LIVEdigitally

Monthly Archives: October 2008

Will the WePC be a Horse or a Camel?

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Community-powered development and brainstorming is an interesting challenge.  On one hand, you get exposure to more ideas and concepts than you can possibly get from an individual or small team.  On the other hand, the signal-to-noise ratio rapidly gets out of control, and depending on the level of empowerment, you get clumsy, hard-to-use, yet feature-rich products.  When I read about the WePC concept from Intel and ASUS, I started pondering what wisdom the crowds have to offer (thanks to BrianB for the image suggestion).

I’ll admit, I’m skeptical here.  First and foremost, the challenges of building any computer come back to the single element which seems to make/break good PCs today: the drivers.  No matter what excellent ideas come back from the crowd, someone has to come along and make outstanding drivers, otherwise they’ll have the kinds of problems with XP or Vista that I used to have with my Vaio (yeah, I went back to the Vaio, beaten horse it may be).

Next, we have a fundamental cost/performance issue.  I don’t think you need to be Jonathan Ives to say “people want lightweight, thin, exceptionally well-styled computers that are feature-rich and inexpensive”.  Draw a triangle with size/weight, features, and cost onto the axes (clumsily drawn to the right using this tool – which desperately needs help).  You can pick any TWO, but not all three.  But what do people want?  All three.

This brings us back down to unfortunate reality, where the “average” computers are cost-driven with basic features and basic size/weights.  Machines like eeePC or the Voodoo Envy or the MacBook Air are all targeting extreme edges of the combinations, but none of these laptops could’ve come from the committee – they are all horses.

That said, if the WePC effort helps give Asus a good handle on what their users may purchase, that’s great.  If it lets them further innovate in their product design, also great.  Companies like Dell and Bug Labs are both using their communities to help steer product direction, but not definitively decide it.  I think it’s a careful balancing act.

My hunch is the WePC’s will end up extremely similar to the existing product lines made by most notebook manufacturers today.  I hope I’m proven wrong, and we see some amazing innovations.  I’ll give Asus a lot of credit with their new products over the past few years, now let’s see where the crowd takes it.

Can the BlackBerry Storm Kill the iPhone?

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I saw a post entitled “Why BlackBerry Storm Is An iPhone (and G-1) Killer” and thought it needed a rebuttal. The post makes some very salient points on how it’s a good device, on good carriers, app store coming, etc. All good points. Now let me explain why I think those points are utterly irrelevant.

The iPhone (which I don’t own, for the record) is not compared to the BlackBerry on the same terms.  It’s not a portable email device, and it doesn’t want to be one.  To compare the two devices its more important to think about the decision-making that goes in to buying either device.

Business buy BlackBerries.  They will continue to do so.  Few businesses buy iPhones, this too will likely remain the same.  Accordingly we don’t need to take enterprise purchasing into account, as this market makes purchasing decisions based on price, security, integration, etc.  What we’re really talking about here is consumers.

Consumers who buy luxury goods are not buying things based on cold-hard fact comparison.  If you drink Grey Goose vodka or use Kiehl’s skincare products or purchase Infiniti cars, odds are pretty good you do a lot less “comparison shopping” than you do when buying mainstream products (btw, for more on this I recommend reading “Trading Up“).  The iPhone clearly falls into this category, people buy it for reasons that have little to do with technical specifications or even feature set (heck, they sold almost 8 million units before they launched the app store).

The iPhone has further achieved success because, frankly, it’s an amazing product (despite its inability to do video recording like my good ol Samsung UCH-740). It’s one of the best phones, best MP3 players, and overall best gadgets you can buy.  It doesn’t matter if the BlackBerry does “somewhat better” in almost any category, whether it’s web-surfing, email, or downloadable games.  Being “better” is far from good enough to beat the iPhone.

A recent survey showed that 22% of teens wanted an iPhone.  I don’t think these same teens are even remotely close to buying a BlackBerry (you know, like Dad uses at work).  There’s no sex appeal to the BlackBerry brand, and building a great device isn’t enough to turn it into a sexy one.  Just ask the HTC G1/Android phone that question (that thing is enough to make Nokia phones look sleek!).

