It’s official, and we had a party to prove it!
Last night (Feb 9th, 2009) down in Santa Clara, my company hosted the Meet & Greet party for the SMX West 09 conference. This was the kick-off party for the conference where we were officially announced our new product, Pixelsilk.
Most of the Sales & Marketing folks were down at the party in Santa Clara. It looks like they had a great time. You can read about it in Kandi Humpf’s blog post here. Be sure to take a look at the picture of the laptop!
On the other end of the laptop connected via Skype, the rest of the team (development, web and support) were having a great time eating cajun tater tots, pizza and of course drinking hand-crafted beer at our local McMenamin’s, the Old St. Francis School. Here are some photos of the team enjoying a well deserved celebration.
I want to give a shout out to the entire team for helping us get to this point! It has been a lot of hard work, but thanks to the all of the great folks it has always been fun!
Ready to Launch
At Smart Solutions, the company I work for, we’ve been working on a new product for quite some time now. Our target has been a launch in February at the SMX West 2009 conference. We’ve just announced it on our company blog.
Warning…Warning…The Coolest New Product of the Year Announced!
But you’ll have to be at SMX to see it!
Well, that’s not entirely true – you can also see it at www.pixelsilk.com; but you’re going to want to be at SMX to really get to know the geniuses behind this leading-edge…some would say “futuristic”… SEO-enabled Content Management System.
You can read the all the details here. It’s an exciting time and very fulfilling to see the the results of our labor bear fruit. Congratulations to the entire team!
Aessential Android Apps
Now that I’ve been using my Android powered T-Moble G1 for several weeks, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the applications that I find essential. They range from true productivity to mindless time sucks, so take each as it is intended!
TouchDown for Android and Exchange
This is a great application giving access to my company Exchange server. The UI and feature set is very nice. I have access to my inbox, calendar and contacts. It also has the ability to get to my other private folders.
The folks at NitroDesk have done a nice job of keeping the UI familiar for both Android and Outlook users. It will, if you configure it properly work in the background and integrates with the standard Android notification system.
TouchDown seems to be developing fairly quickly and their team is quite responsive to questions via email.
aTrackDog
This is a great application that helps you keep your installed apps up to date. It checks multiple sources to ensure your applications are running at the latest release and gives you an easy shortcut to update them if it finds that they are not.
The Weather Channel
This is a nicely done, good looking weather app. Not only does it give you the standard current conditions and forecasts, you can also download the latest Weather Channel video for your area and it integrates with maps to show you local weather stations and their reported conditions.
Shazam
This one is just cool. So you’re out and about town one day, maybe riding with a buddy in his/her car. The radio is playing some random music station when a song comes on that you want to know more about. You whip out your G1 and fire up Shazam and let it listen to the song for a few seconds. It goes and figures out what the song is, the artist and even lets you look it up on Amazon or search YouTube for videos. I still get giddy when it tells me about some song that I had no idea what it was. Wicked!
Power Manager
Let’s face it, the battery life on the G1 isn’t the greatest. This little app gives you power profiles that will let you switch quickly and will even apply them when circumstances dictate. Out of the box, for example, when your battery drops below 30% it turns off your WiFi and GPS automatically and shortens the time before the screen dims when inactive. As a side-benefit, it also gives you quick access to toggle your WiFi, GPS, cell tower locations and bluetooth. It’s a must have!
Solitaire
Ok, so this is a total time waster. I don’t know what it is about solitaire, but it is a great way to spend that time in a waiting room. This one includes Klondike, Spider and Freecell.
Honorable Mentions
There are quite a few more that I”ve installed and many that I use fairly often, but those above are the ones that I find I really would miss if they weren’t there. Here they are in no particular order:
Do you have any favorite applications not listed here? Let me know what they are and why, I’m always looking for new ones!
Is Science Fiction finally coming through?
For years science fiction authors have written about fantastic technologies that will make our lives easier, more fun, and generally better in many ways and ever since we have been wistfully dreaming of those times.
Now it seems that there are a lot of things new announcements and products that fulfill some of those visions. Here are some of the cool items you may not have heard about.
Video on Demand Evolution
Cable companies have had limited video on demand for quite a while now, and more recently companies like Joost, Netflix and Hulu have began bringing us a whiter variety of programming available to watch what when want to when we want to watch it. The networks are getting the hint by making some of their shows available as well; however until now most of these choice required you to sit in front of your computer unless you were among the small percentage of folks that have some sort of media center integrated with your audio-video system.
We have seen set-top appliances that allow us to stream this content to our sets, but that is still yet another piece of equipment to have in your living room, something many wives simply do not like.
