between a few vacations and an intense RSV and Flu season the congregation was knocked down pretty hard. Knocked down and out (of the service), but not completely out of participation thanks to our live stream.

We’ve been livestreaming video of our service since we started 2.5 years ago. When we planted, I couldn’t find any helpful information about livestreaming that wasn’t aimed at large churches with much larger budgets than we were working with. Looking around recently for some equipment I still couldn’t find a good reference. So, here’s a bit of a history of what we’ve done at Grace Church. Hopefully it can be of help!

Getting Started

Diving into livestreaming isn’t free, but even the smallest of churches (we started with 30 people) can participate.

To get started you’ll need someone dedicated to the task of acquiring equipment, learning how it all works together, and training others to help out.

Equipment

At a minimum you’ll need a computer, a camera, possibly a video adapter, an audio feed from your soundboard, an internet connection, and an account with a video streaming service.

Computer

To stream your service you’re going to need a computer. The computer takes the video from the camera and encodes it into a format ready for streaming via the streaming service. To be able to encode video at the quality you probably want, you’ll need a relatively powerful computer. Look for something with at least an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. If you’re already using a computer for projecting words for songs, you might be able to use that computer to do double duty.

We’re a portable church, and we use mostly Apple equipment, so we’re using a 15” Macbook Pro. Our pastor uses it as his computer during the week.

If you’re going to use a firewire video converter like the one below you’ll need a computer with a Firewire 400 or 800 input.

Cost: $0 (If the computer you own will work, or you can borrow one) - $1199

Video Camera

When we got started we just used a cheap Logitech webcam as our video camera. The quality was low. You could barely see the stage. But it worked! It was better than nothing for the family stuck at home with sick kids.

Today you can buy a Canon Vixia Camcorder for under $300. If you’re going to convert your video for uploading later (to a service like vimeo) then you’ll want to get an HD camcorder.

The only requirement of your camcorder is that it has live composite or S-Video output. What this means is that the camera will output a low-def video feed at the same time that it is recording.

If you really have no plans to record your video on the camera, you can ditch the live-output requirement, and maybe even pick up an older still camera with video output.

Also keep in mind that if your camera is going to be in the back of a room you’ll want a high optical zoom (10x+). You do not care at all about the term “digital zoom”. “Digital Zoom” is a hoax. You only care about optical zoom.

Cost: $79-$400+

Video Adapter

If you aren’t using a basic webcam, then you’ll need a way to get the video stream from the camera to the computer. This is where the video adapter comes in. If you have a computer with a firewire port of some kind, then go buy one of these.

If you don’t have a firewire port, then you’ll need to find another solution. Livestream Procaster (which we’ll talk about below) works best with devices from Canopus, but you’ll want to verify that your device is supported before you buy.

Cost: $150+

Internet Connection

To stream live you’ll need an internet connection. For the best quality you’ll need something with at least a 1 Megabit Per Second upload speed. You can get away with a bit slower if you lower the quailty of the video you’re uploading.

Being a portable church, we don’t have any internet available to us in our building. We’ve opted to go with a 4G LTE Card from Verizon, attached to a Cradlepoint Wireless Router

Cost: $0 (You already have it)-$60/month

Streaming Service Account

Don’t bother looking around. Just go to livestream.com and sign up now. It’s free ($350/m if you don’t want ads to appear in your stream) and it Just Works. They have native software for both Windows and Mac.

Download the free Procaster software.

Cost: Free

Audio Feed

The last thing you’ll need is an audio feed from your soundboard. Talk to your sound operator about what you’ll need to get a feed to your computer. Usually you’ll just need a simple audio cable and maybe an adapter.

If you don’t have a sound board then you’ll need somekind of mic setup to get the feed for your stream.

If you’re really stuck you could try just pulling in the ambient room audio from a microphone at the computer. This might get you by, but you’ll be dealing with some pretty bad audio, and you’ll pick up voices of anyone whispering nearby (potentially embarassing!).

Putting It All Together

So you’ve spend somewhere between $79 and $3000 getting the equipment you need to be able to livestream your service. What now?

Take the video (and maybe audio depending on how you want to set things up) out of your video camera and feed it into your video converter (and thus into your computer).
Take the audio feed and either feed it into the camcorder (if you’re going to record live on the camera) or into the computer doing the streaming.
Fireup the Livestream Procaster software and login to your account. Configure any settings under the preference tabs, then click “Go Live”! You’re streaming!

