Windows Phone 7 Series - Noted for what it doesn't do

I haven't been keeping that close of tabs on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series Mobile OS except to notice that most of what I hear coming out of tech blogs and Microsoft itself is how noteworthy it is for what it doesn't do. Can't load apps except through the Windows Market Place. No Copy & Paste, No Multi-tasking, No memory card swapping, etc

Why ditch all these features when the previous iterations of Windows Mobile supported them? In my opinion, it's because Microsoft sees what Apple gets away with, and has noted how acclaimed they are for making 'smart' (if not obstinate and unfriendly) design choices, and the folks up in Redmond think that's part of the secret sauce. Part of "controlling the experience." Right.

Just my opinion, but why the hell else would their new cutting edge phone software do so much less than the previous versions, but look oh so much more minimal, and "modern"

Their aping Apple.

We're going backwards here, not forward. :-/

This iPhone Patent Stuff is complete BS

I like Apple stuff but they're acting like pretty huge dicks. They're suing HTC to on grounds of some BS patent infringement to scare other phone makers out of using Google's phone operating system, Android, but at the same time are being sued by Nokia over refusal to pay licensing fees on patents that every phone company in the industry acknowledges and pays royalties on.

A big part of their defense against Nokia is to counter-sue on grounds on anti-trust and also allegations that Nokia is stealing from them (!?!)

It's super hypocritical, arrogant, and really cocky.

It ultimately probably doesn't really effect you or me, but if you pay attention to this kind of stuff its just another one of those reminders that Apple can be, well, kind of unflinching assholes about stuff.

I dig my iPhone, but really can't wait to give a nice Android phone a whirl once one of them comes to AT&T.

Ah, gadget lust.

So after a very brief hiatus Ive decided to pick up Twitter again. This time I'm using my real name, real face. Still primarily just cracking wise with it for fun, but this time around Im playing it closer to the vest in terms of the # of people I follow and amount of time I spend on it. I missed my friends there too much. It didn't have to be a complete 'either / or' proposition in terms of using it or not. It's fun. I intend to keep it that way.

Twitter and Facebook without the Twitter and Facebook

People are the reason for these "social" sites like Twitter and Facebook. Not the destination or the "platform" or any of that bullshit.

Your friends, family, 'net pals, gaming buddies, and so on.

If you already have a personal social network on these sites, but don't really want to participate on them, but do want watch and keep up-to-date with everyone - thanks to the very web standards most of this junk is built on, you've got a way to do it without being glued to it.

How? XML, baby. More specifically its implementation in RSS/Atom feeds.

Screen cap of my preferred RSS feed reader, Google Reader:

Just like subscribing to a blog, you can subscribe to individual twitter feeds and even on Facebook, you can subscribe to links, notes, and status updates (with a little bit 'o hackery).

Like I said, the point of this is that perhaps you don't or simply can't log into these sites from work, or just prefer to stalk them, without actually logging in and engaging with them.

The point is you have the ability to receive your friends social network data from outside of the social network. That freedom gives you more flexibility and choice.

(this is a quick and dirty post...I plan to update for clarity, perhaps with more information at a later time.)

Apple Tablet coming this week - my predictions on it

So the big tech news on the internet is all the anticipation for the debut of Apple's upcoming "Tablet" device.

There's no shortage of handicapping and conjecture going on, so why not through my hat into the ring with a couple of predictions:

-Despite how fancy the thing is and all the things it will do, the real economic story is still going to be a continuation and extenstion of the iTunes/AppStore business model. Think: "iBooks" or at least LOTS of books are coming to iTunes. Movies are already, but expect even more, at various prices points and in packages or bundles (of TV shows, Movies, etc) 

The WSJ journal cited an source close to Apple quoting Jobs as saying a big part of this device was going to be giving "the old guard" (Media and Publishing companies) new distribution channels, and to literally "help them out" 

The success of iTunes in the music industry is self-evident. They are beholden to it as it's the single most successful distribution channel for them in the digital age. It would stand to reason that Jobs would like to duplicate that success with other "content" businesses, as well. They're certainly hurting right now, and having the ability to bring their stuff, legally, to his device makes it more attractive too.

