If you aren’t familiar with bookmarklets they are little bits of JavaScript for doing things on the current webpage you are on that you run via a web browser bookmark. I used the excellent bookmarklet builder at subsimple.com to take my JavaScript and turn it into a bookmarklet. For a more in-depth understanding of bookmarklets check out the article on Wikipedia.

When you click on this bookmarklet it will create a QR code using Bit.ly and show it in the top right hand corner of the page. Then use your favorite QR code reader (my Windows Phone has a great one built into the search) and click on the link. You can make the QR code disappear by clicking on it.

To add this bookmarklet drag the link below to your bookmark toolbar. You can try it out to see what it does by just clicking on the link and it will run on this page.

QR code this page

Waterfall

In a waterfall process the development flows sequentially downward through each phase of the model: requirement definition, design, implementation, verification, etc. Each of these steps are really a form of what I call “intellectual inventory”. The phases in the model change from company to company but this is basically what happens:

1. An inventory of requirements is created before the product can be designed
2. An inventory of design is built before engineers can code
3. Engineering produces an inventory of untested/buggy code before QA can test
4. QA builds up an inventory of defects for engineering to go back and fix
5. Maybe user experience then builds a list of usability defects to go back and fix

Keep in mind that each phase in this process will be at least one month and usually quite a bit longer than that depending on the project. That means when you get to step 5 you have two choices:

1. Don’t fix any issues and ship anyway
2. Ship very late and go back to step 2

Neither option is very good for you, your customers, or your company. There is another industry that used to produce their products this way that we should learn a lot from: the auto industry.

Lesson’s from another industry

Cars used to get produced in huge batches as it was seen as inefficient to produce a variety of cars at the same time. Large caches of parts were held in inventory every step of the way to minimize fluctuation in supply and demand. This resulted in greatly reduced flexibility. In fact the Model T famously came in any color you wanted “so long as it is black.” This was the Ford way, and Ford was seen as the epitome of success with their assembly line production.

Then Toyota came along with their Toyota Production System (TPS) in the 1950s and changed the whole game. TPS is now more generically referred to as Just-In-Time (JIT) Production. In a JIT world inventory equals waste, by definition. Consider this paragraph from Wikipedia on a TPS principal known as Heijunka (production leveling):

“To prevent fluctuations in production … it is important to try to keep fluctuation in the final assembly line to zero. Toyota’s final assembly line never assembles the same automobile model in a batch. Production is leveled by making first one model, then another model, then yet another. In production leveling, batches are made as small as possible in contrast to traditional mass production, where bigger is considered better. When the final assembly process assembles cars in small batches, then the earlier processes, such as the press operation, have to follow the same approach. Long changeover times have meant that economically it was sound to punch out as many parts as possible. In the Toyota Production System this does not apply. Die changes (changeovers) are made quickly and improved even more with practice. In the 1940s it took two to three hours, in the 1950s it dropped from one hour to 15 minutes, now it takes three minutes.“

TPS actually does the exact opposite thing to minimize fluctuations in production. Even though this minimizes fluctuations it actually improves responsiveness to customer and market demands. Most cars are available in at least a dozen colors and have so many possible options (sunroof, satellite radio, GPS, power seats, engines, transmissions, etc) that there are potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of possible versions of a very common car such as a Toyota Camry.

Hidden benefit of Scrum

Of the many advantages to Scrum which are commonly cited the most important benefit is implied but never really articulated and that is reducing what I call “intellectual inventory”. Software development can have many forms of this type of inventory. It can be any artifact (requirement/PRD, design document, untested code, etc) that is completely created before being passed off to another functional role.

The key steps of the waterfall process are actually all forms of Intellectual Inventory: requirement definition, design, implementation, and verification. In fact the waterfall model is basically building up inventories in large batches.

Creating requirements takes a lot of “non-development” time from team members like the Product Owner/Manager, User Experience, Design, etc. The more complete the requirements are the more investment you are making. It takes development time to implement something that doesn’t get tested. Even if it does get tested but the feature is too buggy to pass QA you have still invested in something with zero return; even though your engineers were “done” with their phase of the waterfall.  Make no mistake about it, intellectual inventory is something you spend investment on.

Intellectual Inventory = Waste

In an Agile/Scrum model intellectual inventory = waste as well. Requirements that are twelve months from being implemented don’t need to be refined to the point that the feature could be implemented today. A lot can change in a year and that feature could get dropped, expanded on, or maybe it will be delivered in a different way (iPad app instead of desktop client, HTML5 instead of Flash, etc) because users and the market change. Clearly any time spent refining the requirements that are discarded would have been a complete waste. Of course in practice it isn’t possible to completely eliminate inventory, but it can be greatly reduced.

Let’s go back to that quote from Wikipedia and see what it looks like when hypothetically applied to software now (changes in bold):

“To prevent fluctuations in production it is important to try to keep fluctuation in the final assembly line to zero. Facebook’s final assembly line never assembles the same product features in a batch. Production is leveled by making first one feature, then another feature, then yet another. In Scrum, batches are made as small as possible in contrast to waterfall, where bigger is considered better. … Long changeover times have meant that economically it was sound to create out as many features as possible. In Scrum this does not apply. Requirement changes are made quickly and improved even more with practice. In the 1980s it took two to three hours, in the 1990s it dropped from one hour to 15 minutes, now it takes three minutes.”

I have personally seen feedback from our user experience (UX) team make it into a shipped product in less than a month from when they did user testing on the product that was in development. That type of responsiveness is impossible in a waterfall model because the UX would be done in a batch that would then lead to a batch of requirements, and so on. Just as in automobile production, reducing batch production of intellectual inventory allows much more responsiveness to consumer demand and reduces waste.

