It's Like Asking For A Strip Search

I wouldn't go through airport security with one of these USB drives:

My First Siri Request

Gave my new Siri app a little test right out of the box - let's see if she knows how to do this:

"Remind me to make a doctors appointment late next September."

She almost got it right. This resulted in a reminder to make a doctors appointment, but the late part apparently didn't get handled, as it was set for midnight on September 1st. So a switch over to the reminder (fortunately, the one she created was clickable right from the Siri window, so I didn't have to back out of Siri, swipe over to the Reminders app, and dig back through to find it), and change the date to later in the month.

I was wondering if she would somehow select some date in the back half of the month for late, but I guess not. What about the end of next September? Maybe that would have worked better?

Great Moments In Technology Journalism

From some brain surgeon at ZDNet, Ken Hess:

[N]ow there’s an added bonus way to burn up that [iCloud] free space: your PC. Apple wants me to use their Cloud-based storage on all of my devices not just Apple ones. Pretty darn sneaky, if you ask me. Smart too.

...

But, the most intriguing of all is the Photo Stream part of the iCloud application.

To setup your PC to use Photo Stream, click the checkbox and then click Options to see the screen in Figure 2.

Here’s the really sneaky part: People take more photos with digital devices because it doesn’t cost anything to do so. Why is that sneaky? Because everyone wants those photos to be of the highest quality. Higher quality photos means bigger photos. Bigger photos means that they take up more space. Sneaky.

This means that you’ll burn through that five free gigabytes with one or two uploads from your iPod, iPhone, iPad or PC. You’ll have to buy more space as described in, “Avoiding the iCloud storage gotcha.”

From Apple's press release on iCloud:

the storage required by Photo Stream doesn’t count towards this 5GB total

Took me about 10 seconds on Bing to find this. I guess technology journalism is hard.

Reason #1 Why I Will Not Be On Twitter

Fox News Politics twitter account hacked.

Seems like putting your corporate or personal identity in the hands of Twitter is a bad idea.

Now In Color!

I haven't had any real problems with my Sony Bravia HDTV (model KDL-52W5100), which has two types of internet capabilities. First, it has native "apps", which are accessed through Sony's XMB interface (the same one they use on the Playstation 3). Most of these apps simply access feeds (RSS or something similar) from various audio/video serving sites and provide a simple folder-based browsing interface to drill down to specific content. These all generally work well (with the exception of the DLNA server support, which is still a fairly hit-or-miss affair for some reason).

Second, it has Yahoo Connected TV widgets. These are small apps that can be popped up over part or all of the screen, and can access various internet-served data, videos, pictures, games, and so on. As opposed to the native apps, these Yahoo widgets are uniformly bad. The startup time to bring up either the widget engine as a whole, or individual widgets, is unacceptably long. The functionality of the individual apps is generally limited (since you only have the TV remote as an input). I don't really do Facebook or Twitter, so I can't say if those apps work better than the others, but so far I haven't found any reason to bring up the Yahoo apps beyond the first couple of attempts.

But via Engadget HD, it appears that Sony is going to try and see if someone will pay for these apps going forward. It's an obvious move - any revenue stream in a storm - but these things aren't even worth the $1 purchase price I wouldn't think twice about clicking for on the iTunes App Store, for example. Unless Yahoo has some kind of major revamp in place (and the screenshots provided don't really indicate that), or unless the next generation of Sony HDTVs has substantially more CPU power under the hood (which is certainly possible), I personally would stay away.

Also unanswered is how much of these upgrades and improvements will be pushed back to older models. I'm not one of those people that insists on endless free upgrades on everything I buy forever and ever - just curious on how much of this is just a software push versus being dependent on new hardware.

That's Some Blatant False Advertising

Perusing my Mac news aggregator this morning, I came across an announcement of a new app - CandyLand for iPhone! I've indulged some nostalgia purchases, like The Game of Life, Battleship and Dragon's Lair, so I figured I could probably drop a dollar or two to relive the classic board game for a little while.

Sadly, this is not the original board game. Instead, it appears to be a Frogger knock-off.

Another childhood memory sullied by naked capitalism. Let the lawsuits begin, Hasbro!

