Tech

Wired And The iPad

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:36:28 GMT

Really interesting short video from Wired, showing off some user interface designs for iPad-centric content. While the demos appear to be running on Adobe Air (as in, not capable of running on the iPad), the concept is powerful and compelling. The sound bite of the video:

"We also think it's an opportunity to reset the economics. For the first time people may value this experience so much that they'll pay for it."

Wow, isn't that what creating a product is all about? Hope the music, movie, and even traditional print industries are taking note, because Wired has figured it out.

'Getting' The iPad

Wayne Hartman — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:18:53 GMT

People are quick to throw stones at something they have never experienced. With the iPad I'm going to leave the rocks on the ground and take what I've seen at face value. Many have mocked its lack of certain features and 'simplicity'. It's not so much about simplicity, as it is another aspect of that. Maybe it's because I write software for a living, but I like to pay attention to the user experience of what other people write.

As many of you know, people don't like to think. It's not because they're lazy, stupid, or unintelligent. It's that when you are using a tool (by 'tool' I mean in the most generic of the sense), you don't want to have to focus on *how* to use it, or maybe even what it is doing. People want to focus on the outcome that the tool is supposed to provide. When people use a computer, they don't want to have to focus their energies on how to use it or be impeded because the tool seems like an unnatural means to the goal.

The iPhone software takes commodity hardware that all competitors have access to and makes it a *joy* to use. Now, that may sound silly to your ears, but when was the last time you drove a car, or road a bike, or sat in a chair, or cut a steak with a knife and thought that you just had an experience that far surpassed doing those things than with other capable, if clumsy, ways? The iPad is about taking that iPhone experience and not only making it *bigger*, but changing the fundamental way in which you consume media and interact with this tool called the computer.

We like the computer as we know it now just the way it is because it has always been that way for most of us. As much as we cling to it, the interface is clunky, doesn't work exactly what seems natural to us. We have shoehorned ourselves to fit it, not the other way around. The iPad is about changing that. And as someone who likes exploring new, better ways of doing things, that's exciting to me.

So, tell ya what:

I will be an early adopter for you. I will suffer the rotten tomatoes and eggs and name calling you throw at me. I will be a martyr of the new way of experiencing the world. And if I was wrong, I will take my tongue lashing and the missing chunk of change from my wallet, shut up, and go figure out what other 'joys' are to be had in the world.

But if I was right, I will relish in knowing that I found that joy before you and focus my energies using the tool in finding more joy in the other things in life as well and experience them in ways you cannot.

iPad: The Unanswered Question

Wayne Hartman — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:09:30 GMT

Now that the hype has died down a bit over the new Apple iPad, there are quite a few questions that linger over the yet to be released device. The forefront on my mind (and the question no one is asking) is this: Who can publish on the new iBookstore? Apple's Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook, commented about the new device's revenue generator, hinting that it would 'inspire a whole new gold rush' for publishers. While certainly comforting for those already established, what for those who may now want to get into the market of ePublishing?

Like the much maligned recording and movie industries, the publishing market is fraught with the Good Ol' Boy mentality of crowding out competition. I can hardly think that Apple struck deals with the announced publishing partnerships to let small fry publishers, or even start-ups, to get a large chunk of the iPad pie. Paranoia aside, it would be incredible, like the AppStore, to allow anyone to step up and develop content for the iBookstore. The iPad is supposedly a revolution for distribution of the written word, why not allow the common man to compete against the Old World juggernauts of publication?

Apple only has one shot with this device. No Flash support, no web cam, no multi-task are massive detractors for purchasing this device, so Apple must win a core audience early on with its eBook strategy. Creating a level playing field for people to distribute quality publications will attract the masses in a way that the Nook and Kindle have not. Failing to deliver, on the other hand, could drive that pent-up publishing supply to those less-sparkly, if cheaper, devices.

Time will tell; I'm hoping for the best.