In terms of physical or technical stuff, I look for it to be "always on" in it's connection to the web, and to rely on the web for more software and functionality than a desktop does. Analogous to a netbook in that regard. There have been rumors of an 'iTunes in the cloud' coming, so that would be interesting (your stuff stored on their servers over the internet instead of locally on the tablet)

Other sites and blogs have already talked about the expectation of a virtual keyboard, virtual sticky notes that can be left for other family members, etc, but on thing I haven't seen talked about is photos and photo-editing. 

I can imagine this having a stand on the back that can sit upright when not in use, like frame. Screen savers with family photos, and digital photo frames are far from revolutionary, but editing, syncing, and linking them up with *other* people's photo albums over the web on a digital photo frame, is. I would imagine something like this will be in-built so it can act as a cool dynamic photo display when the device is not in active use.

Lastly, games and apps. The rumor mill is abuzz that Apple is going to do more with games on this thing than they've ever done with any of their other devices. I'm not a gamer, but this makes a lot of sense to me. Some of the most popular apps on the iPhone are games. If the interface is as immersive as people expect it to be, games would be a big driver in getting people hooked on the thing.

Bottom line, I expect it's going to be a really neat, multipurpose device that does cool stuff, but ultimately is going to be really controlled (like all Apple products) and will further try to condition us to pay for things web and net users are accustomed to getting for free. 

Good for the content business and Apple, maybe not so great for users (especially if you end up paying for stuff twice - for the privilege of being able to enjoy it on this device)

I guess we'll know on Wednesday!

When cynical becomes evil

Forbes has a story on how Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer gave a speech to Oil industry executives Thursday, "Calling Google out over it's stance in China"

From Mr. Helman's story (quoting Ballmer to Oil Execs)

"People are always trying to break into other people's data," said Ballmer. "There's always somebody trying to break into Microsoft."

The Government of China isn't just some "people," Mr. Ballmer, which you full well know. Furthermore, the reason they have not attacked your company is because, by your own admission, you will give them whatever they want in exchange for a chance to sell their people some of your shitty software. (which incidentally is one the primary holes responsible for these attacks)

Certainly you must think that your company will be the ones to outsmart the Chinese Government. That yes, while they are using you, you are using them. And that their government will never back a company wanting to produce a clone of your shitty software then dump you.

Or, perhaps you do realize this but figure you'll personally be rich, retired, and cashed out by then. Who knows?

I'm certain that you've let the Chinese put whatever backdoors they want into your software, and you readily admitted to those Oil execs that:

"If the Chinese government gives us proper legal notice, we'll take that piece of information out of the Bing search engine,"

Why?

"The U.S. is the most extreme when it comes to free speech,"

This doesn't sound that radical to me:




Glad you have the right to say that, Steve.

Most 'smart money' sees China as the future of global economic growth & opportunity, but the most innovative company on Earth just said 'No'

God Bless Google, and God Bless America.

Biggest drawback from jailbreaking the iPhone is an appreciable decrease in battery life.

Multitasking is the culprit, even running only 1 or 2 apps in the background.

I already wore a charge off pretty fast before, but since jailbreaking, I practically need to keep a charger on hand with me at all times.

I've set up this blog to accept updates via SMS, so posts will likely continue in a shorter format, but with greater frequency.

I will likely update and edit these after the fact, but should be able to capture more ideas, thoughts, and findings initially than I otherwise would. We'll see how it goes.

let us give you our bit.ly api key

The major twitter clients do a great job, but I don't think any of them allow for a bit.ly/j.mp api key that would allow you to keep track of the links you have shared.

Ideas I have for little hacks

potential little projects to add bits of functionality here and there

-Delicious archival for ReaditLater (from within app, list, etc)

-Something that automagically grabs and saves all the links sent to me via SMS message inbox. Same could be applied with filtering to emails, RSS, etc. I like the idea of automatic link fetching for communications apps

-Mapping/accessing javascript browser bookmarklets via context/right-click menus (so you could easily highlight text and trigger action) 

-a browser extension that counts characters with space (instead of words)

I've searched and can't find hacks that do any of the above. They're just little hang-nail things, but it would be fun to try to solve them. If I had some time, I'd be trying to do it instead of writing about it. ;-p

escalating privilege, Vertically

I jailbroke my iPhone yesterday. I used blackra1n and have installed both the Cydia and the Rock APT installers. I've got mine turbocharged now (even got a bittorrent client & webserver running on it!)