Waste is probably actually worse in software development than the auto industry. Even if a batch of cars is built that ends up having low demand they probably won’t be sold for less than the marginal cost to produce them, so the inventory still retains much of its value. If a requirement or design is never built because consumers don’t want it then the value of that inventory is zero. All of that investment was lost.

Just one similarity

Using JIT concepts to reduce intellectual inventory is of course just one aspect of Scrum that is similar to the principles of TPS. Here are some others:

• Self-organizing teams with daily status meetings and weekly retrospectives are just a form of Kaizen.
• Ability for any team member to bring any issue to light at any time in the development process is also a similar to the role of an Andon system.
• Using a “pull” system (as opposed to waterfall’s “push”) is basically Kanban.

So the next time you are trying to convince someone in your company of the virtues of adopting a “radical” process like Scrum point out how well these same principles worked for a plucky up-start named Toyota.

Full disclosure: I have an MBA (that’s how I learned about MBA-ish stuff like the Toyota Production System) and am a Certified Scrum Product Owner. ;)

For those of you who have never heard of Amazon Prime before this is it in a nutshell. Prime is a $79/year* membership with Amazon that entitles you (and three members of your household) to unlimited free two-day shipping with no minimum order price on any product fulfilled by Amazon.com. If you are really impatient you can even get $4/item overnight shipping.

*Prime is free if you are a student or you buy diapers from Amazon.

“I usually get free Super Saver shipping anyway”

A lot of people I mention Prime to tell me that they already usually get free shipping at Amazon.com by waiting until they have $25 of items to buy. Here is why Prime is different and vastly superior though. First, you don’t have to figure out $25 of things to buy if you just need one $8 product. Second, Amazon doesn’t just have UPS/Fedex/USPS/etc ship the package quicker for Prime, they actually fulfill the order and get it to the shipper sooner.

Back in my pre-Prime days my Super Saver orders usually shipped 1-3 days after I placed my order. Now with Prime it almost always ships within 12 hours, usually less. Basically you get to cut in line just like people in the First-Class security line at the airport. So instead of waiting a few days to order, three days for fulfillment, and seven days for shipping it is now replaced by less than a day to fulfill and two-days or less to ship.

Many purchases can’t wait a week

There are a lot of things in life that I buy that I don’t need this very second which are impractical to wait a week or more to receive though. The Super Saver shipping may be fine for much of the typical Amazon.com fare (books, music, videogames) but it doesn’t work for these items. Here is a small sample of things I purchased in the last 12-months that arrived in two days that I wouldn’t have waited for:

• “Weed wacker” Trimmer String
• Electric Lawn Mower (seriously. It is an excellent mower btw)
• Refrigerator Water Filter
• Windshield Wiper Blades
• Car Engine Air Filter
• Coyote Urine Deer Repellent
• Batteries (AAA, AA, cordless phone)
• Garage Door Opener Remotes
• Marshmallow Roasting Sticks
• Many Kitchen Tools
• Printer Toner
• Pre-ordered Video Games delivered on their release day
• Many last minute gifts

The best part of getting all of this stuff delivered to my house? Each one of them would have required a 30-60 minute errand to go buy it, I could easily comparison shop and read product reviews, and Amazon.com was always cheaper than the brick-and-mortar store I would have driven to. So the member hip pays for itself and it gives me more free time to do other things that are more important/fun.

Do yourself a favor and sign-up for an Amazon Prime free one-month trial and see for yourself how much time and money you can save.

This deficiency became apparent to me while coding something for work where I wanted to use JavaScript to calculate some basic math and statistics: mean, variance, standard deviation, etc. There weren’t any good libraries or code snippets I could find to do these functions easily.

I ended up throwing something together that got the job done but later decided that I could make it a lot more simple and reusable. Turns out that JavaScript’s prototyping capability is perfect for these types of operations. It turns Math.max.apply(Math, myArray) into myArray.max().

These are the methods I have implemented so far:

• Array.prototype.sum(): returns sum of all array values
• Array.prototype.min(): returns the lowest numeric value of an array
• Array.prototype.max(): returns the highest numeric value of an array
• Array.prototype.mean(): returns the arithmetic mean of an array
• Array.prototype.median(): returns the median of an array
• Array.prototype.sortNumber(boolean decending): returns array sorted ascending, or descending if sortNumber(true)
• Array.prototype.variance(): returns the variance of an array
• Array.prototype.stdDev(): returns standard deviation of an array
• normsinv(p): returns lower tail quantile for standard normal distribution function

These are just some basic Excel-type of functions. I am open to adding more functionality to the library, so if you would like to contribute some code or just have a suggestion for a useful function then please leave comment.

Download the script and examples here. You can also link against the minified version here if you would always like to use the latest version.

I started working at DivX as one of the product managers on the consumer software team. It has been a lot of fun and I have been able to take the lead on a lot of interesting projects. My products are the Codec Pack, Converter, and Web Player. The digital video space has been a really interesting place for the last couple of years and we’ve been able to turn some big key threats (Windows 7 and HTML5) into big opportunities through our software (Codec Pack and Web Player, respectively). The Web Player in particular is something that I have spent a lot of time on over the past year. We recently released a beta that introduces two new features that I am particularly proud of.

First, it now supports HTML5 API for <video> which is something I have been following for a long time. I am really glad to see HTML5 finally getting some traction but the one area where things are kind of still a mess it in the <video> space. There isn’t a consistently supported format across the major browsers yet, and some browser have a pretty low quality of playback. We are helping to alleviate this by delivering a HTML5 <video> platform with consistent support for multiple formats (H.264, MP4, MKV, MOV, and DivX), all in very high quality with hardware acceleration (when available), on Windows and Mac for Firefox, Chrome, and  even Internet Explorer. Users just have to have our plugin installed and it will support standard HTML5 <video> markup. Check out a little HTML5 demo I made to see how it works.

