Category: Technology

John Battelle reaches his Google saturation point

John Battelles Searchblog: Just Asking…

Ive found myself more and more wary of doing things that Id like to do with Google applications simply out of some primal, lizard brain fear of giving too much control of my data to one source. Its not that I dont trust Google, its not that I dont like the applications, its that Im worried they might fall to some ill use, out of the control of the current brand as Ive come to understand it today. Or perhaps its deeper than that – I simply cant let too much of my online life run through any one control point, regardless of who it is.

John Battelle wonders the same thing I wondered before, but of course, he writes it better and backs up his facts (damn journalists).

Does virtualization herald the end of the platform war?

I was reading Marc Andreesen’s new blog and I came across this quote:

Virtualization — in the form of software like Parallels and VMWare Fusion — lets you deal with an individual operating system as if it were an application.

from blog.pmarca.com: At long last, switching back to Mac

and I realized that since Apple has completed the standardization of the X86-family as the chip architecture for 99% of the world, the platform really has gotten irrelevant. Now that OS virtualization technologies don’t require massive amount of processing power, you can mix and match all you want. Like OS X, but need to run some windows programs for work? No Problem. Like Vista, but really need to run that Linux app? Easy-peasey. This really got cemented when Parallels officially released version 3 of their windows virtualization solution which theoretically gives virtualized apps access to the GPUs for the first time. We’ll have to see what the cost (in performance) is, but we know that it will get more and more seemless over time.

This goes beyond just the OSes though. Flash/Flex/Silverlight all enter this as well, further blurring the lines between operating system, platform and application.

I could see that very soon, the OS that you run will be 100% based on personal preference and all the worries about compatibility will be gone. If that does happen, Microsoft better be scared. I think that Bootcamp and Parallels are much more of a long-term threat than Flash ever will be.

The Seattle micro-startup community is organizing

I was around and in fact active in the first web bubble in Seattle. It was a heady time, cocktail parties and pitches. Companies grabbing up every inch of pioneer square loft space and such. Then it all went away and I retreated back into the corporate world so that I could pay the bills. When the new bubble came a knock’in it seemed that Seattle wasn’t jumping on the bandwagon as fast. I would hear about events and some new companies, but it didn’t seem like a tectonic shift like last time.

However, it seems like the Web 2.0 bubble hasn’t completely passed Seattle by. The Seattle PI has a nice article: Coffee, muffins and entrepreneurs, that is covering some of the local gatherings of entrepreneurs around Seattle. It seems like, this time around, the companies are keeping it on the down-low and small at first.

Here some of the links:

ok Apple, now you are really starting to piss me off

At this point, I’m just used to the horror show that developing software for the mac is. But as a user, it has always been sweetness and light mostly and with Apple service, it has always been awesome.

Now, Apple is crossing the line. My 30 GB iPod photo is busted. It has been lovingly taken care of, never dropped, doesn’t have a scratch on it. The problem? Sometimes (not always), the buttons on the scroll wheel are treated like you are pressing the middle button instead. This will last for a while and then go back to working. However, when you are trying to pause your iPod and you just keep flipping between the song, the rating, the position, the cover art, etc… it can be insane making.

So I put the details into a service report and got a box delivered lickity-split. Score one for Apple service. 3 days later, I got a box back! Joy! Apple service would remain in my heart. Until I opened it and read the note that said, (I paraphrase) “works fine, no problems found”. When in my description, I had said that the problem was intermittent, so I hope they did more than try it out for half a second. They reformatted it, of course. I tried it and it seemed to work ok. So I loaded up my music onto it and was able to repro the problem again within 10 seconds. I didn’t update the OS of the iPod, I just put music onto it.

So, I sent it back, saying in my service report, “no really. you have to try it before reformatting it. It really does happen. It is intermittent.”

I just got it back. Same story. “works fine, no service performed”

So, now I have to drag my ass into the genius bar to get some pimply faced UW freshman to ask me stupid questions since there is no fucking phone number I can call to talk to anyone at Apple service. The net result of which will probably be that they drop the DHL box in the mail for me and I get it back reformatted AGAIN with no service performed.

It is this kind of crap that made me switch to Apple in the first place, and it will be this kind of crap that will make me switch again.