How To Install Windows 7 x64 & Boot Camp 3.1

Wayne Hartman — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:55:56 GMT

Yesterday I ventured to get Windows 7 running on my Mac Mini and naturally ran into quite a few problems (quite unlike installing XP). Unfortunately, I could not get the x64 version of Boot Camp 3.1 installed; it would try to install the nVidia driver and then silently fail thereafter. I also ran into the road block of not being able to install the x64 version of Boot Camp 3.0 from the Snow Leopard installation media, but found a work around. You will need the following items:

Snow Leopard installation disc
Boot Camp 3.1 x64 installation package

First, insert your Snow Leopard installation disc and open a CMD prompt As Administrator. Access your disc drive and navigate to the Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple directory. Now execute the following command: msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi This will install version 3.0 of the Boot Camp software. This may take a few minutes, but after it is done, follow the prompt to restart your machine. For the most part, everything should be installed correctly, sans Apple's most recent hardware like the Magic Mouse.

After you have rebooted, you should then be able to run the Boot Camp 3.1 setup without any problems.

Review: Intel SS4200-E NAS

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:21:44 GMT

I have been looking for a NAS for a long time, so when Newegg had a deal on the Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-E NAS Server, I jumped right on it. Selling itself with four internal SATA connections, two external eSATA ports and USB up the yin-yang, I thought this would be a good buy for my purposes. My primary intention was to create a 6TB (yes, terabyte) array where I could have all my ripped DVD, Blu-Ray, music and computer backups but still have plenty of space to grow into. To cut to the chase, I have had nothing but disappointment.

First off, you can only do configurations of two or four drives in RAID. What this means is you can do a simple mirror (RAID 1) with two drives, or a mirrored-stripe (0+1) or parity (RAID 5) with four drives. Those other eSATA ports? Just stand alone and cannot participate in the RAID array. This was disheartening because it dropped the maximum array size from 6TB to 4.5TB (using 1.5TB drives). What's worse, though, is that the eSATA ports would not recognize my orphaned 1.5TB drive plugged into it. After SSHing into it, I could see that the drive was mounted, but the web interface and SAMBA would not share it out. Plugging in a spare 500GB showed up just fine.

Security controls are very coarse grained. It's sad that this is running on Linux, but the web interface only does simple read/write/deny permissions. This device purports to support Active Directory integration, but it only supports up to Windows Server 2003. After digging into see what version of SAMBA it is running, I found bugs that were fixed in the next minor release that allowed joining to a Windows 2008 or 2008 R2 domain. Too bad the device does not make it easy on you to do the simple upgrade.

If those issues were tolerable, the actual performance of the machine was certainly not. While reads could almost saturate my gigabit network (which was very cool to see!), writes were woefully slow. When not doing anything but a dedicated write, maximum speeds topped out at about 20MBps (~160Mbps). Since this is primarily a machine for streaming media content, that wasn't too much a concern, however if I were streaming a Blu-Ray movie or even a DVD on the device while trying to write to it, the experience would become completely untenable. The movie would get really choppy and then outright fail. This was a completely unacceptable outcome, given I was transferring small photos to the device. Watching the CPU get maxed out for writes shows that this has a weak software RAID controller, which tax the CPU beyond usability. Granted, since this an x86 platform, you can upgrade the CPU and memory on the device, but I would opine that throwing incremental hardware upgrades would only produce marginal results. These dreadful results were experienced on both RAID 5 and 0+1 configurations. All in all the experience could have been greatly enhanced if the device would enable some sort of QoS so that streamed media received greater CPU priority, even if that meant that writes were slower.

I could have learned to deal with some of the other feature drawbacks this device has, but given its performance (or lack thereof) I cannot recommend this device for any storage need.

