Heavy Rain - Game Review for PS3

Mar 13, 2010: Check out the Heavy Rain review for PS3 in the reviews section. Click the Reviews link on the upper right corner or click here.

Asus G73JH-X1 Review - gaming notebook

Mar 13, 2010: Check out the Asus G73JH-X1 (gaming notebook) review in the reviews section. Click the review link at the upper right hand corner or click here.

Kindle, Meet Nook

Mar 12, 2010: OK, lets set a baseline here. The printed word is in trouble in many ways. On the one hand, it is enjoying something of a renaissance as social networking democratizes publishing, but on the other hand, actually being a professional wordsmith who is compensated for your effort, is under siege. Folks are still reading, although fewer of them are taking the time to read long form work, unfortunately, but they are increasingly looking for digital delivery of their content for the convenience and efficiency it offers. To date, there have been two barriers in the digital delivery of the printed word. The first is that a traditional, bound paper, book is a great form factor that provides an unmatched tactile experience. The second is that the ecosystem around digital delivery has remained weak. The industry has taken a run at the former for years now and Amazon, with the Kindle, finally seems to have gotten it almost right. Unfortunately, as competitors seek to match their offering, the latter problem is likely to get much worse.

Barnes and Noble recently announced their Nook device. It looks good. To be honest, the Sony eBook reader, the Kindle and the Nook all look pretty similar to me when it comes right down to it from a hardware perspective. Of course these devices will never match some of the "soft" qualities of paper, but I think folks are willing to make that tradeoff for the incredible convenience they bring. Classic corporate behavior, proven time and time again to be bad, seems set to create a mess for consumers as usual, unfortunately.

One would think that in an industry as in danger as "book selling", there would be a greater likelihood for some out of the box thinking and some unity. Ridiculous idealism I know, but consider the landscape. Barnes and Noble has something which still, somehow, has some value. Call it nostalgia. Call it the last remnants of the social aspect of the human condition, call it the addictive nature of Starbucks... Whatever it is, there is still value in the brick and mortar stores B&N runs. They are cozy and warm. People kind of like visiting them. They don't like actually buying books, apparently, but they do like standing around in a B&N and reading them.

Now take Amazon. Amazon is the ultimate expression of the internet efficiency machine. Poster child of web commerce. People like Amazon. A lot. But they like Amazon the way they like the train they commute to work in, their mailbox or a flu shot. It's an efficient means to an end. It gets you a product quickly and cheaply with very little hassle. It doesn't make you warm and cozy and it isn't some place you visit just to be there.

The Kindle does well because a device reliant on digital delivery is a very good match for a retailer that has mastered digital delivery. That said, Amazon started as a shot across the bow of the legacy book seller, evolved into so much more, but really never killed off any of the old brick and mortar guys. So the Nook may just do well because folks do still come into that store for whatever reason.

The question I have is, why must we make this choice? Here is what I want to see. I want to see the publishing industry and its retail channel get together in a room and agree on some standards. A standard set of formats (preferrably without DRM, but realistically with it) and a set of standard fulfilment mechanisms. Web services basically.

I want to be able to buy book reader from any vendor based on price and features and know that it will be able to consume content from any distribution channel. If I go into a Borders or B&N, I want to be able to peruse the shelves and if I see something I like and want it digitally, scan the barcode with the camera built into my reader. I want an ISBN lookup to let me know if the book is available digitally, and if I'm interested, be able to purchase and download it immediately. If I am in a B&N and I own a Knook, then B&N owns the transaction. If you are in a B&N and own a Kindle, and you do the exact same thing, Amazon pays B&N a small "cut" since they were the "point of sale". Similarly, if I take my Knook and download a book from Amazon onto it, B&N pays Amazon a small cut. If I have a 3rd party reader, I understand that prices will be a bit higher every time I buy a book because I must pay an "on ramp" charge for the ecosystem. This should be made up by the fact that my reader should be cheaper. If it isn't , then the third party needs to work on their value proposition.

