http://www.g93.net/weblog/ en-us 2008-01-10T10:50:53-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000190.html Wow, I haven't been home very much. In the last year, I spent at least one night in each of the following cities: Cambridge, MA (home) Gulfport, MS (10+) Biloxi, MS (20+) Seattle, WA (20+) Cachagua, Chile (10) Dublin, Ireland (3) Chicago, IL (4) New Orleans, LA (4) Austin, TX (3) Sebring, FL (3) Norwich, VT (3) Santa Fe, NM (3) Tuscumbia, AL (2) Hartford, CT (2) Danville, VA (2) Denver, CO (2) Lakeville, CT Lancaster, PA Stroudsberg, PA Harrisburg, PA Loudon, NH Brooklyn, NY Albuquerque, NM Manhattan, KS Asheville, NC Gadsden, AL Omaha, NE... dreeves 2008-01-10T10:50:53-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000179.html I spent at least one night in the following cities this year (listed in chronological order): Cambridge, MA Tokyo, Japan San Francisco, CA Las Vegas, NV Lakeville, CT Watkins Glen, NY Biloxi, MS New Orleans, LA Mont Tremblant, Canada Seattle, WA Norwich, VT Bull Run, TN Gulfport, MS Waterbury, CT Santiago, Chile... dreeves 2006-12-28T15:25:00-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000177.html photo sharing"> This is the crazy person towing all of my earthly possessions Originally uploaded by nonsense bird. headed for Gulfport, MS.... dreeves 2006-12-05T22:24:18-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000174.html On the urging of a friend, I recently signed up for Wallop, the latest and greatest social network out of Microsoft Research. Of course, there's a whole set of questions about whether they're too late to the social networking party, whether their slick flash interface will help or hurt them, and about whether the ability to make and purchase mods to customize your Wallop page will make any difference. This blog entry was provoked by none of the above; rather, by an email from Wallop I received this morning: In this email, I (and presumably everyone else in my Wallop "network") are receiving the full text of an email I thought I was sending to Wallop, the company. Why did I send such an email? Because a few days ago, I received a similar "digest" from Wallop. Only this one had nothing in it: So I hit "Reply," saw "Digests@wallop.com" come up in the "To" field, and typed "Why are you sending this to me if there haven't been any updates?" Never did I imagine that hitting reply would be the equivalent of hitting "Reply All" and that my words would be sent back to me a few days later. With the product design hat on, I get it. It's a nice feature, and it's a nice, low-friction way for people to send updates to their friends without even having to log in. But for Pete's sake, let people know what's going on! Set the expectation that any reply is going to go out to one's entire network, and provide a separate, obvious link to manage their email preferences.... dreeves 2006-10-13T09:16:30-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000172.html Suddenly, all the beautiful people in Hollywood have become fat -- or so you would think from watching TV recently. For it seems as though most of the shiny new widescreen TVs out there are still showing old, lo-res signals meant for a tube that just isn't that wide. So those expensively toned bodies we're all used to fetishizing on TV are now being stretched about a third wider than they were before. It's a little like the opposite of the new slimming feature included with most new HP digital cameras. The sheer prevalence of this phenomenon leads me to believe that the pundits decrying the insufficient resolution of the "near-dvd quality video Apple is offering with its new iTunes video store are sorely mistaken. If anything, the rise of MP3s and digital music have shown that when it comes to deciding between fidelity and convenience or cost, people will take the easy way. Update: As yet further proof that I have no original thoughts, this same idea appeared on Slashdot earlier this year. I had no idea.... gadgetlust dreeves 2006-09-21T21:58:33-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000154.html Following the cities visited meme, my list of cities visited in 2005: Norwich, VT Cambridge, MA San Francisco, CA Los Angeles, CA Chicago, IL Dallas, TX Marfa, TX Williamstown, MA Paris, France Sevilla, Spain San Jose de Almeria, Spain Priego de Castilla, Spain Granada, Spain Tokyo, Japan Hartford, CT Lakeville, CT New York, NY Watkins Glen, NY Montreal, Canada Mont Tremblant, Canada Buffalo, NY Sebring, Florida May there be more in 2006!... dreeves 2006-01-13T16:08:50-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000152.html Friday and Saturday, I made a quick, two-day trip out to Vegas to get a sense of the digital zeitgeist at CES. Some quick impressions follow: CES is staggeringly, indescribably huge. Oceans of people, noise, gadgets, 150-yard lines for taxis. There's no way I could have seen everything in my two days there. Stating the obvious: PCs are finally coming to the living room. And everyone wants to provide the interface you use to select and manage your movies, music and anything else that might come down the internet pipe. The big question for this area: what's the right balance of passive entertainment vs. active participation and discovery? Over the next few years, I think we'll see an explosion of creative, low-cost internet video likeRocketBoom start to consume more and more of our attention. But as of yet, no one knows for sure how we'll discover all this new stuff, or knows whether we'll even want to from the living room. Stating the obvious, part II: Given the porn industry's long history of pioneering new consumer media technology, no one should be surprised that the Adult Entertainment Expo ran concurrently with CES. As media of all kinds becomes digital, Digital Rights Management threatens to be an enormous hairball for everyone concerned. For an industry so utterly dependent on convincing people to continuously upgrade to the latest and greatest from older technology that functions perfectly well, locking digital music and videos to specific hardware people have seems to be sheer stupidity. But as long as everything is locked down, it will push people to search for solutions outside the