Information week columnist succumbs to the Second Life hype

12 Things To Do In Second Life That Arent Embarrassing If Your Priest Or Rabbi Finds Out – Digital Life Blog – InformationWeek

I don’t want to dis Second Life too much. You gotta give it up to the Linden Labs folks for taking on a business that has an absolutely horrific track record with a string of failures. That said, I’m getting a bit tired of the hype. So when Mitch Wagner posted his article, I took a look at it. He talks about all the fun things to do in SL, most of which don’t sound new or even very exciting, but whatever. Then he decided to post his in-game pictures, and for me, the wheels fell off the wagon.

of this photo he says ” Times Square. Notice the steam rising from the sidewalk vent on the left.” What I notice is that no one is there. It’s empty. Doesn’t sound much like Times Square to me.

Here’s Amsterdam

Again, where are the people? I see 5 there including the author. How social is that?

I’ve got two problems with SL, both business related. Most of the company that the money has earned have been from virtual real estate sales. There are some real market dynamics problems here. Since this is virtual real estate, this can be a continuing source of revenue for the company since it can create more on demand. The problem is that the more real estate that the company produces, the less any existing real estate is worth. Since there is an active market in re-selling real estate in SL, this makes it harder to put any real price on any of the fictional land. Secondly, the more land that the company makes available the worse that the density of users to land is. This makes it harder for users to encounter each other and can make SL a very lonely place, which isn’t a very good experience.

The other main issue that I have is with the Linden Dollars model. This is also another source of revenue since there is a real exchange that the company brokers between Linden Dollars and real dollars. At this point, however, things get sketchy since it is in Linden’s best interest to continue to create as many Linden dollars as they can since they make a profit on each transaction. You then get into the real-world economic issues of inflation. The more popular that SL gets, the more real that this problem becomes.

I have seen some comments from Linden about this, and I don’t think that they are stupid. I know they have probably considered these issues. However, since their continued success relies on an ever larger revenue source, they will have a serious problem reconciling doing the right thing and doing what they need to do in order to keep the world going.

Blame for record-breaking credit card data theft laid at the feet of WEP

Ars Technica: Blame for record-breaking credit card data theft laid at the feet of WEP

New details have emerged about what has become the largest consumer data theft to date. TJX, parent company of discount retailers T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, disclosed in a regulatory filing in late March that hackers had stolen data covering over 45 million credit and debit cards over an 18-month period. The Wall Street Journal has done some digging subscription, and what has come to light is a sad tale of poor security and corporate irresponsibility. Unfortunately, weve seen it all before.

The cuprit? A WEP-secured wireless network and a company lax on security.

The new curmugeon on the block

Andrew Keen thinks the user-created-internet is full of crap. A bunch of self-important blowhards talking to no one. I am one of them, and I think he is right. Will I give up this blog to let the “real” journalists restore order, doubtful. I have grown tired of the web 2.0 hype though and I’m glad to see someone skewering the insanity of this stuff. Even if you disagree with him, it is worth getting the other side of the story from time to time.

Andrew Keen’s blog at ZDNet

weird iPod moment

I’m not sure if this was an anthropomorphic moment or a fetishistic moment, but as I put my old iPod in a box today to send it back to Apple to get it’s click-wheel fixed, it turned on, showing my favorite A Silver Mount Zion song paused. It was like saying good bye to an old friend for the last time. I was actually kind of sad.

I’m scaring myself.

Review of blend from an Interaction Designer

SB.com: –Engage!

After all this, I realized that MS made a really powerful tool for really expert users. It seems that after all is said and done that it is a tool not for interaction designers, but for interactive designers and thus its real promise is lost because interactive designers don’t design or engineer applications but rather sites, and experiences. Interaction designers do both, and quite honestly are more skilled and experienced in designing complex interactivity than those who come to all this from interactive design. I know I’m going to get burned from that statement, but while interactive designers are really great and knowledgeable, they don’t know a heck of a lot about UX, cog psy, HCI, usability, etc. It just isn’t part of what they do. They concentrate mostly on implementing the presentation layer without much attention to the context of use, without using user centered research models, etc.

First of all, I didn’t know there was a major difference between Interaction Designer and Interactive Designer, although I guess it makes sense that you would want to distinguish between the two different disciplines. I usually hear User Experience vs developer, or something like that.

That aside, it is a very interesting take. It actually makes blend a bit more appealing to me, because I’m more a programmer than designer, but the interface seems pretty screwy relative even to Flex, so I don’t know…