After a few years of iPhone ownership I made the mistake that has become signature of clumsy Apple owners as of late. The seemingly innocent mishap where your phone slides out of your hands and contacts with a surface, creating a spider-like hairlike crack across the glass screen, but rendering your phone still usable until you poney up the benjamins to replace the screen. At the point that this happened my phone was already two years old, I was eligible for another contract extension, but I refused to sign my life away to the behemoth that is AT&T for another two years. I got a really good deal on an Android phone, off contract, so I went down that route and for the first few months fought many battles that, I thought, were eventually won.

Most smart phones nowadays have battery problems. Even the brand new iPhone is plagued with issues regarding the battery life draining away that Apple is trying to solve with software patches. But I feel that because of the large differences in software stacks that are shipped with phones it is much harder for Google, and the device manufacturers, to solve these problems across the board. Every single Android device that I have ever seen has some kind of battery issue. Luckily this is solved quite well with the JuiceDefender application that is available from the market place.

Another issue that I’ve run into is that some of these standard, “best of the breed” Google applications, just plain old fucking suck. There are at least three different mapping applications that shipped with my phone that I can count. This may be a result of the bundled software that HTC installed, but from what I’ve been able to ascertain Google owns at least two of them. What the hell is the difference between Locations and Maps? I have never had an instance when I wanted a map where I did not want to find the fucking location of a business and get walking, subway or driving directions.

My phone came with a Navigation application that Google maintains. In my opinion this has to be the best navigation software that ships standard with a phone that I have ever seen. When it works it is much more accurate than any GPS navigation unit that I have ever owned. The turn by turn directions are almost aways spot on, and the features that come out of the box work as advertised. There is one catch. Often it can take five to ten minutes to pick up a signal with the GPS satellite, and by that time you’ve probably turned around several times because you lost your fucking way. Often rebooting the phone and launching the application again will solve this problem.

By far my largest complaint is the fact that Google can’t seem to hire proper employees that can actually design a framework to make these generic applications flow. It feels like the workflow of the applications were all thrown together without any foresight into the context of where I may have been before it launched. The speed of launching new applications is generally slower than the iPhone counterpart, and responsiveness of the system needs to be beefed up. My phone is by far not a slug, but why am I waiting for Google’s own applications to chug along, hang, and finally open up another application because the mapping application doesn’t actually incorporate the navigation software?

Google needs to work on the cohesiveness of the user experience across the whole system. The software is top notch. I love being able to synchronize my contacts, calendar, and e-mail between all of my Google services seamlessly. But I can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that someone over there doesn’t seem to understand that we need to have synergy between the workflow and the interface. The fact that this doesn’t exist and the software is plain old fucking slow is making me want to go back to Apple.

I purchased a screen replacement for my iPhone 3GS and plan on spending some time this week to bring it back to working order. I think my experiment with Android is done for now. You can release hundreds of phones a year with your software, get thousands of activations every day, but if you can’t make the software and the hardware work seamlessly what is the fucking point?

Many of us “formally trained” developers tend to put an engineering mindset to many of the problems in our life, and this is exactly what I did when I took a look back on my own personal productivity issues. I was beginning to notice that much of my day was filled with distractions. Many of them are valid, but a good chunk of them could be managed much, much better. If you’re productivity is anything like mine it comes in spurts: the beginning of the day you’re cruising with two or three cups of coffee in you, and about an hour before lunchtime everything starts to slow down only to pick up at around 3:45pm. For the next two and a half hours you actually get some work done.

I’ve always had a problem with distractions during work. Many people tend to have the problem where they’ll answer personal e-mails, cruise around on Facebook, or tap away on their phone. I do all of that, but it never became a problem where I had reassess my strategy of getting shit done at work. I am a news junkie. And just like any other junkie, my habit can become compulsive and often lead to me wasting a lot of time on lurking. When you give them a medium that literally includes live news feeds from all around the world, well, I make a habit of spending my time reading. Reading. And reading. It could be about sports, politics, jubilation, world turmoil or even the fall (and eventual rise) of orange juice options.