mainstream. How long will it be before we see an open-source media center interface without DRM that integrates CD and DVD ripping with a nice library interface? The need for storage is starting to be more pressing than need for bandwidth. Three years ago, the industry was consumed with solving the last mile problem. Now, thanks to ever-faster cable pipes, DSL lines and an emerging fiber-optic network, many of the bandwidth issues have been solved. Now, as more and more video and music is digitized at increasingly high resolutions, the digital storage demands of average households are growing exponentially; and for the first time, the cost of storage has dropped to the point where that's entirely feasible. For portable devices, this means more flash memory; for table-top devices, increasingly large hard drives. Not surprisingly, the consumer electronics industry remains much better at hardware design and engineering than software interfaces and usability. Sony's new MP3-playing walkman, for example, is shockingly hard to use. Some of the whizzy new twisting phones from Samsung look cool, but are way, way harder to use and figure out than they should be. It's acceptable when used horizontally as a keyboard; but when you're actually trying to use it as a phone, the important buttons are so small and poorly distinguished that usability is seriously impacted. CEScamp was fun. It wasn't really a BarCamp in the way I had expected, but more of an informal blogger gathering, which I think was what most people wanted anyway. Thanks for organizing it, Albert! Famous faces: Todd Rundgren wandering through the Microsoft booth, Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock presenting for XM. And of course, Robert Scoble, Doc Searls and Amanda Congdon at CEScamp.... dreeves 2006-01-09T21:07:49-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000151.html http://www.google.com/search?q=mobile+manifesto... dreeves 2005-12-21T17:14:40-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000150.html After my recent rant about Bluetooth, it appears as though some help may be on the way. In the latest issue of their excellent Technology Quarterly, the Economist writes (subscription required) that near-field communication technology -- think Mobile Speedpass, or the Suica cards used on the subways in Tokyo -- are likely to be used as an easier way to pair various devices, which could then communicate at a higher rate. In other words, hold the two devices within a couple centimeters; let them work out the pairing process; then, they can communicate using a higher power technology with more bandwidth. In contexts like this, physical gestures can be a vast improvement over typical general purpose screen-and-menus interfaces.... dreeves 2005-12-15T16:47:09-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000148.html I've been using Bluetooth in its various iterations for about four years now, and I've become quite frustrated by how unfriendly it is so much of the time. I tend to be an early adopter, and was willing to forgive many of the little bugs and difficulties early on. But after four years, just as many Bluetooth phones and several new versions of the software, I'm disappointed with the lack of progress. I use bluetooth on a regular basis with four devices: Apple PowerBook, 1.5ghz Nokia 6680 Jabra BT 250v headset Apple Wireless Keyboard The keyboard connects to the PowerBook; the headset to both the phone and computer; and the phone and PowerBook are paired to sync contacts and occasionally use as a GPRS modem. Some things work very well. The keyboard and laptop have been flawless; after some initial hiccups, the phone now syncs reliably with the computer. As a whole, though, the technology is still very rough around the edges, with a few major points of frustration. Specifically: 1. Pairing takes too long. The Jabra headset connects to the PowerBook (for skype) and to the phone. I use both on a regular basis, and every time I want to point the headset at one or the other, I have to go through the whole pairing process again; not the kind of thing you want to do when you're trying to answer a phone call. 2. It forces me to be more aware of security than I should have to be. On a recent trip to Europe, my phone was pinged repeatedly on the subway by people trying to sending me software over bluetooth. I rejected all the messages and nothing happened; but obviously people are taking advantage of the 'discoverable' mode to try to hack into bluetooth phones. 3. Some common needs seem to be ignored or underpromoted Why can't I cut and paste directions someone emails to me right onto my phone without first saving it to a text file? Why can't I do a mass download of photos from my phone to my computer without selecting each one on my phone, and selecting 'send to computer?' Each of these things takes way more steps than it should. But that's not even the biggest problem; many people don't even know that these things are possible. 4. It's still buggy. Of the four devices I own with Bluetooth, the PowerBook and the keyboard are the only two that work together consistently and reliably. A good thing, too -- the prospect of an unreliable keyboard is just about the last thing I want to think about when using a computer. I consider myself lucky if any of the other pairings work well. My phone and computer often need to be rebooted to talk to each other; the phone will think the headset is attached when it's really not. All my devices are pretty recent; after over four years and millions of dollars, a protocol at this level has simply got to be more reliable. It's a hard problem. To be fair: I don't envy the challenges the bluetooth team faced. They had a hard technical problem, an international consortium of hardware manufacturers to please, long manufacturing lead times, etc. Compromises were inevitable, and it's understandable that it would take a while to shake out. What I would most like to see most is a physical interface to pair devices. Don't make me decide of things are discoverable or not discoverable. Don't make me navigate through 6 layers of menus just to connect two devices together. I want to plug... dreeves 2005-12-13T10:58:10-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000146.html