Death of the Dedicated Device

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:34:08 GMT

Today Google announced free navigation for the new version of its mobile software, Android 2.0. Seems like a pretty innocuous announcement until you consider who the players are in the market. TomTom and Garmin are two of the biggest players in the hand held consumer GPS market, so it came as no surprise that their business model might take a hit. Consider today's stock graph following the accouncement:

Ouch! It doesn't take a stock analyst to point out that anyone in the handheld GPS market is going to have an interesting time staying relevant in a marketplace where a once valued (and pricey) product is being given away for free. TomTom and Garmin are feeling the pinch, but they're not the only ones. The writing on the wall here is that the days of dedicated hand held devices are numbered. Even Apple themselves are seeing it amongst their own product lines. The iPod Classic and even the Nano are seeing shrinking sales all because people have discovered that having an iPod Touch or iPhone, which in addition to being able to play music or making a phone call, offer users a vast array of useful applications that fulfill any number of functions.

Who's next? I target eBook readers. The Kindle, Nook, and Sony's dedicated reading devices are the obvious choice for extinction. Though the iPod and iPhone do not necessarily make a comfortable book reading device, one could only imagine what the rumored Apple tablet will bring. If Apple were to combine the power and extensibility of their current iPod Touch/iPhone application experience and marry it with a slick interface for reading electronic books, then it would certainly obviate the need to carry an eBook reader on your person.

Look forward to the future, kids. The power and knowledge of the world is at your fingertips and it is only going to get better.

UPDATE: Right after I post this, I read an article highlighting a Twitter dedicated device. Wow. I am astounded. So what do people do when they have this device and people embed a link to a web page? While I agree that Twitter or Twitter-like communication is the wave of the future (heck, it's already here!), why would I carry such a clunky, one-trick-pony device in my pocket? 1996 just called, they want their glorified pager back!

Windows 7 Party Pack Arrives

Wayne Hartman — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:07:55 GMT

And it is every bit as cheesy as it sounds.

Among other things I get a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, a puzzle, a deck of cards and napkins (napkins?!). I'm not sure that I particularly care for the 'Signature Edition' containing Monkey Boy's John Hancock, but I'm raffling it off anyway. I've assembled the tote bags (last pic below) that include coupons for discounted software from Norton, Kaspersky, Corel, etc. Check out the unboxing:

The New Business Model Of Music

Wayne Hartman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:22:37 GMT

The music industry has an uphill battle to fight. On one hand they want to continue to enjoy the insane amount of revenue that music sales bring them and on the other hand you have the Digital Age sweeping in and casting that idea to the wind. Once a product goes digital, its value in and of itself is nothing.

The Old Days

See, when people bought phonographs, they weren't buying music, they were purchasing a piece of vinyl that happened to have music on it. They owned something. It was physical, tangible, cuddleable. It was yours. You could lend it to a friend, swap it for another, but in all you owned a piece of property, one very difficult to reproduce yourself. Cassettes were the start of trouble for the recording industry because now people could create copies, pass them around, make mix tapes etc. Using cassettes still meant that you had to buy new media if you wanted to make copies, but in all it was fairly convenient. Same with CDs. For longer than a decade now, you have a collection of 1s and 0s. You can share it instantaneously with thousands of other people or duplicate it a million fold at the click of a button.

At that moment a song meant nothing, it is expected to be attainable for free. This of course runs contrary to what the music industry wants you to do, but the opportunity is there and you are not likely to get caught. So how can you compete for free? There have been attempts at giving away advertisement laced tracks. But why would someone savor what is perceived as an inferior product when one without advertisements can be obtained as easily? The RIAA has tried scaring people into submission with threat of lawsuit, but that doesn't seem to have worked. If not that, what?

Enter The New Business Model

Music means the most to people when it is associated with an experience. Listening to a song on an iPod is not necessarily an experience. A song on a radio while sitting in traffic is not exactly a highlight experience of music listening. So how do you create an experience, and more importantly, how do you monetize it?

Since music is now considered a commodity, you have to now start bundling it with value add items. For the cynics who think that's marketing-speak for 'giving away doohickeys', they're on the right track. Apple is trying out a new LP Format to lure fans back into purchasing whole albums, but even that format has limited appeal. Why? Because once again, you're not creating an experience. Music needs to get back to brand. To image. To something tangible.