Upgrades

At Grace Church, in the time since we started streaming, we’ve upgraded equipment and updated workflow, but the basics are all the same, and we still don’t have a huge budget.

We upgraded our camera from a webcam to a camcorder + video adapter. We upgraded our tripod recently.

Here are some other options available to you as you upgrade your setup:

Get A Better camera
Get Multiple cameras
Remove the ads from your streaming service
Embed the livestream on your website
Use the high+mobile quality streaming to give everyone a chance to view your stream wherever they are
Promote your stream on Twitter and Facebook

Keep Streaming

This isn’t the post for it, but there are a lot of great reasons to keep streaming your services for your congregation. From the sick or elderly to the mothers’ cry room, there are members of your church that can’t otherwise participate in your Sunday Service. A livestream helps keep them connected and ultimately builds the church. So keep on streaming.

Android 4.0

2011-10-18T20:30:00-07:00

Summary

Joshua Topolsky (emp. mine):

This question sparked deep user studies at Google on mobile phone use, what Matias described as “Serious baseline ethnographic research which hadn’t happened before.” He tells me that the company spent a great deal of time and effort watching how and why regular people used their smartphones. Not just Android phones, but all smartphones. The company even had employees “shadow” users, visiting them at their homes and workplaces to watch how they interacted with their devices. Matias wouldn’t share numbers, but intimated that the study was a significant undertaking.

This, in my mind, is the battle that Google is constantly facing. In a rigid engineering-biased culture, how do you build products or platforms for people who aren’t engineers?

In the same article Matias Duarte says, “We want to create wonder. We wanted to simplify people’s lives.” Duarte is amazing at what he does, and I wish him the best of luck in turning that ship.

Roboto

I actually like it. Has character.

Screen Resolution

The new expected resolution for Android 4 phones is 1280x720. The best I can figure this requires a 4+ inch display. Is this really the case? Will everyone really start walking around with mini-tablets in their hands?

The Google Apps

The updates look great. Google’s apps have always been good on Android. So good, that in my experience they were just about all I used. I found few things that came even slightly close to them in quality and ease of use.

No more hardware buttons?

Seems that those hardware buttons are going away, which is a Good Thing. The sooner Android can ditch those buttons the better.

Face Unlock

Didn’t work in the demo, which gives me no confidence it will work in practice. How maddening if you can’t get your phone to unlock. What do you do, stare at it harder? Maybe I’m wrong and it’ll work everywhere but the demo.

Looks like intra-app sharing has gotten even better. Android blows iOS away on this front; I really wish this behavior was available on my iPhone.

User Experience

Again, from the Topolsky interview:

Matias also told me that a new style guide was being prepped for developers with lots of off-the-rack pieces that would make it easier for third-parties to create the same kind of streamlined, beautiful applications I saw in Ice Cream Sandwich.

If you’re and Android user, this should be wonderful news. Android apps are an inconsistent mess of UI across the board. Some level of convention would be amazing for Android users.

Availability

I haven’t heard yet when you can buy a non-Google Android 4 phone yet. Given history though, it could be nearly a year, by which point you could get an iPhone 5, or a Metro phone.

If the Galaxy Nexus really is the Big Hit Android 4 phone though, maybe the Android experience really will improve afterall.

Siri

2011-10-18T09:00:00-07:00

Is anyone singing love songs to their Android voice control? Probably not.

My Android-using friends will just watch that video and mock it saying that, clearly, iPhone users are not jobs. Well, the truth of that notwithstanding, Siri is a great example of the different approaches between Android and iPhone.

On Android, you have Voice Control. What more do you need? You tell your phone what to do, and stuff usually happens.

But on iOS, you have Siri, a friendly virtual assistant. At the end of the day you can make all the same appointments, reminders, and dictation on either platform (Having used it, I’d say Siri is much better than Android at all of these tasks today, but no doubt Google will catch up on the interaction side). On one, you’re going to have fun doing it. On the other, it’s just another feature.

This, to me, summarizes the difference in the iOS and Android approaches: Android is giving you features, as many as possible. iOS is giving you an experience, as delightful as possible.

Kindle

2011-10-17T22:12:00-07:00

John Gruber:

E-ink feels peaceful to me. The Kindle doesn’t feel like a computer. It feels — not to the touch but to the eyes and mind — like a crudely-typeset and slightly smudgily-printed paper book. That’s a good thing. Battery life is un-computer-like as well: Amazon measures e-ink Kindle battery life in months, and they’re not joking. It’s a surprise when the Kindle actually needs a charge. I was a doubter until I owned one, but now I’m convinced that e-ink readers have tremendous value even in the post-iPad world.

