The beginning of the end for physical print. Birth of e-ink.
Jan/100
We have seen the loss of many archaic storage methods in the past decade. Rolledexs have been replaced with databases, film has been digitized and widely adopted, music is more efficiently delivered by electronic means eliminating the costumer dependance on CD, DVD or other physical media. We have yet to migrate from the medium most prevalent for centuries, millennia even. This of course is physical print. Probably one of humanities greatest fault is waste and we’ve made exceptional gains with other mediums to limit/eliminate waste but moving beyond paper still seems to be out of reach. Great efforts have been made in the past year to try to cross this final frontier. Devices like the nook, kindle, sony e-reader all have a similar attractive e-ink display and gigabytes of capacity capable of storing hundreds if not thousands of books or periodicals. Internet connections ensure that these devices can be updated remotely or periodicals pushed to them daily or when available. So with these advances , why aren’t more people flocking to these devices? Why haven’t we seen a serious drop in paper media production?
Well my thoughts on this is the technology is still in its infancy. Like the introduction of the MP3 player just over a decade ago this technology will likely take a decade if not more to become widely adopted. The transitions from page to page using e-ink is still a slow process, navigation of menus is arduous using e-ink and people don’t have to re-charge a book on the book shelf so convenience factor has to be weighed. Let’s also not rule out good old fashion ego, for those who have a bookshelf they put in their living room like a trophy shelf of books conquered.
“One should never rule out human dependance on the the familiar, and the old ways.”
Food for thought!
~e
Recording Industry A-holes of America.
Jul/092
I normally would not speak of the RIAA as I rank it up there with Nazi’s and the Sith Empire. Aside from their totally backwards views on p2p sharing and their underhanded tactics to make people stop p2p sharing the United States (Suing dead people, low income families, and small children) their most recent slap in the face is so ridiculous I can’t even think of a proper metaphor that can illustrate how stupid, disrespectful, and downright evil the RIAA truly is.
If you didn’t click the link then allow me to paint you a picture. DRM is a digital rights management system the RIAA has been trying to force down the throats of every user who downloads music. If you’ve used iTunes, (new) Napster, or any other (legal) music download site you have come into contact with DRM at some point. The idea of DRM I can agree with. DRM SHOULD deliver a method for the record industry to control deliver of a digital track so it doesn’t flood onto the (grey market) music download sites. In theory DRM makes digital downloads safer for the artist and the user BUT what the RIAA and MPAA use DRM for is much more sinister. With DRM requiring large amounts of database hardware, software and management it’s not feasible that todays DRM controlled music will work in 10 years from now. The article explains how the RIAA and MPAA believe they have the right to tell you something you bought and paid for is actually just a LOAN or LICENSE and you shouldn’t expect to have unlimited use of your property. We saw an example of the evils of DRM just over a week ago with the Amazon Kindle (e-book reader). Users who purchased a specific copy of George Orwell ‘1984′ awoke to find that the version they purchased had been discontinued from Amazon, removed from their Kindle and money refunded. Where this may not seem terribly bad (given the refund) it is WRONG on so many levels. Imagine purchasing a hardcover book and years later you find out it’s extremely rare, only to be told that it was being recalled because the publisher demanded it. Someone breaks into your house, takes the book, and leaves you the purchase price as a compensation on the kitchen table with a note saying, “Thank you, Yours truly Amazon.” . Essentially that’s what’s happening minus the heartfelt thank you.
I have been a strong opposer to the idea of DRM. Not because it’s a bad idea, but because no CORPORATION in the world will use the technology ethically. With the digital age of music, movies, books, ect. we have less privacy, and control. Are we willing to sacrifice our rights to what’s rightfully ours? I recall another time in United States history the government made it illegal for people to own gold to abolish the gold standard, and move the American People to paper money and thus enslaving the nation into debt. How far until having physical recording like tapes, records, cd’s will be illegal?
Food for thought.
~geekout
Transparent Aluminum!? That’s the ticket laddie!
Jul/092
“So. Is it worth something ta ya…or should I just…punch up clear.” — Scotty
So we are on our way! I read an interesting article that scientists have indeed created, Transparent Aluminum!
Next stop, warp speed. Seems every time we think we have it figured out, someone come along and proves us wrong. Scientists at Oxford have found a way to expose normal aluminum to a high powered laser, and blasting out an electron from the atoms. The result of this makes the Aluminum almost completely transparent. Don’t get too excited, you wont be building a whale tank anytime soon, but it’s progress.