I think one of the more innovative approaches to word-of-mouth product advertising is HouseParty.com. Companies can setup an avenue for people to invite friends over and try out products. In the case of the music industry, why not get your fans to sell crap for you? I'm talking about T-Shirts, buttons, stickers, posters, and other music group paraphernalia. Imagine teenagers across America having a place to facilitate getting friends together at their home to listen to a new album FOR FREE and have them sell orders for T-Shirts and other junk. Fans eat that crap up! In those moments you are now creating an experience that people can relate to and remember. They remember the posters that the host had up, the music blaring, parents shaking their heads but glad that they know where their kids are and what they are doing.

That's just one idea.

How about another: Why not create kits with a CD, SD card, or other digital format of the latest Celine Dion album in a box set of chocolate, lotions, and aphrodisiacs? It's kinky and silly and you're laughing right now, but at the same time you are making an experience out of the music these artists are creating. You can make money off of that!

The point is this: the music itself has no value. It's too easy to duplicate and get for free. That can of worms is open and can never be closed. The music industry needs to come to grips with that and invent other ways to add value to something that now has no worth. It may end up that the margins are not as lucrative as they once were, but as mentioned before, they weren't really selling music anyway, only the media upon which it was inscribed.

Good luck artists, you're going to need it.

OCD #36: Those Who Type 'http://'

Wayne Hartman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:46:29 GMT

I have a sister whose educational background is in psychology (she's currently getting a masters degree) who claims that we all have (on some level or another) obsessive compulsive disorders. One thing that absolutely drives me nuts are people that take the time to type http:// when typing in a web address. Or they use their mouse to select a URL sans the http:// and delete it, believing that they have to have the protocol there in order for the Internet Gods to direct them to the correct website.

News flash: YOU DON'T HAVE TO TYPE THE HTTP PART! All modern browsers assume that you are using the HTTP protocol when typing in a URL in the address bar! That's seven characters you don't have to type! STOP THE INSANITY! Just type the address and because your browser loves you so much, it will automagically add the http:// for you. Now, when you're going to an FTP site, yes, you have to have the ftp:// part. When watching an MMS stream, you have to explicitly type mms://--that's perfectly normal because you're telling the browser that the address you want uses a different protocol. But please, do your fingers a favor and save those seven keystrokes for something more productive.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.

URL Shorteners Are Evil, And Why I Have One

Wayne Hartman — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:01:15 GMT

Url shortening has been around for quite a long time, but it has exploded due to the popularity of Twitter. Money tends to follow the popular so dozens of URL shortening services sprang, seemingly overnight, to fill the gap. The first to go down for the count, tr.im, decided to throw in the towel due to mounting costs that are associated with running what is essentially a redirecting service. I'm not sure what the business model is for these sites, except that they have a goldmine of information to what people are linking and sharing with others. Apparently, tr.im couldn't figure it out, either.

Failed business models aside, this brings up an interesting topic of discussion concerning link rot. The age old problem with the Internet is that everything depends on linkage to sites or pages that may no longer exist. This problem mushrooms when people become dependent on these URL shortening services that go belly up. Instead of link rot existing as a natural phenomena that occurs over time, we can now have link cancer when these services go away. When the service dies, the links go with them.

The logical conclusion, then, is this: why not have sites publish through their own internal URL shortening services? I did just the same with my own site, waynehartman.com, and purchased a short domain name for publishing my own short URLs. I figure that if my site or online persona goes belly up, it doesn't matter much if my short URLs go with me.

The problem I ran into was that I could not just get any short domain name. They have all been snapped up. I had to settle on misf.me. I came up with the acronym Make It Short For.Me. I would have preferred to get a two or three letter domain name, but it appears that most (if not all) have been gobbled up by domain squatters.

At any rate, my $10 domain name is now purchased and the site for creating my short URLs is forthcoming. Goodbye, Bit.ly.