Gruber nails it on this one. E-ink really does feel “peaceful” when you’re reading it. When I take my iPad or my phone outside to sit and read, I feel like it’s a device of anticipation, giddily awaiting the next moment that I’m going to launch an app, send a tweet, or take a picture.

But when I sit down with my Kindle it really feels like all it wants to do is sit lazily all day and turn a few pages. I’m not even sure if Amazon knew what they were on to when they picked up E-ink for their reader. Maybe it’s really the E-ink guys that deserve all the praise.

Regardless, if I’m going to sit down to just read these days, you can bet I’m going to grab the Kindle to do it. E-ink really does seem to have a place in the world; I hope it doesn’t go away any time soon.

iPhone 4S Falls Short

2011-10-12T12:43:00-07:00

October 5, 2011:

”Features on Apple’s iPhone 4S fall short of high expectations”

Even though the iPhone 4S is an improvement over its predecessor, it isn’t being perceived as a breakthrough partly because it’s not being branded as an iPhone 5 as most people had been expecting, said Prashant Malaviya, a marketing professor at Georgetown University.

October 11, 2011:

“4S preorders topped 1 million the first day you could order it, topping the iPhone 4. Does this iPhone live up to the hype?”

This is just funny.

Ideas Don’t Happen Because They Are Great

2011-10-10T17:14:00-07:00

Matt Perman, quoting Scott Belsky:

Ideas don’t happen because they are great — or by accident. The misconception that great ideas inevitably lead to success has prevailed for too long. Whether you have the perfect solution for an everyday problem or a bold new concept for a creative masterpiece, you must transform vision into reality.

I can’t tell you how many people come to me with “I have an idea for an app…” and simultaneously expect me (or some other developer) to front all the money, push all the sales, and market the whole thing.

It’s not a good idea until you do something, and even then, it might turn out to be a rotten idea after all.

If it’s a really great idea why not take a risk and make it reality?

Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T17:05:00-07:00

apple.com/stevejobs

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

James 4:14 (ESV)

yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

NFL Changes Rule on Microphones for Centers

2011-10-01T13:01:00-07:00

ESPN Reporting:

The memo does not specify the reasons for a change in protocol, but players, coaches and executives who have spoken with ESPN on the condition of anonymity say they believe it is the result of persistently expressed concerns about the practice of teams using technology to detect opponents’ verbal audibles, snap cadences and in-line adjustments. On Monday night, Costa claimed the opposing Redskins were shouting out simulated snap counts similar to Romo’s normal cadence, which resulted in errant snaps from center.

Fascinating side effect of technology in a highly-competitive space.

Amazon Losing $10 on Every Kindle Fire?

2011-10-01T09:54:00-07:00

According to IHS iSuppli, as reported in PC Magazine Amazon is losing $10 on every Kindle Fire they sell.

Who knows how true this is. We know, for example, that Apple, with it’s massive volume and remarkable supply line, pays less than just about everyone else for component. So how is iSuppli supposed to know the deals that Amazon makes for parts?

Even if they are losing $10 per Kindle you can be sure that they’ll make that up, and more. The $40 “discount” they give for their ad-supported Kindles is a clear indicator that the ad-supported functionality alone is worth $40 per device to them.

Bezos is a smart, competent business owner. Unlike the yahoos at HP, you can be assured that Amazon isn’t throwing their cash out the door just for grins.

I’m still really skeptical of all these iSuppli parts costs lists though.

Twitter Study Tracks When We Are :)

2011-09-30T12:22:00-07:00

From the New York Times:

Drawing on messages posted by more than two million people in 84 countries, researchers discovered that the emotional tone of people’s messages followed a similar pattern not only through the day but also through the week and the changing seasons. The new analysis suggests that our moods are driven in part by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment.

I find this fascinating.

Amazon to Buy Palm?

2011-09-30T11:50:00-07:00

No idea how true this is, but let’s assume it’s true so we can ask a few fun questions:

Would Amazon want Palm for the Patents, or WebOS?

Seems likely that they’d want the patents more than WebOS. They’ve jumped into the Android pool rather head-first with the Fire and their App Store. Hard to see them backing away from that.