Second, we introduced a new feature we are calling DivX HiQ. It allows you to choose to use the DivX Plus Web Player on popular sites like YouTube and Vimeo instead of their default Flash players. As the Web Player is solely focused on video unlike Flash it offers a much better experience with dramatically lower CPU and power consumption. Don’t just take my word on it though see what users are posting about it on our forums.

I have also been doing a bit of programming since I’ve been really getting involved in a lot of web/HTML5 stuff through my work. I made an “Instant” search using Bing’s AJAX API which was novel until Google Instant came out. It is a fun project and it works really well on mobiles. I also created a Google Code project for a JavaScript statistics library (I hope my Purdue professors are proud :) and a Silverlight audio player that supports the HTML5 audio API that I made. I’ll probably blog about them more later.

That is a sampling of what I have been up to in the tech world. I will try to post more regularly (once or twice a month) about what is happening in HTML5, media, and the mobile landscape.

Xbox 360

• Xbox Live: Does anything really need to be said about this? Cross-game chat, invites, picture/text/video messaging, unified friends list, single sign-on account, etc. It is the pinnacle of a complete online gaming experience that is easy to use.
• Xbox Live Arcade and XNA: Microsoft have really created an awesome solution for bringing down the barriers to game development. I love the classics like Street Fighter II and the new originals like Geometry Wars.
• HD Out Of The Box: It is great how the Xbox 360 (with the exception of the arcade model) comes with cables to play HD right out of the box. No dealing with some Best Buy employee trying to sell you on the $2000 Monster HDMI cable for “better digital frequency response modulation support implementation colors”.
• Fast Disc Drive: Every good PS3 game requires an install now, but the 360’s drive is plenty fast to just drop in and play. I don’t prefer having to switch discs (which hasn’t happened on the 360 for me yet) for a game, but I don’t know how that is any worse than having to wait through an install before every act on Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3.
• Wireless Controllers: It is easy to take this for granted now that every system has them, but it is really nice not to have to deal with a bunch of wires. Especially when you have four people playing on a console at once.
• Choice: Probably my favorite aspect of Microsoft’s approach to gaming is having options. I could buy an Arcade model and latter add HD cables or a hard drive and have the Pro level experience. I can rent/buy content from various online sources (Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, and soon Netflix) other than Xbox Live. I can install games if I want too (soon) or I can just drop in the disc and play.
• Multimedia: You can play and control your music (even from an attached iPod) even while you are in a game. It supports a lot of formats (H.264, DivX, Windows Media, MPEG-2, MP3, and AAC). Xbox Live has HD movie and TV content. The Media Center Extender functionality is awesome. I can be watching a TV show and accept an invite to play Halo 3 and it will switch right to the game (Halo 3 is usually in my drive :). It has a built-in IR “eye” for my Harmony too.

Playstation 3

• Quiet: There is no doubt about it, the PS3 is the quietest “next-gen” console out. It is probably quieter than my first PS2 actually. Sony really hit one home on not being a audible nuisance.
• Downloadable games: Sony is really leading the way with full-size game downloads being simultaneously released on disc and online; only Steam does it better. Not only is it convenient to just download a game, but then you don’t need to switch discs to play a different one.
• Multimedia / Blu-ray: Like the 360 it has broad media format support and downloadable movie and TV content, but it also supports Blu-ray HD movies. In fact, it is still really the only Blu-ray player worth buying. Without the PS3 it is likely that Blu-ray would have lost the format war.
• Built-in wired AND wireless networking: It is nice to have both options. The wireless-G is great for most people, but I can still use a wireless-N bridge if I need too (I do on my 360 for HD streaming).
• Uses standard hard drives: It is really nice that you can purchase any 2.5” SATA hard drive to expand the storage of the PS3. Sony realizes that it should make money selling content (games, movies, TV, etc) not proprietary storage to hold it.
• Web Browser: This is something that I found a lot more useful than I was expecting. It is really a pretty good browser that even supports most Flash content and the controller is utilized really well for navigation.
• Wireless Controllers: Now that rumble is back in the form of the Dualshock 3 controller the PS3 has a proper wireless controller. The only thing I’d fix would be to include a bit longer recharging cable, but at least it uses standard USB connectors so I could always buy one.

Wii

• Different Kind Of Controller: While I personally don’t like how the Wii’s controllers work, it obviously appeals to a lot of other people, especially “non-gamers”. I know the Wii is the first console my sister ever wanted. Hopefully this will help break game design out of the repetitive use of the same control schemes we’ve seen for some time.
• Low Launch Price: You can’t under-estimate how much price has played into the success of the Wii. It definitely reaffirmed where the volume is in the market and I’m sure that will play into Microsoft’s and Sony’s future console plans; that is good for gamers.
• Included Game: The Wii is a major throwback to an era where a game was included with every system, and that game was a major driver for sales of the console. Wii Sports is still one of the best games for highlighting the Wii’s strengths while effectively managing its weaknesses. How many launch titles can usually pull that off?
• Wireless Controllers: It had to be mentioned for the Wii too right? Due to the use of Bluetooth for the Wii-mote, it has actually become quite useful for some really cool homebrew hacking of motion sensing software too.
• Mii’s: What a great way to personalize your gaming experience. they aren’t just an icon for your profile but are actually playable in your games. The Mii concept is so great that Microsoft is even copying it now with their avatars.
• Backwards Compatibility: The Wii is the only system that still completely supports the last-gen games. It even supports the old Gamecube controllers.
• Web Browser: The Wii-mote makes a great control device for using the web on a TV. Built-in Flash support is really great too. Although it isn’t included with the console, $5 is a very reasonable price.