~geekout.
Technology abroad. Mexico edition.
Jul/092
Think beyond the United States and Canada. I recently took a business trip to Mexico City. These days, the first thing you associate with Mexico is swine flu (H1N1) and burritos. First on a non-technical note: Our version of Mexican food is very different from the real thing.
Well I survived to tell the tale of my trip to Mexico so things couldn’t have been that bad right? I have to say of all the places I’ve traveled. So far Mexico has been the most enjoyable. Great people, lifestyle, food, and cultured. There is a definite divide between the rich, middle class and poor. In a city populated with over 9 million it’s easy to get caught in the between.
So what does Mexico offer on the technology front? Well don’t expect a radical difference as if you were visiting Japan. Similar to the rest of North America Mexico employs many of the same technologies. GSM is the prevalent cellular infrastructure in the city and boardband on the wire is neither fast or cheap. Talking to my Mexican colleagues 1 mbit is considered generous and cellular tethering is so outrageously expensive that only the elite road warriors would consider it. Business’ typically had more bandwidth (highest I saw was a 32 mbit connection) and were deploying devices to make sure they were using the most efficient use of their bandwidth.
Business’ in Mexico for the most part preferred Microsoft or Linux systems. I saw very few Macs used in the business environment. Exchange 2003 seemed to be the mail server of choice. Macafee seemed to be the AV of choice, Cisco seemed to the be router of choice but oddly firewalls were more random (aka non-Cisco).
Interestingly enough, Blackberry seemed to be the device of choice for the average business user. I saw a number of curves(blackberry), 8800 world phone’s and pearl flip phones. For personal use there was a surprisingly large number of basic handsets used. Nokia, Sony Er, Motorola handsets came cheap. Many stores carried ‘Telcel’ phones which could be purchased without contract. It seems the carriers are offering the subsidized rated for phone and not enforcing the contract purchase. (likely because telcel has a monopoly) I learned the average monthly rates for these devices ranged from $100-$150 USD. The price of connectivity. (note. I bought a nokia cellphone when I was there for $45 USD)
Laptop’s, Desktop’s and Game Consoles seemed in the same or higher price range and at the same level we would fine locally. Don’t let the peso $ scare you. with a 13 : 1 USD rate, some quick math should get your heart going again. I didn’t get around to all the shopping centers but I didn’t find many video game or electronics stores, clearly room for growth in this market. Designer clothing stores and high end electronics (Apple Store) could be found in the more up-scale parts of the city. You’ll find technology is at a similar price because it’s imported from the US or abroad. Local goods like beer, tequila, food, ect. were exceptionally cheap.
Rating: 3.5/5
Great place to visit but geeks should make sure they have a hotel with free internet access. Pick up a spare GSM phone when you’re down there.
Fun: 5/5
Technology Rich: 3/5
Internet Access: 4/5
Free Internet Access: 1/5
~geekout
Clash of the Titans!
Jul/090
We all knew this day would come. Within the last week we saw the internet goliath Google announce a very lightweight OS based on the graphical architecture of Google’s browser Chrome. Surprisingly Microsoft has been very positive about Googles entry into the OS market. This move where anticipated came as a surprise because many believed Google might be biting off more then it can chew between perfecting it’s Android Mobile OS, ever expanding Google Apps, and of course the ongoing acquisitions and integration of other tech companies.
The big question seems to be. Will Google revolutionize the way we use our computer like the way they revolutionized email, online applications and data management; or will google arrogantly try to re-invent the wheel and just hope their name attached to a modified version of linux will be enough. Time will tell but this is really the first time we’ve seen a real opponent appear to the Microsoft and Apple dominated market.
One thing we can guarantee, seamless integration with google apps, and gmail. That alone will be s selling point for a number of people. This OS is largely targeted for netbook use. Lightweight and internet focused (googles specialty). It will be very interesting to see an OS develop in the open source community with Google footing the bill.