At the time of this writing it is roughly four thirty in the morning and I am cruising news websites because I can’t sleep. But during the hours of work this can absolutely become a problem. One of the ways that I have been able to manage it is by spending a good chunk of time in the morning (and evening) on the bus ride reading news digitally. This gives me my fix for the day and doesn’t affect work productivity. Being of the engineering mindset I’m always looking for that optimum solution for being productive at work. How do you manage your action items? Do you plan your day out on paper, use colored post-it notes based on priority, an old fashioned to-do list, or are you the type of person that doesn’t need a mechanism to get shit done?

For me I’d definitely be in favor of software that allowed me to track to-do items across multiple environments (Windows, iPad, Android, Mac) and have found that Google’s Task API gives me the ability to do this seamlessly. But I haven’t yet found a proper front-end that is clean and intuitive to use. On the Mac side the Things software has been around for awhile, but charges for the application usage on multiple platforms. They seem to have solved the issue elegantly, but I am also looking for integration with my Google services which doesn’t seem to be there yet. And I also have that pesky Windows and Android to think about. Not to mention it is just damn expensive.

Maybe the answer is that there isn’t anything yet that’ll let me organize my priorities digitally, but I have a hard time believing that. What are your experiences?

Two years ago (tomorrow) I started my first day as a temporary contractor at Bloomberg, and at the end of February I was brought on full-time. Since then I’ve been able to work with an amazing bunch of people, and without them I’d surely be in a gutter somewhere clutching an empty bottle of Odesse vodka. Instead I am occasionally in the gutter, which is usually directly related to drinking with John Crepezzi or Kenny Katzgrau, but at least I have moved on to some finer whiskey. Of course when I’m not in the gutter I have a well stocked shelf of various spirits. The goal is to eventually be sipping Johnny Walker Blue on a nearly regular basis.

Some shout outs: Becks, Shiran, Adam F., Amy, Renée, Rahul, Adam L., and of course my amigo that is soon to be on his way back from a long overdue vacation, Peter. For those of you that I forgot its probably because we haven’t drank in some time. I think its time to remedy that situation!

The past couple of years I’ve been doing this whole near year’s resolution thing. I don’t necessarily agree with it in principle, because the fact of the matter is that most people (including myself) do not stick with their goals throughout the year. There are often life changes that impact the feasibility of them, and sometimes the goals themselves are life changes that are not possible. The majority of my goals this year are redundant, but to continue with tradition and be able to look back on them next year will be nice. So, here we go:

Travel to Europe at some point during the year. Possibly California and Washington state.

This was a goal last year that I wasn’t able to achieve. There was a loose plan to travel with a friend through Europe, but we were unable to get our schedules together. This upcoming year I already have plans to see Germany in September, and possibly London in February, although both aren’t booked yet. I modified this from last year as I want to go to Europe, and I don’t consider Mexico or Canada abroad. Last year I made several trips to Boston, went to Virginia to see a friend, upstate New York, and took a week long trip to Indiana. In addition to going to Europe I would like to see the west coast, but we’ll see about that one.

Make the decision to go to graduate school, and take the GRE.

It has always been “in the plan” to go to graduate school, but I’m still up in the air if I want to go for something that is in the field of software engineering, for literature or possibly even a business administration degree. I am leaning towards going back to school for an MBA as it seems more aligned with my long term goals, and I can always go back to get the others later if I am bored.

Keep eating healthy, be more active, and ride the bicycle more.

Last year I was able to achieve part of this goal and I lost a little over forty pounds just by changing my eating habits. Since I enjoy cooking I want to learn more about nutrition, eating healthy, and how to cook up some meals quickly at the end of the day. The activity part is where I need to focus on since I’ve done the diet pretty well. I was in a softball league in the spring of last year, rode the bicycle a little in the spring months, and did some hiking. I am considering martial arts if I am able to find something that jives with my schedule. I was able to do this all last year without going to a gym, and I’d like to continue on the same path.

Write more words, play more video games and enjoy life.