Technology At The Speed Of Government

I got a message on one of my bloglists that the hearing to decide one of the last remaining races from the 2010 elections, for Texas House District 48, was going to be streaming on-line. This is a local race here in Austin, featuring Republican Dan Neil trying to overcome a 12-vote margin against Donna Howard. As usual for Democrat races, military ballots are at issue.

I was pretty surprised to see that there would be streaming for a relatively small sub-committee, so I headed over to the page to see what was there. I was even more surprised to see this:

The RealPlayer or RealOne Player software from Real Networks is required to access video/audio broadcasts.

There's someone in the world still using RealPlayer? I didn't even know it still existed, but I guess it still does. With all the drama over embedded video standards in HTML5, I'll have to admit I haven't heard anybody wondering (or caring) if .ram files would be supported.

State Government - rocking the Internet like it's 1998!

Microsoft OneNote for the iPhone - First Impressions

I see that Microsoft has now released a version of OneNote for the iPhone. Being an avid user of what I consider the single best piece of software to come out of Redmond, I quickly downloaded a copy. First impressions:

• It requires a Microsoft Live ID to use, as it stores all of the documents "in the cloud". I wonder if Microsoft will release any numbers about how many new IDs are generated by this app?
• Once logged on, sure enough, my existing notebooks dutifully appeared...after a while. Syncing up initially was a pretty slow process, considering I don't have many notebooks stored on Microsoft's web drive (is it still called SkyDrive? I don't remember).
• Opening a fairly large workspace was also relatively slow to do. I'll have to see how well incremental syncs in the future perform.
• Formatting appears to be mostly lost in this view. No bold-face or italics, and sadly, no tables. The fairly easy freeform table creation is one of my favorite parts of OneNote, but in the iPhone version, the tables are only represented by "[table]".
• Oddly enough, some graphics (mostly screenshots) were displayed and others were not, with not even a placeholder present in the doc for the missing ones. Tapping an image displayed it in a separate page, where it could be rotated, pinch-zoomed, etc. The main document as a whole can be rotated, but pinch-zoom doesn't appear to work.
• It has buttons to add images, bullet lists and check boxes, but not any other formatting that I could see. I don't know if it supports image capture through the camera since I am testing on an iPod touch 3GS which has no camera.

So, on the whole, for me I can see this as a moderately useful viewer app for (parts of ) my stored notebooks, and maybe for jotting down quick notes that I would like to access from other cloud clients. But I'm not particularly a "power user" of OneNote, and even for me there are gaps that prevent this from acting as a first-class client (table support being the main gap).

However, it's only version one - Microsoft never gets it usable until version three. Suffice it to say, I'll be looking forward for the next two releases more than this one.

And Now For An Important Mess...

Lord knows I don't know much about web design - I am, after all, a coder primarily, and if we were left in charge, most web sites today would still be black text on a plain gray background.

But I do know that I don't like this:

This is a weather alert box on The Weather Channel's web site. If you can't read the text, it says "Severe Thunderstorm W....".

Now, there are two possible endings to this phrase: "Watch" or "Warning". And they mean two different things. One means that it could happen, one means that it is actually happening or is imminent. And you should take different action depending on which one it is.

Unfortunately, the way they chose to lay out this text makes it impossible to tell. Yeah, you could click through - in the grand scheme of things, not a big deal - but that's an extra step you have to take to view one of the more important pieces of information this web site actually provides. It's the difference between good design and adequate or poor design.

Of course, the cynic in me then realizes that having an extra mouse click means they get to serve up another set of banner ads. I've really got to work on that cynicism.

Welcome To The Fold, Google

Work + World Of Warcraft + Sleep = no blogging.

In other news, I see that the new GoogleTV is suffering from the same case of streamus-interruptus that my Playstation 3 contracted last year. Hulu, CBS, NBC, ABC - all are detecting access from the Google/Sony set-top box, and blocking it. It's still the case that the content providers are paranoid about the screen you are using - if you view via a computer monitor, that's OK, but using a digital TV, not so good.

So, another target market that the networks could have snapped up and served ads to will instead now be served by the ad-free market that is the world of BitTorrents and their variants. Congrats, guys - heckuva job!

Well, Steve Jobs managed to break the music labels eventually - maybe he can do the same to the video morons.