Update: I posted a follow-up The Seven Ways Each “Next-Gen” Console Succeeds

Xbox 360

• HD-DVD: It should have come built-in. It would have allowed more room for games, disc-based HD movies, and the format may have actually survived if one of its two biggest backers actually got behind it.
• Better storage options: It should come with a much larger hard drive (especially at launch) and the ability to swap in standard 2.5” SATA drives. It would be really nice if it had the ability to use any standard USB key or SD card for a memory card too. The day of proprietary memory cards really should have ended already.
• Headset: Why aren’t the audio controls built into the controller so that any headset would work? I should be able to mute my wireless headset without taking my hands off the controller.
• Quieter: I know the DVD drive spins fast so that load times are shorter but some sound insulation would be nice. Maybe installing onto the hard drive will help this, but see bullet #2.
• Web Browser: I could understand not having a browser when the console launched, but the time is far overdue for the 360 to get the web. The PS3 and Wii each have it, and it is more useful than I would have guessed.
• D-Pad: For a console with so much classic and arcade content it is ridiculous how bad the D-pad is. I really think that they’d sell more XBLA games if it didn’t feel so wrong to play classics like Street Fighter II with that D-pad. It looks like they may actually fix this soon.

Playstation 3

• Better UI than the XMB: Sony, would it kill you to use some icons with color? After all, it is one of the key ways for people to quickly identify items (see #6). The XMB is about as intuitive a way to tie together hierarchal lists of functions and data as any OS’s file system. Playing music should not use the exact same UI as your friends list.
• Built-in IR “eye”: It may seem petty, but it drives me nuts that every AV device I own is controlled by my slick Harmony universal remote except for the PS3. If it really wants to be the center of my entertainment it needs to work with my existing stuff.
• More memory for textures: The low quality textures so often seen on the PS3 are really the only thing keeping it from surpassing the Xbox 360’s graphics. Low quality textures were the only thing that marred the otherwise amazing graphics of Metal Gear Solid 4 for me.
• Cables: Sony, get with the program and start including component HD and/or HDMI cables in the box. It is so nickel-and-dime to sell a $500 console based on its ability to play HD games without the cables to do it.
• Memory Card Readers: Drop ‘em, they probably cost more than an HDMI cable but almost nobody uses them.
• Real motion sensing: It is either all or nothing for me on this one, so Sony really shouldn’t have even bothered because Sixaxis is thoroughly mediocre. Even PS3 exclusive developers are saying that it is “useless”. It’d probably save Sony some money on making controllers too.

Wii

• Lackluster motion control: FYI, I really don’t enjoy playing the Wii. It isn’t that the concept is bad, I think the concept is great. The motion control is just so terrible though. For proof look no further than the existence of a first-party add-on to fix the motion control.
• Weak GPU and CPU: The graphics and CPU power should have been at least 50% greater than the original Xbox, and it should be able to output video in 720p. I’m not saying it should compete with the PS3/Xbox 360, it just needs to be better than all of the last-gen stuff. Low quality 480p looks pretty bad on those fancy flat-panel TVs. :)
• Friend Codes: Here is a tip Nintendo, look at what Microsoft is doing with Xbox Live and copy it.
• Media support: It is really ridiculous that the Wii doesn’t have legitimate support for playing your pictures, music, and videos. You can do some of it, but it can’t do it over your network so I hope you have a lot of big SD cards. I’m sure that would be a popular feature for their target market.
• Better storage options: It is clear now that the built-in storage on the Wii is lacking and that Nintendo still doesn’t have a fix lined up yet. Why not increase the built-in storage and/or allow memory cards to (actually) expand the console’s usable space.
• Wired Networking: Sometimes you just want the reliability of a wire. The lame duck Wii WiFi also requires a “long preamble” (usually only required for old wireless-B devices) which kills your wireless-G and N performance.

Digg’s “Possible Dupes” for “Five Firefox Extensions That Should Be Built-In”

• Wedding Favor Lip Balm
• Can English Be The Official Language
• How Much You Count On a Free Dating Site?
• 10 Lies You Really Shouldn’t Try On Your Next Resume
• Itches You Shouldn’t Scratch
• iPhone Firmware Update 2.1 Coming Soon
• HOW TO ENABLE COOKIES
• Gateway to Green Living

Honestly, I can’t figure out what kind of “magic” is going on in their algorithms that would connect my post with any of these. “Itches You Shouldn’t Scratch” or “Can English Be The Official Language” really?

The really funny part was that two of the “possible dupes” it suggested were actually submissions of the exact same link, with the exact same title. Apparently their dupe checker didn’t help out on that one. When I checked on submitting some of my older posts that had already been submitted to Digg from a site I used to cross-post at it didn’t suggest a single possible duplicate. Go figure.

This is just reason number 53 for why I don’t really use Digg anymore. Here’s a screen cap of the full dupe checker results if you’d like to see them yourself.

A Lose-Lose Outcome

It is easy to look at the end-users and realize why we’d all be upset. The TV Pack is nothing like it was originally anticipated it would be, and there is no official channel, support, or upgrade path for anyone other than to buy a new PC. Who wants to buy a new PC just to get a software update?

Microsoft’s partners are also losing out on this one. I personally had been waiting for DirecTV support and was ready to switch to satellite as soon as it arrived. It would have been really nice to have a more integrated fully-digital solution, but it looks like I won’t be switching now. All the issues surrounding CableCard will probably be ironed out by the time DirecTV is on Media Center, or Duke Nukem Forever comes out.

You might think that OEMs would appreciate being the only channel to get the new software bits, but how many people are going to trust Microsoft or an OEM with supporting any product they buy? It’s hardly an incentive to buy that new Windows Vista machine you’ve heard about in the ads. In my book Media Center is a complete lame duck now that will never flourish.