Cadiz Originally uploaded by dreeves. Just posted some photos from a recent trip C and I took to Andalucia, a region in the south of Spain.... dreeves 2005-11-02T16:46:01-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000143.html Evan at Millennium Park Originally uploaded by dreeves. My nephew (when your cousin has a baby, how are you related?) enjoys the fountain at the Millenium Park in Chicago. Chicago is a fun place to be, especially when the weather is as nice as it was last weekend. For a Bostonian, Chicago seems very spacious -- apartments are bigger, streets are bigger, there are more vacant lots, more unused space. It had an urban vibe that I hadn't really experienced since C and I were in Berlin two years ago. And there's a lot Chicago shares with Berlin; a great music scene, small shops, and most importantly: space. When space isn't so precious, things can happen. It's all about having some kind of critical balance of creative people in an environment that *isn't* precious, so they can try things without huge amounts of debt, or watchdogs with too much time on their hands breathing down one's neck.... dreeves 2005-09-22T10:47:08-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000140.html In the week or so since the joint Motorola and Apple announcement of the new iTunes-enabled ROKR phone, the knives of the early adopter bloggers and tech pubs have been out. If you haven't been following the coverage, a quick summary: the ROKR phone is basically a typical Motorola phone, with the addition of an Apple-supplied interface for playing MP3s and iPod-like integration with Macs and PCs through iTunes. As far as I can tell, the criticism breaks down basically as follows: It's an ordinary-looking phone, and doesn't reflect Apple's typically brilliant industrial design The experience of using the phone is largely typical Motorola -- underwhelming. Apple's iTunes imposes an artificial limit of 100 songs, even if the phone's hardware can store more. I'm not one to be an apologist for Apple, and I'm the first to say that this phone isn't for me. It's uninteresting, crippled, and I'd rather visit the dentist than be forced to use a Motorola mobile phone interface. But I do think it's useful to consider this phone in the context of how companies bring new products to market. Consider the following: MP3 players have been widely available on mobile phones for over a year. Despite their broad availability, customers tend not to use them very much. No one, including Apple, knows for sure why this is. Some possible reasons: Is it too hard to transfer music onto your mobile phone? Are phone interfaces for playing music not good enough?? Do customers prefer simpler devices that do one or two things well over more complex devices with multiple functions? A number of industry watchers see increasingly capable mobile phones as the greatest threat to the iPod franchise and margins Apple is probably pretty confident they can solve the interface and transfer problems -- that's largely what made the iPod such a success. But *if* there is a real customer preference for single-purpose devices, that can be pretty hard to overcome. So if you're Apple, you have a number of unanswered questions. How do you start to figure out the answers? By putting a real product on the market that you can learn from. And most importantly, do it quickly (before the your competitors) and cheaply (without having to engineer a whole new device). Focus on the problems you can solve, avoid cannibalizing your existing products as best you can, and partner with a company that can do the things you're not good at. Hence, the ROKR phone. If their experience with that phone reveals that a better interface and PC integration is the key to opening up a whole new market for music-enabled phones, you can bet that Apple will start to invest more -- up to and including the entire experience of the phone, from hardware design to the phone interface. But to get to that point, they have a lot to learn first. If the ROKR doesn't fly -- Apple learns that there's not a burning need for MP3-capable mobile phones -- they can think of it as cheap insurance. Better Apple invests a small amount and fails, rather than not trying at all and watching a competitor disrupt the whole iPod business.... gadgetlust dreeves 2005-09-11T16:15:40-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000135.html Brad Feld has a great post about the difficulty in quantifying the acceptable unexpected downtime for software sold as a service, and the delicate ongoing balance between minimizing risk (investing in redundancy and infrastructure) and driving demand (new features). At QuickBase, our umbrella term (coined by Jana, the GM) for these efforts was "Business Reasonable." Vague? Yes. But the important idea behind it is that any notion of reliability and redundancy has to be defined relative to the kind of customers you have at the time, and how they're using the product. So instead of reflexively falling back on axioms like 5 nines, you use your empathy and sense of the customer to try to answer the question: what sort of downtime they will they consider reasonable? Just as Geoffrey Moore's early adopters and visionaries are willing to overlook holes in a product's functionality, those same customers are often, by temperament, willing to give away more more "free passes" than later stage customers. During our periods of early rapid growth, we definitely used up one or two of those precious free passes. We all spent time calling customers to explain. And ultimately, after some incredible efforts by our engineering and operations team, we became a service our customers could depend on.... the business end dreeves 2005-07-28T00:28:07-08:00 http://www.g93.net/weblog/archives/000134.html Strange coincidence after my last post: Suddenly, I can't get to Google anymore. It seems to have been replaced by 'SoGoSearch.com.' Update: Odd. I restarted my computer, and it's working again. Guess the problem is on my end -- which raises another question: is there any way for others to affect the OS X routing table? I'm using OS X 10.4.2, Firefox 1.0.5.... interweb dreeves 2005-07-22T12:01:06-08:00