What the above would create is some "soft consolidation" in the book selling industry, which should make them all stronger. B&N can adjust, over time, how they inventory their stores as more purchases shift to digital fulfilment. The stores can start to become "showcase" locations for events of various kinds. Book signings, "kids days", what have you. Once a partnership is established, Amazon might even choose to partner with a brick and mortar store (GASP!) to leverage that direct consumer touch for something.

The best part is the consumer would have more flexibility and choice while everyone (including the authors who are likely to sell more books) makes money. Of course this model forces each corporation to accept that they aren't going to build an industry monopoly and, since "building a monopoly" seems to be the chief lesson taught at Ivy League business schools, don't expect to see the above vision of commerce utopia happening any time soon.

Joel Not on Cloud

Mar 12, 2010: I just read an article by Joel Spolsky dating back to May of 2008 in which he expresses extreme skepticism (putting it mindly) regarding Live Mesh and goes farther to apply the term "Architecture Astronaut" to, among others, Ray Ozzie.

Now I have a lot of respect for Joel and have enjoyed his writings for years. I think he gets a lot of things (most things?) right most of the time, but on this one, I think he has possibly made the classic error of allowing a personal bias cloud (no pun, honest!) his judgement. It worries me that he seems so eager to apply this pet term "Architecture Astronaut" to folks who the mainstream would typically call either "aspirational thinkers" or "visionaries"

On topic, though, Joel writes off Live Mesh as nothing more than "file sync" (something, he says, which no one needs more of) and adds that the aforementioned "Astronauts" are famous for pushing out architectures that no one has either asked for, or needs.

To be perfectly frank, I haven't checked to see if Joel has had a follow-up to this entry and has, perhaps, issued a "mea culpa". If he has, kudos to Joel! But either way, it's not really relevant to this entry because he is really just echoing an argument that comes up a lot - particularly around very forward looking topics.

There are two specifics here which require rebuttal. The first is that Live Mesh is "just file sync". It is fair to say that the first application on Live Mesh is "file sync" and that the proof of concept is "file sync", but this is hardly the ultimate intent of the platform. I would also take issue with the notion that "no one needs" another file sync system, but more on that later. Ozzie's vision with Mesh includes the notion of a central, cloud hosted, distribution engine for applications.

But lets take a step back from all of this. Live Mesh may turn out to be a dud, or it may transform into something else entirely. What's more important, I think, is rebutting this notion that none of this is anything anyone "wants or needs".

Consider a very plausible scenario involving your average, gainfully employed, millenial. Joe or Jane Millenial quite likely has a desktop computer at home, a laptop that they drag on the road either for personal or professional use, a smart phone of some kind, an MP3 player (I wonder which one? hmmmm), possibly a video game console and maybe even some sort of "smart TV" that is internet connected (a set top box, a Tivo, other DVR or the TV itself)

This is a very common setup for the average young person. Not a techno super geek; just an average Joe or Jane. Scattered amidst all of these screens, platforms and points of presence is an equally common mix of content; applications, music both DRM'd and in the clear, movies and television shows also DRM'd and in the clear, photos, personal documents, applications and application data.

Today, managing this blob of information is a nearly full time job. There are a dozen incompatible standards and formats and an equal number of point solutions for synchronization and storage of content. None of these are intelligent, few are cross platform and all require lots of user intervention. They are also all premise bound unless you jump through some big hoops and learn more about technology than you might want to.

Call me an "Architecture Astronaut", but I think many folks would both want and need a single, unifying, web accessible console which allows them to "organize their digital life" (to coin a wretched marketing style cliche). I imagine sitting down, launching a browser, connecting to some "cloud" and landing on my "stuff" page. There I am presented with a friendly representative view of all of the information that is important to me and all of the entry points that I have subscribed - my PC, laptop, phone, Tivo, etc. The capabilities of each of these devices (their platform, processing and storage limits, IO thresholds, etc) are known to the cloud intelligence and options are either presented or hidden based on that knowledge.