Update: Phil wanted me to add that Microsoft is entering into the cloud application space to compete with Google Apps, thus this ‘Clash’ is going to happen on two fronts. The questions we will see answered will be, is building a platform OS then entering into the cloud easier OR is building cloud applications then creating a platform OS’
~geekout
iapps
Jul/091
Today most users don’t necessarily view a phone by it’s features but by the applications it can host. With the dawn of the smart phones users choice of software over hardware is more prevalent. With a plethora of applications available on the Apple iPhone, many users flocked to its handset despite a number of design quirks that might deter users from the hardware if thats all Apple offered (iPhone v1.0)
iPhone v1.0 was not a smart phone. By definition a smart phone gives the user the freedom to install 3rd part applications to enable evolving functionality of a handset. Where a iPhone hacker revolution (of which I was involved) enabled this functionality the leman had no access. So the version 1.0 firmware left the iPhone a phone and nothing more. 2.0 fimware was released with the iPhone 3G along with a new app store, enabling the iPhone to finally enter the Smart Phone realm.
With that I am going to give some suggestions of applications for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. I separate these applications mainly because the iPhone offers more functionality with the built in mic, GPS, and 3G.
Top 5 applications for iPhone:
5. Shazam: [free] Probably one of the most unique application I’ve used. Sampling even the quietest background music and sending it to an online database. This software has surprised me with being able to determine both the very quiet and the very obscure music I’ve heard. How many times have you wanted to know the name of the song you were listening to and either didn’t know, or didn’t want to ask?
4. Remote: [free] Apple created and distributed application, should probably have been included on the iPhone by default. This useful application allows you to remotely control your iTunes music and movies over WiFi.
3. TweetDeck: [free] Users of TweetDeck know the power of the PC version and any Tweeter knows the attraction. TweetDeck is a fully featured port of the PC version. Take pictures, tweet, re-tweet, look at profiles. This is a solid #3
2. WordPress [free] Blog posting at the push of a button. WordPress is the most popular blogger application. This app allows full moderation, and posting of your blog. I use it for this site.
1. RDP [paid/free] Offered in a full and lite version RDP allows access to your servers or home PC. A wise suggestion for a user using a co-lo server or IT manager.
Honorable mentions: FriendSync, and Facebook
Top 5 applications for iPod Touch:
5. Topple 2: [paid] The seaqul to the clever limited free predecessor ‘Topple’, Topple 2 offers 30 levels and online play. This game I never would have thought to make my top 5 but the addictive nature to playing Topple and the full use of the iPod’s motion sensor and touch screen make this a top choice.
4. eBay: [free] Almost requires no explanation, the eBay application is quite useful for tracking my auctions and bidding while I roam the house without the need of a laptop.
3. fring: [free] Multi-IM client is a useful companion for doing your IM’ing, computer free. Consolidating Skype, MSN, ICQ, AOL, ect into one easy to manage contact list.
2. ESPN: [free] If this were a paid application it would not be on my list but the attractive nature of tracking my favorite sports teams without running for a TV or laptop is a great FREE feature.
1. Wolfenstine 3D: [paid] The Nazi killing classic that was my gateway game into computers is back in iPod form. The graphics are crisp and the controls are surprisingly intuitive for a FPS (first person shooter) on a touch screen.
There you have it! Like them or not, thats my list! What’s yours?
~geekout
To go or not to go?
Jul/093
4 years ago, Sony unleashed a competing device for the portable gaming market. Until 2005, Nintendo had dominated this market with their GameBoy product line. Sony’s Portable Playstation (PSP) sported some decent hardware specifications. The CPU, high resolution screen, analogue stick control, and WiFi were new and unique to the PSP. Where the PSP had a few strengths it suffered many weakness. Sony’s ever expanding list of proprietary technologies has always been a source of contention for end users. Memory Stick and UMD both being exclusive Sony technologies trying to re-invent the wheel. Sony underestimated Nintendo’s understanding of the mobile market. Sony’s PSP was not what the doctor ordered. This is a consistent fault of Sony, trying to predict or TELL the market what it wants. The market wants battery life, innovative control, limited moving parts, universal compatibility with existing platforms and technology. Integration of the PSP into the Playstation 3 was a wise move but hardly useful for 90% of gamers. Sony was the first to allow downloadable content for their mobile platforms using the Playstation store. With a number of failures under Sony’s belt and an inability to pry the PS2 (a very stable revenue source for Sony) from the hands of gamers in lieu of a new platform, Sony’s failures land them in hot financial water.
In 2008 rumors began to circulate about the development of a new PSP. Better, Stronger, Faster. With the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch now entering the mobile gaming arena there are high expectation Sony will pull a revolutionary rabbit out of its hat. As the rumors increased a claiming to be a legit render from Sony was later exposed as a hoax. This render included an iPod Touch like screen with nice lines and clean appearance with a slick slide up screen exposing a very Playstation replica like control pad. The rumor alluded that gamers would be able to use the device to play music and games like they would on the iPod Touch and for more advanced games use the controls. Many gadget sites thought this might be enough to shake the stable Nintendo foundation but again this was a proven hoax.