(Still) So Much For Hulu

I've had a few struggles in the past with trying to use my network-connected PS3 to view Hulu-hosted videos. When I first bought my PS3, I could use the built-in web browser to connect to Hulu and watch videos. But shortly thereafter, Hulu decided to explicitly block the PS3 as a web client.

Now they've announced Hulu Plus, which will (at some future point) bring the entire Hulu library (including more shows than are available in the standard Hulu) to non-PC devices, like the iPhone and the PS3.

This will only cost you....$10/month.
Oh, and on the PS3, you will apparently also need to subscribe to the Playstation Network Plus, which runs another $50/year. So, tack on about $175 a year or so.

Now...Terry White asks "Will you pay for content that once was free?"

For many tech-heads, that's the wrong question. The question is: "Will you pay for content that is still free, and at a higher-quality, and without advertisements?"

Because that's still the competition for me - these shows are in enough places on-line that this kind of deal just doesn't offer enough in convenience/quality/whatever to make it competitive. No Hulu plus for me.

How Not To Inspire Confidence

It's just a camera phone shot, so not very high-rez, but still...



This is a screenshot from Time Warner Cable's new DVR box, informing the customer that they aren't subscribed to a channel.

Or rather...that they "aren$t" subscribed.

I'm guessing the text message uses a "smart quote", but the font they used didn't have that character, or they used the wrong encoding, or something similarly dumb. So a garbage character appears on screen.

Come on, Time Warner Cable...believe me, I understand testing is hard, but how stupid do you have to be to not catch this during even the most basic functional test? Would this make you feel good about having Time Warner Cable handle your TV connection? Your internet connection? Your phone line?

Help! Help! He's Being Repressed!

Outrage at Apple yet again. Now that Mark Fiore has won a Pulitzer Prize (no doubt, for explaining how to talk "like a tea bagger"), a few have noticed that his iPhone App was rejected a few months back.

Now, Apple's rejection criteria has been, to say the least, fluid. However, Apple has started clearing the dross of the app store, rejecting apps that are just graphics collections (i.e. usually softcore porn). Their claim (and rightly so) is that those can be better viewed just as web applications by a browser.

However, a few folks have decided this is political censorship:

Are you to be the new Digital Taliban?

If you cannot understand the First Amendment, if you can’t understand it supercedes your narrow monetary interests, perhaps you might want to consider moving your Corporate headquarters to a place like Singapore or Malaysia, where you’d at least have the excuse of hiding behind their similarly-repressive governments.

Yes, clearly Apple - with board members like Al Freaking Gore - is a bastion of repressive, right-wing anger. Or maybe, they realize that releasing politically-polarizing material - on either side of the aisle - is a good way to lose customers. Oh, and comparisons of a corporation making a minor policy decision to a fundamentalist terrorist group like the Taliban are always nice - what's the matter? Afraid to go full Godwin here?

Since you suggested it, let's take a look at the First Amendment, shall we?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

"Congress shall make no law..." Now, the Amendment's reach has been extended to other governments besides just Congress. But it hasn't been extended to Apple Inc., and as far as I know, Apple cannot pass a law.

The First Amendment means that the state cannot prevent you from speaking your mind. Indeed, this guys publishes on NPR - the state is actively supporting his speech. The Amendment does not say you get to choose how your speech is distributed. If Apple doesn't want to distribute political speech, that is their right. Just as it is your right to complain, boycott Apple, whatever you want.

Because I hope you really don't want the government forcing corporations - any corporation, not just networks or newspapers - to support any type of speech that comes down the road. That truly is fascism, not just the pretend label that gets slapped on anything politically disagreeable these days.

More Stuff I Now Know

Some things I found out today:

1. Looks like now that I am with UVerse instead of Time Warner Cable/Earthlink, I now have access to ESPN360.com for streaming video. I'll have to see if this is accessible on my TV (presumably by streaming through my PS3, as I doubt there is direct access from the Bravia TV itself. Yet.). At any rate - cool. More stuff to watch.
2. I also get access to AT&T Wifi hotspots, which is good for my iPod touch.
3. In dealing with the Hulu-blocking-PS3-access issue, it looks like some people were having success getting around this by using a proxy server to change the User-Agent HTTP header to mimic a standard Windows browser. More recent messages seem to indicate that a new block has been put up that stops even this. My guess - they are now querying the Flash run-time for user-agent info, and Flash isn't going through the proxy server. So I won't even try to get that up and running yet. Why does Hulu hate this path so much?