It’s Apple’s Move Now

This also further illustrates the commonly held view that people should just wait for Windows 7 because that is exactly what these actions are saying. While we wait for Windows 7 Microsoft is just going to leave the door gaping open for Apple to come in and steal the digital living room. Honestly, even AppleTV’s history hasn’t been as bad as Media Center’s.

Keep in mind, I actually likes Vista and Media Center. Dictating moves like this to your users is straight out of Apple’s playbook. I hate it when they do it, and I hate it when Microsoft does it too. I just can’t believe how many of the usual sources aren’t running with this story.

Overall I find the concept, and to a large extent the execution, of VMC to be awesome. Here are some the strengths of VMC:

• No DVR fees to the cable company (or Tivo)
• Comes built into Vista
• Easily share the DVR through extenders (of which there is already a huge base of Xbox 360s)
• Top notch user interface (most of the time)
• Portable recordings

I especially like that the recordings are just files that I can play on my laptop or stream over the Internet (via Orb) when I travel. You can also easily sync and automatically transcode recordings to WMP-compatible media players, Zunes, and even Windows Mobile devices. I do wish they’d develop/release a softsled (software-based extender) though.

Vista Media Center TV Pack

Microsoft are set to announce the “Vista Media Center TV Pack” formerly codenamed Fiji at next month’s CEDIA Expo. It will bring welcomed features such as proper native QAM support and heterogeneous tuner support; both of which I’ve been waiting for. While many were expecting features such as support for H.264 and DirecTV, and the ability to have widescreen thumbnails, no such features are showing up in tester’s hands. Honestly, overall it is a complete disappointment. Not just because of the software, it is the delivery too.

Epic Fail

It gets ugly when you start to look at how you can get some TV Pack goodness for yourself. First problem, you can’t upgrade to it. Apparently a fresh install is required; just what I want to do with a system that is setup how I like it. Second, it is only available through OEMs! But wait it gets worse. Third, all the OEMs have said they are only planning on supplying the TV Pack with new computers.

Let me get this straight, so because I bought and installed Vista myself, a very common scenario for most current media center users, I don’t get access to a key update to an included component of the OS? And Even if I had bought my HTPC through an OEM, they aren’t going to support the product further? Who is making these decisions and how do they sound right to them? As if I didn’t feel like my copy of Vista Ultimate wasn’t completely lacking anything Ultimate about it already.

It must be awful to be one of the developers working on Media Center at Microsoft. So much work into a great product only to have it destroyed in the marketplace due to bad business decisions. The many VMC users out there are pretty loyal but we will only take so much. It is like we are continually waiting for the next installment to really make it all right (satellite support, good digital cable support, broad codec support, softsled, built-in place shifting, etc). Microsoft is lucky my DVR options are so bad to begin with, but that won’t last forever.

Money Isn’t The Root Of All Evil, It Pays My Mortgage

I don’t know exactly how this all started, but the very thought of paying for any service online is almost unthinkable for most people. Microsoft made a bold, but I think smart, choice when it decided to make the Xbox Live Community Games a marketplace of buyers and sellers; a place where creators can be rewarded for their work and aren’t pressured to work for free. After all what is really so bad about paying someone for something they do?

With the Xbox 360 (or any other console) you have people paying $300-$400 for a console, buying multiple $60 games, extra $40 controllers, and then they are going to balk at paying $45 for 13 months of service? That is only $3.46 per month. Pretty reasonable considering most MMOs cost about three times as much. Do people think that it just goes straight into Steve Balmer’s personal bank account or something?

The money really goes to pay people (regular ones, just like you and I) that work to create the hands-down easiest, most seamless, integrated, and arguably best online gaming experience available. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the only online gaming service you pay for was found to be the best, even amongst PS3 and Wii users, in a recent poll. Obviously this would be a different discussion if the Playstation Network was overwhelming seen as the top platform, but it isn’t.

You Don’t Get What You Don’t Pay For

There is an old adage that says “You get what you pay for.” I use the converse of that statement mostly though, “You don’t get what you don’t pay for.” I’m sorry if this sounds like Econ 101, but in a market driven economy paying is a crucial method of voting (signaling) for what you want so that people will build it. There is essential information inherent in a paying transaction that you approve of what someone did, and that they created value beyond what you are paying them.

If you have a situation like is common on the Internet today, the people who pay are actually the advertisers. So many sites and services are slaves to their advertisers because their users won’t pay a dime. I have asked many people I know who live and die by Facebook how much they would pay for it, and they all said zero. They all spend at least an hour a day on it, but it is apparently worthless to them, and much of what they want is never conveyed in any meaningful transaction.

So Facebook becomes a slave to advertising and pimping out their users’ information for every cent they can get. It isn’t unrealistic to think that if people paid for more services that their personal information wouldn’t be shared quite so freely. The sites don’t work for you though, they work for the advertisers. I’m not saying all online services or sites should shun advertising, but it is ridiculous how much the solution to every Web 2.0 business model is advertising.

In many ways the Internet has been one of the greatest economic tools of all time. Viable marketplaces will have to be developed as more and more things are done online though. Almost everyone shops online for tangible products, but something really needs to be done to make intangibles not a solely advertiser sponsored economy.

BTW, I really didn’t want to post anything pro-Microsoft or anti-Apple today, but this was the news I was dealt. :)

A Palm Refugee

Basically you could say that I am a long time Palm user that is growing increasingly impatient. I like the ease of use and efficiency of the PalmOS UI, but the under-pinnings are really starting to show their age. This has been made very apparent by adding a data plan to my phone recently.