From here, I can categorize blocks of my content as applicable to certain devices or not, push applications and their data where I need them (and perhaps subcomponents of those applications - Halo 4 on XBox 360 and provisionable to the PC, but a Halo 4 messenger client for chatting with friends who are online in the game pushed to the phone and laptop) and consume new applications and services that are surfaced entirely within the cloud. For the finale, I can choose to have some or all of this content also live within that cloud and be made available (in part or whole) from any web browser. So if I want to watch the latest episode of Heroes from my Tivo via a web browser at a friends house, I can do that.

Writing off all of this "cloud stuff" as simply architecture for its own sake and the solution to a non-existant problem really misses the needs of the millenial generation, if you ask me. It almost reminds me of the mainframe guys waving off this "useless PC" that was starting to creep up. And if by some bizarre and unlikely twist of fate Joel is reading, please think about this topic again (if you haven't already), this time leaving Ozzie out of the equation!

ADDENDUM - A friend just informed me that I was remiss in letting Joel off the hook on the whole "Hailstorm" rant (Microsoft Passport, as it is known today). After recovering from the shock that someone actually read this, I acknowledged that this was a glaring oversight indeed. In my defense, it was really late and I tend to run out of steam on this things as they wear on (especially since I work under the assumption that no one is reading!). So on the topic of Hailstorm... Joel wrote this off as an attempt to corral all of the worlds data which failed, in the end, because "no one wanted that or trusts Microsoft". I would argue that Hailstorm was simply well ahead of its time and possibly not even fully understood, in terms of its place and potential, by the folks who launched it. Ask anyone who architects network services of any kind and they will tell you that sitting right there in the room of any design session, just waiting to be heard, is a big giant identity management problem. As services and applications shift to public/semi-public and interconnected private clouds, this problem will intensify. It is likely that the ultimate solution will be found in SAML and claims based authentication as a means of federating with minimal impact. The complexity of such a scenario is greatly reduced if the 80/20 rule is applied and the vast majority of user identities are contained within a few large security domains. Passport, is an attempt to provide one such uber domain. If every Microsoft property relies upon a single directory for authentication and access control, a pretty large segment of users is addressed. As far as trust goes, I would argue that people are trusting Google today with the keys to their kingdom and nearly begging them to take more. And Google hasnt exactly been a great steward of this privilege to date. So any trust issues Microsoft has really go directly to either branding and image, or general ignorance of the problem domain. Either way, it isn't a technical issue. From a technical standpoint, Passport makes no less sense than a Google id and Google encouraging partners to plug in to the Google identity management backend. Last I checked, no one is really complaining about that because the need for it is now readily apparent.

8 bit map of NYC

Mar 11, 2010: Here's a link to an 8-bit (NES graphics) map of NYC. Very cool. Click here.

Professors banning laptops in class due to distractions.

Mar 11, 2010: Read full article here at The Washington Post.

Talk about taking a step backwards. I have used laptops to take notes at school for 7+ years and I've encountered professors like this. What makes it more insulting is that I went to a TECHNICAL school.

At a certain point, people need to be responsible for themselves and if they can't control their urge to constantly check YouTube or Facebook then it is their own decision. These students are still paying your school a boatload of money! Don't ruin it for the people who use technology as a tool.

Perhaps the better solution is to disable Wi-Fi in classrooms. Or maybe since we're in a technological age, every major needs an intro to tech class where students learn how to harness the power of technology instead of learning how to use MS Office (who doesn't know how to use office these days?). Teaching students valid and current topics... hmm that's a unique idea for a school isn't it?

140 tech experts on Twitter

Mar 11, 2010: Tech Republic has an article listing the top 140 technology twitter accounts to get your tech news and information from twitter. This list should cover the gamut of interests and more importantly, may reveal some tech experts that you were unaware of.

Asus UL30VT-A1 Review

Mar 8, 2010: You can find a short review of the Asus UL30VT-A1 over at the Reviews page.

Windows Mobile apps won't work on Windows Phone 7

Mar 7, 2010: This article from Computerworld reports that existing Windows Mobile apps will not work with the to be released Windows Phone Series 7.

Although there may be moaning and groaning about lack of backwards compatibility, big changes, especially NEEDED changes as in the case with Microsoft's mobile platform, require ditching the old and starting fresh. The Windows Mobile platform has past its life cycle many iterations ago, it's time to say goodbye.