E3 2009 Sony Announced the PSP Go. What many hoped would be a totally re-invented device were disappointed to find the PSP Go is simply a cosmetic re-design with minor hardware changes. The only change that looks promising is the removal of the UMD drive. Where the rumor mill seems to have got a few things right with the slide up screen that masks the buttons, their is no touch screen, only one analogue stick. Still memory stick and now internal memory to download games right to the handheld. Make no mistake, this device will not move Sony forward in the mobile gaming market. Sony has done a great job losing ground to all of its competitors over the last few years. With delayed game titles, not offering price drops when everyone else is, trying to milk bluray for all it’s worth, and most importantly not listening to what gamers what. Sony has dug itself a hole it will need to spend a lot of time and money getting out of. Delivering gamers a product that offers no change from what is now industry standard will not get your name back on the top of the list. Many podcasts from IGN and other sources all seem to echo this device will only fall in the hands of people who have to have every gaming gadget (myself included) but offers nothing over the Nintendo DS, iPod Touch, and PSP v1.0
Step up your game Sony. Everyone seems very tired with your failed attempts to milk gamers dry for their money. I would normally fault Microsoft for this but at least they have made many concessions to appease their supporters. Microsoft has done multiple price drops, never reduced functionality on their equipment, and where they have hardware issues (trod) they did extend the warranty to three years.
Sony, you need to get the hint.
~geekout
Adventures in “Fog Computing”
Jul/091
What’s cloud computing you may wonder? Judging by the amount of press the topic gets, it seems like everybody has an answer for it, and up until a few weeks ago so did I. To me, cloud computing basically meant the same thing “utility computing” meant for the last several decades. In a very general sense, utility computing has been the perennial counter-attack against the rise of the PC and desktop computing. Giants like (the former) Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and IBM would site it as the answer to Microsoft domination. People no longer would need significant terminal resources, and would return to centralized management of their applications and data. Amazingly, Microsoft held them at a distance with indisputable dominance on the desktop and even launched counter offensives in all their domains, high-end servers, databases, and software. But then along came Google, who is more than just a search engine, and is redefining computing for everyone, whether they want to follow along or not.
Among Google’s myriad innovations, the standout in the context of cloud computing is their ability to manage server resources with extreme efficiency. The result is a massive computing resource that is being put to work in everything from indexing and search, to application hosting, to plausible use in artificial intelligence (this will make a great topic for another post). But focusing on the core ability to build custom “google servers”, cluster them, and then turn around and offer amazing new services is, in my opinion, the stunning contribution to ”cloud computing” that has shaken everything that has come before it.
Another substantial change to the concept of utility computing is then introduction of widely accessible and fast maturing sector of virtualization, that is the abstraction of computing resources so that, among many methods, lower level resources (like CPU, memory etc) are utilized by shared higher level applications (like OS). There’s many flavors of VM, from full virtualization where the hardware is simulated allowing “guest” OSes to run simultaneously ([1]Parallels Workstation, [2]Parallels Desktop for Mac, [3]VirtualBox, [4]Virtual Iron, [5]Oracle VM, [6]Virtual PC, [7]Virtual Server, [8]Hyper-V, [9]VMware Workstation, [10]VMware Server) to other types, which we won’t go into detail here.
The short story is that there are now hundreds of ways of offering an application or service over the Internet, and cloud computing is becoming a strong competitor to hosting your own dedicated hardware in particular. This is where the story for the idea for this post is picks up. Our company was searching for alternative ways to scale a hosted web service (an on-demand analytics package), so I responded to a webinar invitation from a vendor. After some pre-qualification emails I am learning that I know nothing about cloud computing as it is being defined a the bleeding edge. This email content in particular had my head spinning… or let’s say that “fog computing” became appropriate.
A rep writes:
By Vmware’s definition of the “Cloud”, as I read it, an “external cloud” MSP would host and serve your application to a customer’s ”internal cloud” via the “private cloud”; “internal cloud” referring to customer’s virtualized, vSphere infrastructure, and “private cloud”, a new cloud concept altogether, in which internal and external cloud are joined. This means either you would host the external cloud (also, ”public cloud”), or find a vSPhere-certified partner to deliver same.