I like having the access a lot more than I would have expected; Opera Mini is a great browser but the Java VM that runs it isn’t so much (it crashes regularly). Add on the lack of native Bluetooth A2DP (which my car’s audio system does support), a so-so email client, and Palm’s tardiness with a new OS and you can see why I’m looking for something better.

Honestly I have to admit that the iPhone is probably the best device right now for what I want (strong multimedia, great web browsing, good email client, decent form factor), although it is far from perfect (the phone part isn’t amazing, no built-in search, short battery life with 3G on, no A2DP, etc). So why am I not buying it?

My Apple Epiphany

I must confess that I generally don’t like Apple, and that I think their products are over-hyped most of the time (“Apple is reinventing the home stereo with the new iPod Hi-Fi” –Steve Jobs) but they generally make some good products. The iPod, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, or Mac Pro are all legitimate top-of-the-line competitive products that most companies’ products do worse than. I realized what my real issue with Apple is though: their business practices.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that when you go Apple your choices are mostly dictated to you by Apple (aka Steve Jobs). Why will Adobe’s CS4 suite be 64-bit only on Windows? An Apple business decision. Why is the iPhone only available on AT&T? An Apple business decision. Why couldn’t .Mac users wait until MobileMe was stable to switch their e-mail over? Again, an Apple business decision.

The problem is particularly pronounced on the iPhone as it is an insanely closed platform (without jailbreaking it). It is like the iPhone is nothing but a DRM device, because basically it is. Lock down my music, check. Lock down my videos, check. Lock down my service provider, check. Lock down my choice of applications, check. Pretty much anything you can do with it is locked down.

Open Platform != Open Source

Don’t confuse an open platform with open source. Windows, PalmOS, Symbian, and even Mac OS X are all basically open platforms (but clearly not open source). You can run any app designed for the platform whether it is specifically blessed by the developer of the platform or not. If Windows or Mac were closed platforms you couldn’t make a third-party application like Firefox because Microsoft and Apple both already have competing web browsers. Look on the iPhone though and you’ll see that Apple won’t let any developer make a competing media player. See the difference?

I have numerous third-party apps on my Treo 680: Google Maps, Opera Mini, Gmail, Pocket Tunes, Facebook, a dictionary, etc. It may seem funny, but it would really bother me to have Apple deciding what I can and cannot use. Simple things like the program I use to track my gas mileage are switching costs to me if there isn’t a viable alternative on a new platform. After Apple’s trend of pulling Apps from iTunes lately I really can’t say I trust them.

Technically there are Windows Mobile 6 phones that have all of the features I want (A2DP, Opera, 3G, wifi, real multitasking) but I just don’t think I could stomach the stodgy UI. So I guess I’m left waiting to see whether Android materializes into something good, Palm can finally bring out their new OS, or hope that Windows Mobile 7 has a new UI, because those will all happen before Apple truly opens up the iPhone.

What is up with the “blogosphere” on this one? Some of the titles would make you think that Microsoft lied about what the software could do when really the only “lie” they told was what the name of the OS is. So I don’t know how Microsoft lied to make them like it. The people in the videos obviously really liked it.  I personally like Vista, but I was genuinely surprised by how much some of these people just fawned over it. They were that impressed.

My History With Vista

I was really skeptical of Vista at first myself. I had tried out the beta versions and hated every single one. Literally the only reason for why I switched my desktop over to Vista was so I could do Media Center on my Xbox 360. My desktop is basically a file and print server for our laptops so I didn’t really care if it wasn’t that great so long as that stuff worked. However, within about a month of having Vista on my desktop I switched over my laptop, and a couple of months later my wife’s got switched too.

I should mention that I didn’t switch over until Vista had been out for about six months, so I missed out on the launch-day issues, but I never switch over to a new operating system when it comes out. No matter who makes it, new OSes always have some somewhat significant bugs or quirks. I would have probably hated Vista in January of 2007, but Vista in August 2008 is a different story. When I saw ExtremeTech defending Vista I knew the tide was turning for Microsoft.

For more of my ramblings on Windows Vista and XP check out this post.

Just look at their 1.0 product short comings that a subsequent version fixed:

• iPod: firewire only, no iTunes for Windows, no service to replace old batteries, mechanical scroll wheel
• iPhone: no 3G, no GPS, no third-party software, no contacts search, no corporate e-mail/contacts/calendar sync, 4GB model, couldn’t easily use third—party headphones, no music ringtones, etc
• iPod Touch: pretty much the same list as the iPhone but you have to pay for each update even though they are free for the iPhone and new iPod Touches
• AppleTV: couldn’t purchase or download content on the AppleTV, measly 40GB hard drive, no support for Dolby Digital 5.1, had to be connected to a computer to do anything, apparently people are still unhappy with the state of AppleTV
• Mac OS X: launch version had almost zero software, ran very slowly, no DVD playback, no CD burning, no Windows/Samba file-sharing, no built-in search
• MacBook: palm rest discoloration, cracking plastic, low quality 6-bit LCD panels, you could only order it with 512MB of RAM, had draft-N wireless support but you had to pay $5 to use it, excessive heat made Apple label it a notebook instead of a laptop (because it is too hot for your lap apparently)
• And now MobileMe: “1%” of users couldn’t access their mail for weeks (as of this writing I’ve seen reports that some still can’t), Apple’s idea of PUSH technology isn’t actually a PUSH at all, exchange contact and calendars don’t sync, and now they are adding MobileMe software onto non-MobileMe users’ PC via iTunes without asking or even telling them

Basically, within a year or two of each product coming out a new revision/version comes out that fixes the glaring bugs and notably missing features, and sometimes even costs less. If you ask me, it really does seem like 1.0 is more of a paid public beta test for Apple. The thing that amazes me is how they can get their users to forget about all of this. That is some amazing marketing…

autoHideStatusbar: Quite simply AHS hides the status bar unless you hover over a link or move your cursor to the bottom of the browser window. It is great for maximizing vertical space within the browser window. I don’t know about you, but most of the time I don’t need the status bar but sometimes I do.