Recently some television makes have announced their sets will support streaming with no other device, and they will do it over Wi-Fi. LG announced 2 of their lines will support NetFlix, CinemaNow and YouTube, while Vizio unveiled models that not only stream NetFlix, Blockbuster, Amazon and Yahoo!, but it will also support images from Flickr, streaming music from Pandora and Rhapsody and more. Not to be left behind, Sony announced the ability to stream from Yahoo!, Amazon, YouTube, Slacker(sm) and more.. I would also be remiss to mention that the XBox360 got streaming movies from Netflix last year, and with applications like PlayOn Media Server you can get your Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, ESPN and CBS on the XBox, Playstation 3 and soon the Wii. All we need now is to replace the actual screen with a hologram ala The Minority Report and we will have arrived!
Mobility and More
Of course everyone knows about the iPhone. What you may not have heard of are the new generations coming with the Android operating system, with the T-Mobile G1 being the first to market. BlackBerry and Palm have also provided significant updates to their operating system given us many choice for little computers walking around in our hands with functionality from GPS navigation to price comparisons via scanned bar codes. Oh, and they still let us talk to people too!
This revolution in mobility is beginning to make its way into other devices. Android has been spotted as the underlying OS for new desktop phones and with its easy to use interface it makes it perfect for other embedded devices. Can you imaging having a microwave or oven that you can set up to come on at certain times more easily, or a refrigerator that will let you know you are running low on milk via SMS before you come home?
Automotive
The newest Microsoft Sync is pruported to read your text messages as they come in, and even recognize your voice commands for not only calling, but for interacting with the navigation system and all of your music as well.
Oh, and since you asked (I know you were going to!) the flying car is making progress. There are still a lot of issues from logistics to infrastructure and more, but it looks like there are some very smart folks working towards making the ultimate sci-fi dream a reality.
There’s far too many other gadgets to go into without turning this post into the size if War and Peace, but be assured that it is an exciting time in technology!
The truth about the T-Mobile G1 Android powered phone.
In a word (or two)…it rocks!
Recently I wrote about the initial unboxing of the twin G1′s my wife and I purchased. I have not had it for a little over a week and a half so I thought it was time to share some of my thoughts on the experience so far.
The User Interface
The UI is fairly intuitive. As I stated in my previous post, my wife never had to open the Getting Started book. That was fabulous. The sliding and scrolling actions seem very smooth and natural. I really like that.
I like having a home screen that is easily customizable. Moving icons and widgets around is as easy as a tap ‘n hold. Additional feedback is given via a brief vibration when the item is ready to move.
The notification system is great. Icons appearing in the top that expand with a quick drag to see the details is a much better system than I was use to with Windows Mobile.
Setup
Getting my Gmail settings going was easy. Now I can get to my mail or calendar with 1 icon tap, and the interface for Gmail is based on the web version complete with threads and labels. Very nice!
Contacts also come from Gmail. This was a bit of a struggle at first. Most of my Gmail contacts were still in the suggested contacts state which meant I had some work to do in order to get them into my phone properly. In addition, most did not have phone numbers associated with them and I am afraid I am a ways off from making that happen. I am a little gun-shy about importing them from my SIM card as I feel this might create a bunch of duplicate entries that I would have to go back to correct, but I will admit I have not tried it yet.
Operation
For the most part things are very easy to do. Making calls, sending text, etc. The one thing I have noticed that is a bit of a drawback comes when you want to change your settings. Most items are accessed through the settings menu, so changing your ringer profile, toggling WiFi or Bluetooth, etc… Fortunately, there are some very nice, free apps that put these items into one easy place. It would have been nice out of the box, but the solution wasn’t difficult.
The battery life is ok considering everything it does and the amount of use I’ve been putting it through. Watching videos, using the GPS with Google Maps in street view (and compass mode!), browsing the web via WiFi. These things tend to drain the battery so you can’t expect too much. I’m charging it about once a day with a 24 hour usage bringing me between 25% and 60% of remaining life. Not terrible by any means.
YouTube. Wow, this is very cool! I have watched many videos, used search and went into the popular categories. Over WiFi the quality is great, and even using the EDGE network (we get 3G in March) the video performance is more than fair. I did not have high hopes for the EDGE scenario; however it looks like they scale the quality down to a level that allows the stream to work with the slower network, yet it is still quite viewable.
The Android Market
There are a lot of cool applications, and many more that are not so cool, available in the market. I’ve personally sampled close to a hundred already and I’ve narrowed my current install set to around 20-25 that I use. The installer and uninstaller seems to work well. I haven’t run into any problems yet, although I’ve heard that some people have had issues.