Vmware has yet to formally declare all external cloud components, supposedly to be announced by EOY, but they do have a few major MSPs who are to sign on, from the AT&T cloud scale on down. A few have already announced their intent.
“For its part, VMware has publicly announced that its customers will eventually be able to work with public cloud providers, including AT&T, Verizon, Rackspace and BT-but Amazon remains notably absent from VMware’s list of cloud business partners.”
Yeah. We’ve booked a phone call and more will be explained to me then.
But for now, here’s my summary of what I see as viable options for migrating a web service to the “cloud”.
1) Use a “Virtual Private Server” or VPS offered by virtually (sorry) all the Web Host providers on the market. This is a turn-key offering for a virtualized OS account (typically Win2K3, Win2k8, Linux, and some FreeBSD too). It’s just like having dedicated hardware that you RDP into and use but with server resources shared with other VPS accounts.
2) New offerings for cloud computing from Amazon (Amazon Web Services) and GoGrid let you buy instantiations of OSes, and only buy resources like CPU, memory or storage by the hour or Gigabyte, and only as you use them. This is really attractive in scaling up and down on demand.
3) Buy your own hardware and host any one of the Full-Virtualization apps listed above. This sort of defeats the purpose, and requires you to administer the entire infrastructure, instead of your account only.
Cloud/Virtualization Pros: price, ease of startup, less security and admin worries
Cloud/Virtualization Cons: shared resource / performance concerns, reliability, platform / provider lockin
We might say more on this when we take the possible plunge into AWS, we already use VPS services to reasonable success level.
References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallels_Workstation
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallels_Desktop_for_Mac
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Iron
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_VM
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Virtual_PC
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Server
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Server
Music in the 21st century.
Jul/090
The year is 1998. It’s christmas day. I’m 15 years old and opening my last gift. It was a Diamond Rio PMP300.
This small little black box was the first North American and second world wide MP3 player. Running on one AA battery and packing a nice display this unit sported 32MB of internal storage and had a smartmedia card reader. Today the Diamond company is no longer but is now only ‘Rio’ and still making digital audio players.
This little device single handedly lightened my backpack as I no longer had to carry my panasonic shockwave CD player and CD collection. The revolution was well underway by the summer of 1999. Napster and other P2P music services began flooding the internet with free music. The recording industry knew little to no information about this technology and like they do today they just sued Napster out of existence. (A new Napster emerged from the ashes but is a pay service). Other services emerged out of the reach of the RIAA and still prosper today. This is of course not the point of this post.
Over a decade ago we saw the first real MP3 player and P2P music. Ten years pass and the only major evolution worth of notice is the technology breakthroughs that have enhanced our digital audio player market. Now holding upwards to 160Gb (5120 x the Rio 32Mb). It seems the music delivery infrastructure is still years behind where we are in terms of hardware. Take iTunes as an example. 99c per song, an average album has 16 songs. so you’re really paying about the same as a CD even today. Yes there is the argument that you can pick an individual song vs. the whole CD but why pay a premium for one song when if you buy the whole album it’s the same price? We still have a long way to go.
~geekout
Welcome to the internet ‘gdgt’!
Jul/090
Well it’s been a long time coming and with much anticipation ‘gdgt.com‘ has launched and the geeks of the internet can now sleep a little easier from now on. For many of you who have not been following engadget over the past few years, I’ll explain. Ryan Block used to be the editor for the geek/gadget popular online site engadget.com. Last year Ryan left engadget to pursue his own geek ambitions. This seems to be a common element within the geek blogosphere. Most people in these circles don’t seems to have a particular gripe or vendetta, they just want to make their mark in the internet and work for the most part these side ventures have been sucessful.
So what is ‘gdgt’? Well unlike its predecessor it isn’t a blog. Instead the guys at gdgt have taken a unique approach to develop a community for everyone who loves gadgets. The idea seems outrageous but once I setup my account and started playing they have many things to keep you coming back and keep you contributing. What this means for the geek community now had a resource to see what other geeks think of gadgets. Example, you can look up a gadget like the iPhone 3Gs and you can see how many people own this device on the community, how they rate it, and comments about the device. The beautiful thing about seeing everyone opinion is you can develop an unbiased opinion for yourself.
I strongly recomend you check out gdgt and make an account. Add some gadgets you have and see how you stack up against everyone else. Maybe people know some tricks about some additional fucntions you haven’t been using?
~geekout