Image Zoom: This is another simple extension that can be really useful. It adds a context menu item for zooming in and out on an individual image on a page. It makes it a lot easier to see details in smaller images when you can easily enlarge it by 200%. I would like to see a bit more friendly UI for this one however. The context menu approach works, but some sort of hover over pop-up may be more intuitive.

Speed Dial: I’m sure all of the Opera users out there recognize this one; it is a blatant copy of the speed dial built into Opera. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right? When you open a new window or tab this extension will populate it with a three-by-three (although you can adjust the row and column count) set of tiles of sites you selected. I have mine set for five columns with three rows so that the most common fifteen sites I visit are easily accessible. I know I could (and do) have them in my bookmarks, but this is really just quicker and easier. The tiles also refresh regularly so for certain sites I can tell if there has been an update just from the tile.

Personal Menu: This is a must have extension for me, but I may just be crazy about maximizing my screen space. This extension will remove the regular menu bar and make it a drop down menu from an icon. That way I can eliminate an additional toolbar and save myself some vertical space. Something like this, or perhaps even the method IE uses of pressing the Alt key to bring up the menu would be a welcome addition.

Update Notifier: This extension is one that I can’t believe wasn’t added to Firefox years ago. When an update for Firefox (it works in Thunderbird too), an extension, or a theme is available the icon will turn blue and pop-up a small notification window listing the available updates. You can then install all of the updates right from the drop down menu.

I first thought up this concept about four years ago, before the term “cloud computing” was en vogue. Basically I was thinking how great it would be to be able to pool and leverage the CPU resources of the three computers (two laptops and a desktop) I had within my house. In particular I wanted to be able to use the desktop’s faster CPU to complete workloads for my laptop in a relatively ad hoc manner.

Some video applications I had used could render their output on more than one machine using their own clustering software, but why should it be limited to niche programs like that? I already share disk space, printers, or even TV tuners (via Orb or Media Center Extender), why not my CPU? You can push your computing out on the Internet cloud all you want but a lot of people have a micro cloud of resources already within their home, or workgroup.

At the time it seemed like something that might be esoteric enough to be implemented in Linux so I tried to find out how feasible it was in some Linux developer forums. In my mind I thought it could be implemented as a virtual CPU that the scheduler would only send jobs to if the physical CPU was at 100% for more than ten seconds or so. It would also have to be aware of the bandwidth and latencies of the connection between machines. Obviously network accessed CPU resources wouldn’t be incredibly efficient but any additional processing cycles gained would help.

As the number of cores continues to increase (particularly on the desktop) and devices like netbooks with limited resources become popular this could have been a huge boon. Unfortunately nobody took me seriously. After all, my kernel-level C programming is severely lacking. :)

If the documents SDTimes has received are accurate it would seem that Midori is all about cloud computing. Or put more accurately, heavily abstracting away hardware from software to enable remote or local resources to be used for any given task. It isn’t just for the CPU either. Imagine being able to easily pool the disk storage available on the various nodes of your network into one huge fault-tolerant distributed storage volume. All I can say is that on paper this all sounds incredible.

Microsoft is obviously pretty quiet on the purpose of Midori. The PR people have admitted its existence but they it is just an incubation project; only time will tell. Hopefully it will see the light of day before I die or Duke Nukem Forever comes out, which ever comes first.

*Update: Must be a pretty big story if even the BBC is running it.

The State Of Updates

Right now almost every program on my computer has its own update mechanism of some sort. They primarily fall into three categories.

• Notify me of an available update
  • Pidgin
  • WinSCP
  • VMware Server
• Udate themselves from within the program
  • Firefox
  • Thunderbird
  • Quicken
  • Opera
  • Photoshop
• Special updating program that runs at startup and constantly uses memory
  • Java
  • Quicktime/iTunes
  • Google Pack (Picasa, Desktop Search, etc)
  • Thinkpad utilities

With every program doing its own thing, keeping your software up-to-date is a bit of a hassle and certainly not something the “average” user does.

Windows/Microsoft Update

Microsoft has their own updating software of course: Windows Update. It can already be extended to update other Microsoft products through Microsoft Update. They also serve up drivers for various WHQL’d hardware through it.

Why not open this up for any program on your system? This could be another feature to help differentiate Windows Vista or Windows 7 from the competition (OS X or Windows XP). This would also address one of the pain-points to “boxed” software that web applications don’t have.

Updates ala YUM, APT, or Xbox Live

I’m not saying that Microsoft should host files and provide bandwidth for every Windows application on the planet. They could create a secure way for third-party applications to be updated from the developer’s site through Windows Update.

YUM or APT on Linux is similar to this concept but it only works reliably if you only install software from repositories. Xbox Live also manages updates for every piece of software that runs on an Xbox 360 and it rectifies one of the main reasons for why I don’t PC game: it is such a pain to keep games up-to-date.

Ultimately Microsoft is a platform company, and this would make the Windows platform more attractive to users and developers. Having a unified method and interface would greatly simplify keeping software up-to-date, particularly for less savvy users. It could also have the effect of improving system security by making it easier for people to have the latest version of programs (Quicktime, Reader, Flash) that have been recently targeted through web browsers by hackers as well.

I would think that developers would appreciate not having to maintain software just to help…maintain software too. It really is kind of silly that everyone has to reinvent-the-wheel each time for updating their applications. Certainly there are some details for Microsoft to work out on how to implement this, but that is their problem. I’m just the idea man. :)

*Before anyone sends me an e-mail about this, yes I do know that there are programs such as RadarSync that claim to keep all of your applications up-to-date. I have yet to try one that is easy to use and actually works however.