UVerse First Impressions

So, I never thought I would say this, but - I'm now an all AT&T shop. My cell phone has been with AT&T since I got it (well, technically it was Cingular to start with, but still the same provider). But now I've switched over my phone, tv and internet to AT&T UVerse. It did take a while - the UVerse web-site didn't believe I was in a service area until I alerted them to the problem. But once that was resolved, the order and install went pretty smoothly. My install took about two hours, which included installing a new junction box (or whatever they call it) on the outside of my house and replacing a telephone port on one wall, but not running any new cables. We just reused the coaxial cable from my existing DirecTV installation to connect the set-top box in my living room to the main gateway box in the back office.

First impressions:

• The Total Home DVR service is nice. I can setup and view recordings on either of my two boxes, with up to four streams recording. My previous DirecTV setup only had one box capable of recording/viewing, with two streams maximum.
• The DVR itself is not quite as capable as the Tivo box from DirecTV. There is no thumbs-up/thumbs-down ranking available, no automatic recording suggestions, and while there are searches available, it doesn't look like I can setup a recording schedule based on that search. It terms of the basics, however, the UVerse DVR is certainly capable enough for most use cases.
• Basic TV viewing is fine. The channel surfing is faster than the DirecTV boxes, but I haven't found a way to only surf through my favorites. I don't really want to pass by the channels that I don't even receive - that's just a dumb interface. The Tivo box was much better in this regard.
• There are some rudimentary interactive capabilities. The Weather On Demand might get some use (I had this problem with DirecTV also - no local weather from The Weather Channel), but I tend to use the internet on my iPod touch for "instant" weather information. But at least they are there, and maybe they will get more robust over time.
• There is home media server support through Media Share on UVerse, but it is officially Windows-only. My media is on my iMac, so I'm going to poke around to see if there is any way to trick Media Share into seeing my iTunes-based library.
• On a related note, the UVerse router is blocking my existing UPnP-based media sharing (which I currently use to stream from my Mac to my PS3). I'm going to need to find out what firewall rules need to be relaxed for this to work - this is a major show stopper for me.
• Other than this UPnP issue, the router itself seems to work fine. None of my devices (computers, iPods, PS3) had any problem connecting, and the speeds and signal strength seem to be good enough for my house. According to SpeedTest, I'm getting close to the advertised 12 Mbps speed for downloads.
• The phone service also looks good. I was able to switch over my cell phone to use the same voicemail system as the UVerse land-line, so now both phones drop messages into the same box, and the messages can be retrieved on phone or over the web. Nice.
• UVerse comes with its own branded version of the Yahoo services. However, I already had my own Yahoo account (along with related accounts like Flickr). It isn't clear that I can merge the two in any way, so I have to decide if I want to migrate to the new AT&T Yahoo account, stick with the old one, or maintain both of them.

So, really, the only big sticking point for now is the UPnP blocking. It also remains to be seen how the HDTV signal looks, once I get my new TV (which may be happening this weekend). And of course, it's nice that the bundle is going to be cheaper than my existing SBC/DirecTV/Earthlink combo, while also providing me with better features. Ah, technology.

Well, Yeah

Once you see it, it's obvious. Why haven't I seen this already?



An electrical outlet with built-in USB charging jacks.

Don't Send A Boy...

So the Motorola Droid phone that's been talking so tough on TV about how it does everything the iPhone doesn't only has 256MB of storage for apps?

This is the latest mighty "iPhone Killer"?

Yeah, I'm sure Steve is shaking in his boots.

This Better Be A Prank

April Fool's....in November?



The OpenOffice mouse.

A History Of "Brilliance"

John Dvorak, reviewing the original Macintosh:

The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.

Sad thing is, he hasn't gotten any better with age. He's still technology's first name in "wrong".

They Have That On Computers Now?

From a news article about how the debate over health care reform has crashed the House of Representatives email system:

[A spokesman] said new technology called "load balancing" is in place to try to handle spikes in volume.

Wow, that newfangled "load balancing" technology! What will they think of next?

(And these are the guys we want in charge of health care? Right....)