Some of the applications fill a definite hole in the out-of-the-box UI, but as stated earlier, they are fairly easy to find and install. Others are nice add-ons that can help in certain situations, and still more are great time wasters 
Here is a list of some of my favorites:
- aTrackDog – This helps you stay apprised of updates to your other installed applications. – Must have!
- Power Manager – Has automated, customizable profiles for different power situations. I like the way it turns off my Wi-Fi if my battery level drops below 30%.
- aSettings – This app puts most of the toggles you need (WiFi, Bluetooth, Ringer profile, GPS…) on 1 screen. I set up a home screen shortcut to it.
- Scoreboard – Sport score update application written by the Google folks. Does a very nice job.
- ConnectBot – A little ssh client used to connect to linux boxes.
- PhoneFlix – Allows management of your Netflix queue from your phone.
- Ringdroid – A nice application for creating ring tones from your MP3 files. It lets you choose the portion of the song to save out as a ringtone file.
- The Schwartz Unleashed – A total time-waster, light-saber application, but very cool!
- The Weather Channel – Exactly what it sounds like, get current conditions and forecasts. Even does videos.
- Twidoid – For all your Twitter needs.
- QuickPedia – Mobile interface for Wikipedia. It includes nice formatting of the articles.
- wpToGo – Nice blogger client if you happen to have a WordPress blog.
Summary
I am very happy with the phone. My wife seems to really like it as well. So far things have gone smooth and the decision seems to be a good one. My overall opinion is that it is a good phone and if you are in the market for something like this, I would recommend it.
I Am Android
The cell phone I’ve used for the past year and a half finally gave up the ghost. I was using an HTC P4300, one from the touch screen family of HTC phones. For the most part, it was OK as a phone platform; however, the Windows Mobile 5 operating system did have it’s issues. I believe that I had to hard reset it to factory defaults and reinstall and configure my system 4 or 5 times during it’s life span. That’s not terrible for someone in the tech industry, but your average phone user would probably find it irritating.
The phone recently went into the mode where it decides to start rebooting itself continually until it is plugged in to its power source making it utterly unusable, so it was time to start shopping.
I looked at some of the comparable upgrade options in the HTC, WinMo family. There were some promising modes, but alas my carrier only had 1, and it was roughly 8-10 months old. Considering the price tag approaching $350 USD. I decided that it was bit more than I really wanted to spend.
My options were to move to the Crack…er…BlackBerry. I’ve never really like them so other options simply did not have the capabilities I wanted and needed.
On to another carrier! T-Mobile has the G1 (on the HTC Dream) running the Linux based Android system. Here is a platform that has most of what I need and I have the ability to write my own applications for it, as I did with Windows Mobile. I decided it was time for a switch.
At the same time my wife’s phone has been giving her fits. She was ready for something new as well. At first, all she wanted was a phone; however, the more we talked the more we came to realize that she really wanted more than that. One of her highest priorities was the ability to easily get to her GMail account from her handset so we decided to get her a G1 as well.
I must admit that I was a bit worried. I’d read some reviews that knock the so called “Google Phone” for not having a UI as polished as the iPhone. While my wife is more tech-savvy than many that are not part of the tech sector, I did not want her to struggle with her telephone.
After talking it through, we went ahead with the order. Due to the demand, the phones were not in stock in the store so we had to wait, anxiously , for them to arrive.
Our new G1′s arrived by UPS on a cold Tuesday evening. After charging them up and flipping through the getting started guide to make sure it was easy to follow, I handed the guide and phone to my wife and grabbed mine to start setting it up and exploring the Android Market.
45 minutes later, from the other side of the couch, I heard a sound that brought me back to my youth. It was the familiar song denoted the start of a game of Pac-Man. I had seen it in the app market, so I had to laugh a bit and ask my wife what was going on.
Me: “Wife, what’cha got there?”
Wife: “shhh…oh..oh!!!! Dang it!” <followed by the bwoop bwoop of Pac-Man dying>
Wife: “I downloaded Pac-Man, this is SO COOL!”
Me: “Good, so you’re feeling OK with the phone?”
Wife: “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
Me: “Did you get your GMail set up?”
Wife: “Yeah, and my calendar is there too.”
Me: “Great!”
Wife: “Yeah”…pauses…”You know, It says a lot about a product when you are able to set everything up you want to without cracking open the book at all.”
Epic win for the Android in my opinion. Thanks Google & T1!