On the other hand there are a lot of good reasons to think that a solid mobile device patent portfolio is something that Amazon could use to defend themselves going forward. It’s not like Amazon has been afraid of hoarding patents in the past.
Is this kind of deal still on the table given all of HPs CEO issues?

Will HP still want to sell these assets after yet another CEO change? Will they change corporate directions yet again in the next few weeks? Will they want to hold onto the TouchPad so they can continue selling it at a $400 loss for each unit they sell?
How much would Amazon have to pay for Palm assets?

I think $99 would be a fair HP-quality price for something like this.

Inquiring minds want to know.

The New Amazon Kindles

2011-09-28T15:54:00-07:00

From the bottom up:

The new Kindle looks like a great step. The price is so low there doesn’t seem to be any reason to buy anything else. Granted it’s trick pricing (see below) but the price has been slashed substantially no matter how you look at it. A lot of new people are going to own Kindles after this Christmas.

The Kindle Touch looks like a nice upgrade for a current Kindle owner. Personally I hate the non-touch interface, and I’m considering upgrading just for that. X-Ray seems like a great new feature, as does an even lighter device.

The Fire is just about everything one would have expected it to be, but the price is even lower than most people were guessing. Clearly the idea is that you buy an Amazon Fire to read Kindle books, watch Amazon Movies, and listen to your Amazon MP3s. That you can play games on it is just a bonus. If you just want a color Kindle, this is less than half the price of an iPad.

I haven’t read any in-depth reviews yet, but I will be interested to hear about the overall performance of the device. Amazon has built it on Android, but this isn’t your Xoom’s Android. This is Amazon’s totally custom fork, built with their device(s) in mind only. We’ll just have to wait and see how well that works out.

The hidden gem of today’s announcements, in my opinon, is Amazon Silk, the Fire’s web browser. The short summary is that Amazon is complicating the delivery process of websites by injecting themselves as a high-performance proxy with the idea of improving performance of the tablet’s browser. Most likely this is to beef up performance of an otherwise sluggish browsing experience. There are myriad performance, privacy, and security implications that only time will really flesh out, but it’s an interesting move that might yield both better browsing for Fire owners as well as some very interesting data for Amazon to play with.

Amazon Tablet Tomorrow

2011-09-27T21:29:00-07:00

It’s the day before the Amazon tablet announcement, and really most of it has already been announced, but I thought I’d throw out my thoughts before it’s revealed, mostly for my own fun.

Color Screen Duh.
7” Screen I can’t remember if we have been told the details on this yet or not. Seems rather unlikely to me that they’ll try to make it any bigger. 7” keeps it right near the same size as the current kindle.
Touch Screen Only No physical keyboard. Most likely it’ll have the same stupid Android hardward buttons every other android device has.
Runs Android
No mention of Google anywhere I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t even say “Android” anywhere. Everything is going to be branded Amazon. The store, the apps, the device. All Amazon.
$299
Available within the next 2 weeks
Extensive battery life You’re going to be able to read all day with this thing.
It’s not an iPad competitor They’re not trying to compete with the iPad, they’re trying to sell more books, movies, tv shows, music. This thing is going to come pre-hooked up with all the CloudDrive, etc. etc. — turn it on and login with your Amazon account. Buy anything you want with a single click.

No matter what happens tomorrow I’m looking forward to seeing a device by a company that knows how to provide a great product.

Netflix Secures Streaming Deal With DreamWorks

2011-09-25T21:22:00-07:00

New York Times reporting:

LOS ANGELES — DreamWorks Animation, the company behind successful movie franchises like “Madagascar” and “Shrek,” said it had completed a deal to pump its films and television specials through Netflix, replacing a less lucrative pact with HBO.

The Netflix accord, which analysts estimate is worth $30 million per picture to DreamWorks over an unspecified period of years, is billed by the companies as the first time a major Hollywood supplier has chosen Web streaming over pay television.

It is also a bet by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the animation studio’s chief executive, that consumers in the near future will not distinguish between the two. “We are really starting to see a long-term road map of where the industry is headed,” Mr. Katzenberg said in an interview. “This is a game-changing deal.”

Who’s next?

Update: But it doesn’t start until 2013? That’s pretty lame.

Netflix Did the Right Thing

2011-09-25T12:00:00-07:00

The writing is on the wall and it says, “DVDs are dead.”

The DVD business is expensive to operate, requires loads of employees to get the job done, and relies on the USPS, which is going to have fewer delivery days and higher rates in the future.