It's really quite amazing how much it opens the phone up. It was a nice product before, but this makes it no different than running a beautiful, robust little multi-touch UNIX computer in the palm of your hand.

I don't know why I was so previously opposed to jailbreaking and was so embarrassingly far off. This device is head and shoulders above anything out there. (All Android devices included in that not-so-humble assessment) Unlocking the file system on the phone & providing a means to install 3rd party software on it outside of the AppStore (which is all that jailbreaking really is) is a no brainer and totally enhances the experience of owning this device.

Looking back, looking forward

If you're a friend or reader of this blog, you know it's something I've never been consistent with.

From this point forward, I'm going to try to keep my posts more informal and observational, but much more frequent. I intend for this to be a personal record of thoughts, ideas, and findings about tech products & services, and any other interesting stuff that I may find.

For a time, I hoped to make a 'serious' technology blog out of this domain, regurgitating news releases and other 'analysis' from the blogesphere. I can't guarantee I won't occasionally fall into that claptrap now and again (it's the nature of tech blogs, I think), but going forward, the best way I can be serious about any effort is to simply be genuine.

(whether or not that's always interesting is another story...but I believe there's better odds going this way)

So anyway, that's my apology post, dated 12/25/2009.

My resolution for 2010 is to capture more stuff here, with more frequency as well as face-lift in terms of design and more.

Thanks for reading and following me!

Merry Christmas.
Chris Duffy aka Spinchange

Where I'm at these days...

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.

check out the following sites:

http://favrd.textism.com
http://favstar.fm

Don't forget to give your favorite tweets the stars!

My 1st Genius Playlist

By Genius, I refer to this feature of Apple's iTunes. I'm rebuilding a music collection on my new iPhone. this is what it came up with from my small, but eclectic collection. Pretty interesting.

Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex - CSS Cansei de Ser - Sexy 
What Sarah Said - Death Cab For Cutie - Plans 
Help I'm Alive - Metric - Fantasies   
Everything In Its Right Place - Radiohead - Kid A  
Out of Control (State of Emotion) - Kenna - Make Sure They See My Face 
Creep (Live) - Pretenders - Pirate Radio (Digital Version) 
The Crystal Ship - The Doors - The Future Stars Here 
Missed the Boat - Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank 
Welcome to England -Tori Amos - Abnormally Attracted to Sin   
1901 - Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix  
Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell  
One Headlight - The Wallflowers - Collected: 1996-2005 Rock  
Walk It Off -The Breeders - Mountain Battles (Bonus Track Version)  
Pyramid Song - Radiohead - Amnesiac  
I Guess You're Right - The Posies - Every Kind of Light 
Are You Gonna Be My Girl - JET Get Born 
Sun Red Sky Blue - Kenna - Make Sure They See My Face 
Give - Tori Amos - Abnormally Attracted to Sin  
Love Comes - The Posies - Every Kind of Light 
Loose Wires/Blink Radio - Kenna - Make Sure They See My Face 
Flavor - Tori Amos - Abnormally Attracted to Sin 

the iPhone conundrum

The elegance and beauty of the iPhone lies in the fact that it's basically really, really great software.

Just look at a powered-down device: It's just a shiny piece of polished consumer electronics –its black, blank, stateless screen waiting for the logic to pass you control of the device's inherent capacity.

Though a sight now copied by numerous other brands and makers, Apple’s was the first and is still the best. But why? It’s not inherently that much different from any other? And it costs much more.

It’s the software. It’s the way the phone reacts to you.

Fundamental to the Apple design ethos is a unified user experience. This means that all the components of it’s software share the same behavioral characteristics and gracefulness. One can posit that It also means for Apple that everything serve to reinforce the platform itself.

Google’s sin against the platform is that the Voice app literally spoofs core or low-level functions of the OS. It’s doing basic phone functions thats Apple feels their software should do. 