I would say that this was mostly a success. I started posting on this blog for a semi-regular basis, and at one point started drafting notes for a science fiction novel I’ve been itching to write for nigh on a decade now. The past couple of months I’ve been playing Battlefield 3 with some old friends, and the same ones are trying to get me to sell my soul and play some Star Wars: Old Republic, but I am pushing back.

Learn the guitar well enough to jam out with some friends.

Over the Thanksgiving break I went down to see a friend in Virginia, and we both picked up Rocksmith for a song. I started learning the guitar by playing this video game, and found out that my MacBook makes a really great amplifier with GarageBand. I’ve always wanted to get back into music, and my goal is to get decent enough so that I am able to have some fun with friends that jam often.

I figured since I am already working on these goals it makes sense to include them so I can show some progress this time next year. Because life changes very often I don’t see a point to include something that is out of reach, or will require a huge dedication of time that I am not certain I can allocate. Next year, as long as the apocalypse doesn’t happen, I am hoping to be able to continue the tradition and add some more goals (as well as check some off).

It seems to be the popular opinion that the Blu-ray disc format was a complete failure, and we’re on the verge of completely going digital for everything that we consume: music, movies, and video games often the primary candidates being associated with this philosophy. Of course, it is very hard to argue against that. The past decade we have seen digital distribution systems which deliver video games directly to your personal computer. Your game library is now completely “in the cloud” and immune from hard disk failure. We saw iTunes rise to the top of ladder when it comes to purchasing music digitally, and whole host of others for streaming live music to your devices over the Internet. How can anyone forget the gorilla in the room: Netflix video streaming services make up for approximately thirty-two percent of all U.S. Internet traffic during peak hours.

Given everything above it is very hard to argue against physical mediums going the way of Betamax. Lately the talk has mostly been about the Blu-ray disc format, mainly due to the competition when it was first introduced with HD-DVD, but now because the pressure has been turned on with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. But if you look at the trends in consumer devices, especially television purchasing, you can see that many people that did not buy high definition sets last decade are going out to purchase them now, and they’re looking specifically at 3D high definition set ups. Right now the only consumer disc format to support 3D is Blu-ray, which requires the use of high resolution (bitrate) audio.

If consumers want that crisp, clear, high definition video with surround sound, they’re not going to be able to get it over your standard Internet connection in the United States. In order to stream Netflix at 720p with high definition audio you’ll need at least a 5 megabit/second Internet connection. My Comcast Internet connection is the lowest tier available, as far as I know, which I measured at roughly 25 megabit/second to east coast data centers. The average speed for broadband in the United States is well under that threshold, pegged at 4 megabit/second, which would allow you to stream the “medium quality” from Netflix. Remember we’re only talking about 720p here, delivering content at 1080p would require much more bandwidth than that, but the average speed here is already struggling to deliver what consumers expect.

If that wasn’t enough the cable broadband providers across the United States are beginning to look towards changing their pricing models to reflect how Internet video distribution is cutting into their cable television subscriptions. That means you’ll be paying more money for your pipe, and have a cap on it before you’ll end up being charged more (usually by the 10GB increment) to fully utilize Internet streaming.

This summer Netflix announced the plan to split their DVD video service into a separate entity, and due to rising costs of the content they are now providing Netflix was also forced to increase the subscription service rates by 60%. These changes resulted in a consumer backlash and Wall Street punished the stock with a drop of more than 70% since July. Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, tried to provide an explanation and give a half-hearted apology, but ultimately it turned out to be more of an excuse.

Ideally it would be amazing to stream high definition audio and video over the Internet with full clarity. This obviously is the future, but we’re only at the beginning of exploring this technology. In the coming years we’re going to realize higher bandwidth through the local Internet providers which will give services such as Hulu and Netflix the capability of delivering video streams surpassing even the highest quality that televisions support now. But don’t get it in your head that you’ll be throwing away your video discs anytime in the near future, at least if you care anything about surround sound, high definition video, and finally being able to own Star Wars in a quality format.