In which the customers are forgotten in the war between Cable and the Network…
If you live in Central Oregon and have been a BendBroadband subscriber, chances are you longer receive the FOX feed. KFXO and BendBroadband have been unable to reach a mutual agreement regarding the transmission fee KFXO is asking for from the cable company.
Now, I am unsure of the fairness of the fee. It may be 100% legitimate and fair, or FOX may be asking more than they should. I really do not have enough knowledge to form an opinion on the matter.
I am; however, qualified to give this outlook. I am (one of) the customer. I do not care what the dispute is. I simply know that FOX should come through my television set when I ask it to.
The workaround proposed by KFXO is to purchase an over-the-air digital receiver. There are 3 problems with that, or more depending on where one lives.
- Why should the customer have to pay for a piece of equipment they will likely (hopefully!) never need again once the two companies reach an agreement?
- Who will install this piece of equipment for those (most customers) that cannot get by with it in the house?
- What about the fact that more and more people use their DVR’s to record shows? It will not work with a built-in cable DVR.
- For those out of the city, behind hills or in valleys the tuner is not even a viable option.
Personally, I blame both companies. Each has their claims (FOX, BendBroadband) that the other isn’t being fair. Grow up and reach an agreement! Compromise a bit, each of you! Offer an extension, whatever.
This time of year is of course huge considering the NFL is getting into the full playoff swing and some of the games each weekend are carried by FOX. Think about the customer a bit and realize that all you are doing (both companies) is losing respect and possibly customers (on the cable side).
JavaScript == English
I was born and raised in the USA and as such, the English language comes naturally to me. Sure, I see the idiosyncrasies such as 3 words spelled 3 different ways sounding exactly the same (their they’re there), 1 word with multiple meanings (rich, row, tear) or a word spelled the same, pronounced differently and meaning something different (lead, bow, ..) when that is done. Due to these traits, it has been said that English is one of the, if not the, toughest languages to really master in the world if it’s not your native language. (Note: this is a generalization and every situation is different) The basics are easy, but to really grasp the language takes real immersion into the culture.
JavaScript feels the same to me. If your native programming language uses similar concepts (Lisp, Scheme) then you’re probably good, but if you are among the majority coming from a C based language (C++, C#, Java..) you will likely have problems. Sure, the basics are easy, it looks like your C based language, but mastering it can take a lot of time immersing yourself in its culture.
The question becomes this: In today’s web environment, is it worth it to truly master the language? The creator of JavaScript, Brendan Eich, casts his own doubts regarding his creations future:
I don’t really believe ES4 is a demon from the ancient world, of course. I’m afraid the JS-Hobbits are in trouble, though. As things stand today, Silverlight with C# or something akin (pushed via Windows Update) will raze the Shire-web, in spite of Gandalf-crock’s teachings.
Of course the Shire-web he refers to is the current status quo, and Gandalf is clearly Doug Crockford, one of (or perhaps THE) top authority on JavaScript.
My own experience have just recently brought me to an understanding of JavaScript that makes me feel like I finally really get it.
I feel like the <pick your Latin language based country here> who learned enough English when I was young to ask how much my dinner cost, where the bathroom is and to call a cab to get back to my hotel. Finally, moving to the USA, living, working and playing with native English speakers I get the mastery of the language.
Having made that analogy, albeit a stretched one, I think I now have enough information to say, it depends.
What? It depends? I’ve just read this entire piece of junk for a non-answer!?!? Well, yes. Nothing in this life is black and white, or at least very few things are. This includes JavaScript!
I really do think that JS’s multi-paradigm nature means there is no one-true-subset for all to use (whether they like it or not)
I feel JavaScript will of course be around for a long while. While the web does need an overhaul, there are too many people and pages invested in JavaScript to make some grandiose statement that Silverlight, Flash, Air or whatever will replace it. These new, powerful and exciting technologies have found ways to work with JavaScript and it is my belief that the world (wide web) will be a better place for it.
I also believe JavaScript will evolve, kicking and screaming if necessary. I believe it will become more powerful for the programmer. Of course, the problem with evolving JS is browser support and browser saturation. The platforms must support it and people must upgrade. That is the one advantage the other technologies have, at least for the moment.
If you feel you do not have the level of mastery you should have with JavaScript, I suggest immersing yourself with Doug Crockford’s writings. It’s a great place to start. Use jQuery as well since a lot of the examples you find force you to use patterns you may not have already investigated. As with all things, practice and perseverance are the key!
Good luck on your journey, Grasshopper!
To Boldly Go…
…well at least my name id boldly going. Thanks to Ariel Waldman for point this out via Twitter. You too can go to NASA’s Kepler project site and have your name included on a DVD being sent into space on the Kepler Mission.
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