If you’ve bought and paid for an iPhone a logical reaction might be, “Wait a minute, it’s my phone, right? I can put what I want to on it, can't I?” 

Well, not really. Read the fine print, that iPhone, is still their phone. At least the software is. And that's what counts. Of course you can jailbreak it, but in doing that you are violating the thing that makes the phone special in the first place, the Apple experience.

While Visions of Metalic Tsunamis Were Dancing in Everyone's Heads

Another week of Google announcements and vaporware analysis. This isn't the Google of old that just shipped a beta version of something with little -to- no fanfare. This is the new microsoftized Google that announces launches of products at dates forward in the future when anyone else is trying to launch their product of service.

Among this week's examples: Another Wave "announcement" on July 20th that 100,000 invites would be released on, wait for it...September 30th (kthx for heads up, Google. I'll be sure to mark it down on my Gcal)

Meanwhile an actual working real-time communications and collabortaion app was launched on the same day. An upstart called Watchittoo that allows to you share videos together with friends in real time and chat and collaborate about them. Ironically, it's built in part on the YouTube API! (Youtube is owned, of course, by Google) Watchittoo is proudly displaying the Youtube logo/ link all over their site.

Letting these guys get some spotlight wouldn't have exactly killed Mountian View, but who knows, maybe Watchittoo's PR department sucks. It could've just been bad timing, but I'm suspect because...

There was Chrome OS annoucement on the eve of Microsoft's Office online launch. Again, a strategic PR masterstoke carefully desgined to suck out the limited attention supply of the tech press and blogesphere for a cycle or two...

Don't even get me going on Wave...I've been waiting for that. Getting Ridiculous.

I come back to Chairman Jobs's dictum (of whom Google CEO, Eric Schimdt, actually reports too in another capacity in life): "Real Artists Ship"

Watchitoo, Microsoft, Opera:

Their art is launching, not announcing.

Digg break your links? Use Bit.ly instead next time.

JD Rucker aka 0boy has uncovered the story and Mashable confirmed it: Digg's URL shortener 'diggbar' - which shortened web addresses and put a digg iframe on top of their pages - is now redirecting visitors to the digg.com site instead of the destination URL that was initially shortened, once the story is posted as a digg submission that can be voted on.

This isn't exactly the end of the world, but it wasn't previously like this for users. It's being used by a bunch of 3rd party twitter clients & sites as a regular utility URL shortener- not just a digg traffic engine. The appearance is that digg got people using their shortener for its own sake, and then changed how it functions to better benefit them after the fact. In a word: Sneaky. 

The bottom line is the only reason to use Digg.com to shorten a link is if you're submitting the story to digg.com and want it to be voted on. Period. If you need a vanilla URL shortner, Digg (or any social network, really) probably isn't the one that you want to use.

Going forward, I'm using Bit.ly almost exclusively. I'm doing this mainly because it's not the domain of a social network's service, and because it doesn't have a toolbar that wraps the page in a frame we all know annoys at least 50% of the people who click thru. Bit.ly, as far as can be told, just wants the analytics and metadata (and shares most of it -for now, anyway- which is sweet) 

You don't even need an account to shorten a link with bit.ly, but if you sign up for one, it saves all your URLs on public page like bookmarks but with the aforementioned yummy click and conversation data.

Any bit.ly link then shared on twitter or elsewhere can be looked into further by placing /info/ in between the bit.ly/ and /xxxx hashstring portion of characters in the URL (e.g. http://bit.ly/info/1RPfXx)

Back on their site, They've got a search that's a nice way to look at what links are being shared across twitter. You can use a twitter username as a search operator along with words like " listening to: " (or 'reading,' 'must read' etc.) You can subscribe to your recent bit.ly 'bits' as an RSS feed too.

It's like I've been saying to friends, bit.ly is the new del.icio.us

Update: Here's a screen grab I took that shows off the bitly sidebar for sharing your links:

If you want to try this service out, go to a web page you'd like to shorten the URL for (this one even, ;), and in the address bar of your browser, type ' bit.ly/ ' before the ' http:// ' and hit return. The link's right there for you to copy and paste and much more.