Unreasonable Assumption: Regulators Could Fix This

It may be that I just don’t love standards bodies or government interference but I really doubt that they are the solution to inconsistent HD picture quality. Just look at the bang up job ATSC did in defining what HDTV would be in the first place.

They couldn’t even settle on whether HD would be interlaced (1080i) or not (720p), and in my humble opinion interlacing really should have been left behind. It has to be by far the worse form of video “compression” still in use today; it is 1940s era tech after all.

ATSC never foresaw a time (read: about 2006) when almost all HDTVs would be natively progressive scan, and that most would have terrible deinterlacing engines. It quickly became obvious in the television marketplace that 1080i was no good so now we have a plethora of “true HD” 1080p displays with literally zero broadcast programming in that format. They of course made the 1080i/720p compromise for bandwidth reasons, but a more modern codec (any MPEG-4 variant or VC-1) can easily handle 1080p given the same bandwidth as an MPEG-2 1080i stream.

Consumers’ Increasing Choices

Here is the real reason regulators shouldn’t be invovled: consumers have choices for their content delivery. The standards for displays are good enough that without switching your HDTV you can get HD programming via over-the-air, DirecTV, Dish, cable, fiber optic (FiOS), or even DSL (U-verse) now. Sure you probably don’t have all six options in one location but you probably have at least three, maybe four. New IP-based download services (Xbox Live, Amazon, iTunes, etc) are creating even more options too.

When I moved to Indiana my cable provider at the time offered terrible HD service. There were very few HD channels, and many shows that I used to watch in HD were broadcast in letterboxed 480p on the “HD” channel! Guess what? I started looking at what DirecTV and Dish were offering. My cable provider added some HD channels and stopped down converting their HD shows before I pulled the trigger though.

The bottom line is, I could have gone elsewhere. DirecTV is already moving to MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) and they can increase bandwidth by adding additional satellites. Consequently their HD seem to be particularly good, especially compared to certain cable companies. To top it off, almost anyone in North America can get DirecTV. I will probably switch as soon as Media Center’s DirecTV support comes out.

If (and that is a huge “if” for most people) people really care about getting better HD picture quality they will switch. Which will put pressure on the low quality providers to improve. We don’t need regulators telling us what does and doesn’t look acceptable. Leave the hard standards for the displays not the content delivery. We really won’t want to be stuck with only MPEG-2 streams a decade or two from now.

Increase Visibility

One of the biggest problems I believe AmazonMP3 is facing is that even amongst people who buy music online (mostly iTunes users) most haven’t ever heard of it. Anytime I mention AmazonMP3 to a friend of mine they are surprised that such a service even exists; they thought iTunes was the only option.

The value proposition is really strong for Amazon MP3: no DRM, files are compatible with all MP3 players, a large selection of music, a familiar company that most people already do business with, and prices that are generally lower than the competition. All of that doesn’t matter if you don’t know about it though.

Bundle With Other Amazon Products

Amazon should bundle MP3 downloads with every iPod or MP3 player. Three of the top six selling MP3 players aren’t iPods so they don’t have any default store, and seventeen of the top one-hundred selling electronics are MP3 players; it is a great opportunity to cross-sell.

They could vary the number of included tracks based of the price of the product. So the bargain $35 MP3 player might only come with two or three songs while a high end $500 MP3 player could come with an album or two; depending on the margins of course. This would be a differentiating factor versus other online stores for MP3 players, and would introduce most of these users to AmazonMP3 right off the bat. Amazon could even include free songs with other devices that play MP3s but aren’t “MP3 Players” such as cell phones, portable GPS units, game consoles, or even computers.

They should make MP3 purchases count toward free “Super Saver Shipping” and highlight it to certain users too. I know I would buy a few tracks to push my order over $25 instead of hunting down some cheap book or a 24-pack of pens.

Brick And Mortar

I think they need to go after the brick and mortar establishments as well. They could be selling AmazonMP3 gift cards at electronics stores, big box retailers, and supermarkets just like iTunes does. Although the cards would say AmazonMP3 they really should be redeemable for any purchase at Amazon.com. They could also extend the bundling concept to select retailers to include AmazonMP3 tracks with MP3 players. Amazon already has a commercial partnership with Target so why not start there?

What do you think? Would some legal free tunes entice you to buy an MP3 player at a certain store? Do you think you’d actually redeem the free MP3 tracks, and even make a future purchase?

At the end of my last post I was waiting to be contacted by a woman from billing about the problems with my service. She did eventually call me, and I did receive a credit on my account to offset the issues I had been having. They never got my service working properly however.

The local Comcast manager ended up contacting me. It was pretty funny because as I started explaining my issues and mentioned that he was calling me because a blog post I had written got read by some Comcast VP he told me “I know about the post, I have it up on my computer right here.” In case you haven’t read the previous post, it is a bit of a sarcastic rant on Comcast. You know, the kind of rant that you’d rather not have a Comcast employee read while they are talking to you.

He ended up trying to do some tests and was convinced I must have a signal problem. A technician came out to check things out and lo-and-behold my signal was fine. I can’t remember all of the different tests that were run, but eventually I just gave up because I was leaving in two weeks. When this all started I had three months left until I was moving out of Indiana. Apparently that wasn’t enough time for Comcast to deliver the service I paid for.

After my own experiences I can’t say I was surprised at all to see more news coming out about Comcast’s atrocious customer service. I know that fixing my problems had to be a pretty high priority considering that I had a VP at Comcast emailing me about it. That is what makes it so bad, it was a high priority and they couldn’t even fix it. They couldn’t even figure out what the problem was actually. You know that those cheeky DirecTV commercials are aimed right at Comcast.