By rebranding the DVD side of the business they afford themselves the opportunity to sell it off in the near future. When DVDs only arrive 3 days a week because the USPS drops it’s delivery days, people will say, “Netflix wouldn’t have done this.” When prices go up 200% because postage rates continue to skyrocket, people will say, “Netflix wouldn’t have done this.” When workers are laid off and DVDs take longer and longer to turn around and more and more mistakes happen people will say, “Netflix wouldn’t have done this.”

But of course they would have had to, because DVDs are a desperate, dying business.

Dish Network, after buying Blockbuster’s assets, is going to get into the same game. Let’s see how that’s working out 12 months from now.

Still, Netflix is taking a big gamble — they’re betting the company on their ability to make some killer content deals to keep people happy with their streaming service. If they can’t pull this off then Netflix is toast, finished, done for. But at least this way they have a chance.

The bird was already doused with gasoline. Yes, they lit the match. Now we all stare at the ashes waiting to see if anything happens.

Software Is Hard

2011-09-23T00:00:00-07:00

I am terrible at attempting to estimate how long a programming task will take. I’ve learned to take my instinct and at least double it, but often I’m still off by an order of magnitude (usually low, sometimes high).

Sometimes my estimates are wrong because the client changes the nature of the task half-way through. Sometimes my estimates are wrong because I get sick or there’s a family emergency in the middle of the project. But almost always the reason that my estimates are so awful is because ** I’m creating something that has never existed before. **

Sure, a button similar to this one exists in another app somewhere. And that ability to download a file like this isn’t unique. But never before in the history of man kind have they been put together in just this way.

Moreover, the natural state of software is failure. **Normally**, something is going wrong. The version of the library you tested against isn’t the same one the user has. The user’s network connection suddenly dropped in the middle of trying to read that file. The battery died while the user preference were being saved. The user thought it would be fun to edit the save game file *just to see what would happen.*

And since the natural state of software is failure, most of the programmer’s efforts must go into protection and prevention. No where is this more evident than in networking code. By it’s nature networking is unreliable and fault tolerant. That’s what makes it so robust. An overtaxed router can just drop some packets in order to make sure some others get delivered. Usually those are your packets.

Every time you read from the network, you must assume that your data will not arrive, or will arrive in a corrupt state. Every time you write data to the network, it’s just as bad.

And what makes all this failure especially hard is that the user doesn’t care how hard it is. The user doesn’t know what a packet is, and certainly doesn’t know why if one router dropped it another can’t just pick it up off the floor, dust it off, and send it on it’s way.

The user does not care, but neither should she care. She just wants it to work. So when those downloads fail, she expects them to pick right back up where they were when we comes back. When her file fails to save over the network she doesn’t want to know about “Error 112: Unexpected socket timeout” — she wants you to save that file, never mind how.

And this is why software is hard. As Dick Cheney might say, there are myriad unknown unknowns. It’s hard to find the needle in the haystack. It’s harder to find a needle in the haystack at night. But it doesn’t get really hard until you have to find all the needles in all the haystacks in the warehouse. At night. And tomorrow the kindergarten class is coming to play in the hay, so all those needles you miss…

Google and Skyhook, A Technical Perspective

2011-05-12T00:00:00-07:00

Great article here about the Google v Skyhook lawsuit. Tons of interesting information about the relationship between Google and Android Handset makers.

Plenty of others will write about the heavy-handed approach that Google is taking with handset makers, and how it doesn’t feel very “open” for a company that touts it’s openness that over and over.

What I want to talk about is an interesting technical explanation for the problems Google was having, and potentially part of their motivation for throwing down the hammer on Motorola.

A central point that Google kept making in these documents is the concern about contaminating their own location database with information from Skyhook. Here’s why I think their concern is legitimate.

Any modern smartphone uses typically 3 different methods (or a combination of these) to determine your location:

1) The location of the cell towers

This differs between CDMA and GSM, but the basic idea is that the cell phone can know where the cell towers that it’s taking to are, and use those locations to determine it’s approximate position.

2) Wifi Access Points

This method, made popular by Skyhook, uses your wifi antenna to “see” which wifi access points are visible, and at what signal strength. That data is sent to the wifi location database (Skyhook or Google) and a location is returned. This location is approximate, and relies on the service provider collecting massive amounts of data with GPS and wifi antennas, typically by driving around or using cell phones as data collection devices.

3) GPS

By using a GPS receiver in the phone, the phone can get it’s exact location on earth, typically within a few meters.