(I have no material interest, financial -or -otherwise in Bit.Ly I just think the service is good. This stunt by digg makes all URL shortners look bad. I don't think bit.ly and some other's are.)

Brass tacks: Can Microsoft hurt Google more in search advertising than Google can hurt Microsoft in selling software?

A Microsoft and Yahoo search partnership deal imminent? According to Kara Swisher at allthingsd that's the word

Redmond is still laser-lock focused on breaking Google's grip over internet search & web advertising. Just consider the enormous launch of Microsoft's shinny-new toy: Bing. Now there's even twitter integration with "Bing Tweets" Early numbers show that Bing is making an impact is terms of sheer size and presence.

Hitting them on the other side of the advertsing equation will be the relaunch of Mircosoft's Ad Publisher "pubCenter" network. I've tried it out and it offers some pretty quick and easy-to-use tools and customizations to get some PPC ads on your site fast. The ad bloc at the bottom right is an example.

(Iroincally I've always wanted to serve Google adsense but have never been able to do it properly in 4 or 5 years that I've had an account. I tried again this week and found that the account was deleted. On top of that, I'm prevented from making a new one or contacting anyone at Google about it. Therefore, Google loses at least 1 potential publisher to Microsoft. I'm sure other people have had problems with the service and would like to look at alternatives too.)

Google's been the only good game in town for advertisers and the same goes for its AdSense network for web publishers.

With Bing off & running + a deal to be Yahoo's search partner- Microsft is finally hitting back at Google's core in meaningful way. Technology trends aside, It certainly seems that Microsoft could hurt google more directly in the pocketbook, than anything Google can do to them. (other than maybe just stealing mind share and a few news cycles with product announcements).

You don't see it being spun that way, but it seems like the case when it comes down to the business of how both companies make money.

History repeating itself in realtime with Tweetbe.at

The entire world is re-awakening to the phenomena of real-time, short messages, ala Twitter. It was the lone vehicle to carry the news of revolutionary protest in the streets of Tehran following the failed elections in Iran. It's not only captured the attention of the global news media, but stolen it from them. Even the White House and it's State Department validated the site's role and geopolitical importance. One former Bush administration official has called for it to receive a Nobel Prize. Even Oprah's using it these days. Heady stuff.

But this isn't the first time technology like this has 'shrunk the world' and shone a light in dark places- In 1991 the news of Soviet coup d'état attempt was carried over IRC despite a media blackout in the country. Reports from the first Iraq war were carried over its channels as well.

And IRC is as old as the hills. In spite of that, It's always allowed for realtime group conversation -or- private one-to-one dialog. You don't need to create an account, big personal network, or audience of followers to start-up and jump into a conversation. You can monitor channels of topics and come and go as you please. It's a pretty damn efficient twitter, way before Twitter (and cell phones, text messages, even AIM for that matter)

What Twitter's done to the individual messages of SMS (and by extension, chat & IRC) is marry them to hosted nature of the world web web. Individual statements in 140 characters, published as html documents; those documents aggregated into user profiles & feeds.

With so many documents being broadcast and so little inherent organization to it's delivery, Twitter can be very much like being in crowded room where all your friends are shouting at themselves and each other. Third party software like Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck are powerful tools that help manage these twitter feeds like mini-email, but neither helps you discover the rest of twitter at random or topically, like you do on IRC.

Thankfully, developer Alex Bosworth has connected the dots and come up with something that marries the two. It's a proof-of-concept alpha called Tweetbe.at.

If you use twitter, you know that putting #hashtags in your messages is a way to tag or catagorize them. The idea behind Tweetbe.at is that #hashtags represent IRC channels of tweets. You need to log-in using your twitter account (not with password, but OAuth) and then you can visit or create and participate in as many channels as you want. If you like, It allows you to fold in other search terms and user's feeds so you can develop and refine the channel. The important thing, whether you want to moderate the channel or just sit back and watch, is that you can now surface more relevant tweets you may have otherwise missed, or use it to get into @reply conversations with new & interesting tweeps you otherwise may not have ever met!

Well done, @p1bx