There are lots of reason to pick one method over another. The most common is battery requirements. Using a cell tower uses the least battery because that radio is always on anyway. You don’t have to use extra power. Wifi is used because it’s faster to get a location and typically uses less power than GPS. It’s also typically more accurate than cell tower triangulation (much more so on CDMA). Finally, GPS will always give you the most accurate location, but it uses the most battery power, takes the longest time to get a location (usually), and doesn’t work well (if at all) if you don’t have a clear view of the sky.

The problem that Google seems to have had with Motorola using Skyhook in their phones is that the Skyhook locations were being reported as a GPS location by the phone.

Now, it’s important to realize that Google uses their phones as a wifi location database collection tool (well documented in the lawsuit documentation, above). Here’s how that process works:

First, get a GPS fix that’s accurate
Second, take a look at all the wifi access points you can see, and their signal strengths.
Finally, send that signal data, along with the GPS fix, to Google.

The problem that Google was having was that the phone could think that it had a GPS fix when in fact all it had was a Skyhook location approximation. This means that Google would be populating it’s own wifi location database with Skyhook locations. This would be both potentially inaccurate and potentially lawsuit inducing if Skyhook thought that it was intentional or through fairly obvious negligence.

You can argue about whether or not Google should be building it’s database through all these Android phones or not. But it seems pretty clear that from a technical perspective there were some good reasons to not let Skyhook be used in this way. Whether they decided to throw down the hammer on Motorola about this was based on this technical reason or more nefarious intents someone else will have to decide.

Either way I wouldn’t be surprised if future versions of Android ship with Skyhook’s wifi location service built in, but without sending that data back to Google and instead working in tandem with Google’s own location database building desires.

How Android Wants To Be Like Intel

2011-05-10T00:00:00-07:00

It’s become common to compare iOS and Android to Apple v Microsoft of the 1980s-1990s. As the theory goes, Android is going to come from behind and stomp on the once dominant iOS platform, becoming the One Phone To Rule Them All.

Google, however, seems to have slightly different ambitions.

Gloria Sin, writing for ZDNet:

Imagine if your fridge could automatically ping you on your phone that you need to pick up more milk the next time you go grocery shopping. How about if the lighting and music is synced perfectly with your video game to make the experience even more immersive as demoed on stage? Consumers in the future will be able to purchase an Android @ Home receiver to do just that: to communicate with your Android-enabled appliances, and download apps to control those devices through your tablet or other mobile device.

It seems to me that Google doesn’t want Android to be the new Windows. Rather, Google wants Android to be the Intel of software. Know those “Intel Inside” stickers on every laptop and desktop PC out there? Imagine the same thing, but on your fridge, with a green robot.

Already Android isn’t really a Phone OS, or even a Phone and Tablet OS. Rather, it’s a loose platform that allows Google to widen the pool of potential advertising recipients and gather ever more data to sell to ever more advertisers. Every phone manufacturer has enough modifications to the basic stock Android builds that it’s a very different experience phone to phone. Phone to tablet to phone is even more diverse. The one consistent factor is that you’ll see AdMob (read: Google) ads in most of your apps.

Now imagine if Google could gather data not just from phones and laptops and TV sets, but from refrigerators, cars, toasters and electric boxes. If your Android powered mirror could just see your face in the morning it would know how strong your coffee should be, and maybe offer you a special deal on 5-hour energy.

Google doesn’t want to be Microsoft. They don’t want to have a unified experience across a wide range of commodity hardware. Maybe that’s because trying to get the mobile industry to move to commodity hardware is crazy hard, if not impossible. That’s not a bad reason. But I think it’s even deeper than that. Google doesn’t want to be Microsoft because they don’t just want to be on every PC, or every Phone, or every Tablet. Google wants to be on everything that runs on electricity.

Eastwood

2011-04-14T07:00:00-07:00

From an interview with Esquire:

And now that we are supposedly entering the next crisis of masculinity — this time the world doesn’t need men because we can’t listen, we can’t sit still in kindergarten, and so all society will shortly be a massive gynocracy in which men’s primary role will be as the problem children of successful mothers and wives — we need Eastwood more than ever. Whatever else has changed over the past fifty years, self-mastery and control over our lives are still what we want more than anything.

Eastwood is not a perfect personification of masculinity, but he is a striking example of modeling self-control and restraint in a world full of machoism and excess. I need to go watch Unforgiven again.