The BlackBerry Storm seems like it’s going to be one heck of a BlackBerry.  Best one ever, no doubt.  Probably the best portable email device ever made.  And they will probably grab a good chunk of the existing BlackBerry market.  But kill the Iphone?  That gun’s not loaded yet, and it would take RIM years to create the combination of product/brand positioning to come even close.

Sonos + Pandora = 42

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My insufficiently geeky readers probably won’t get the 42 reference, so I’ll assume you read this reference before continuing. Of all the convergence I’ve seen that bridge gadgets with Web services, I think the implementation of Pandora’s free Internet radio service onto the Sonos music system is probably the best.   The single “snag” in the entire system is that you actually need to (1) have a Pandora account, and (2) own a Sonos.  If you don’t, I recommend correcting the situation immediately.

In a nutshell, Pandora works by building “radio stations” based on artists and/or tracks you like.  If you pick Frank Sinatra, boom, you have a Frank Sinatra Radio Station.  Add other artists, and create your Smooth Crooners Radio Station.  If you don’t get it yet, well, go to Pandora and set up an account, it is free after all.  The super delicious part of the story is how well they integrated with Sonos.

On your Sonos, you simply need to add your Pandora username/password, then you have access to virtually all Pandora features.  Key to it is how easy it is to use on the Sonos, including bookmarking content and creating new stations.  One of the softkey (programmable) buttons is labeled “ratings”, the other “Pandora”.

Click “ratings” to rapidly Like, Dislike, or Not hear a song for a month.  Perfectly logical, works just like Pandora on the Web does.  This feature is one of the key parts to how Pandora works – while you can’t specifically pick songs to play, the collaborative filtering system (recommendations) works extremely well.

The “pandora” button allows you to add the given song or artist to your current radio station, or build a new station based on the song/artist.  Again, this implementation is exactly how it should work.  Within minutes I created five different stations, all in different genres, with practically no effort.  You can similarly bookmark content to retrieve later at pandora.com.

I’ve ripped my 800+ CD collection into MP3.  We have access to tons of other streaming Internet content.  I can say without hesitation that 90% of my Sonos listening will now be over Pandora (and my new house has 7 Sonos zones planned).  Amazing job to both companies.  BTW, Sonos also introduced an iPhone app, but since I’m not an iPhone guy I’ll let the pro’s talk about how great that is instead…

Sorry (where's JT??)

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I haven’t blogged in almost a month and I definitely feel a little guilty about it.

It’s not as if there’s no technology news to discuss. And I have a small pile of gadgets I’ve recently tried out (quick highlights: SuperTalent 8GB USB Pico drive is awesome, orbitsound T12 seems pretty impressive so far, Targus Grove combo backpack/messenger bag is my new favorite, i want a new macbook air, my maxtor shared storage plus NAS just crapped out, NHL 09 for xbox 360 is amazing, and my vaio is acting up again – no joke). So I can’t say I have nothing to talk about.

I’ve come to realize that the reading about and discussing both the elections and the financial situation are consuming the time I used to use for blogging. Unlike my “pro blogger” friends, I only have a small amount of time I can dedicate to it each day, and I’m spending that time researching other things right now. Not to mention the fact that hockey’s back in full swing (Go Habs!).

For the few of you who follow me on FriendFeed, you’ve probably seen much of my thoughts on both politics and the economic climate. I’ll take a moment to address both briefly here:

Regarding the economy, my opinion is that it is far too soon to make any kind of judgment call regarding “another Great Depression”. Granted I’m an optimist, but I have yet to see a single financial expert who’s actually been correct through this entire mess, so I see no reason to begin trusting any of them – regardless of their position. I encourage you to read multiple articles on the various topics, and do some reading on other historical “panics” prior to stocking up on canned soup in your bomb shelter.

Regarding politics (yes, I know this isn’t the place you come to read politics, so if you don’t want to hear any politics, just skip this paragraph, it’s that easy), I’ll take a moment to endorse Obama for President. In 2000, I thought McCain was an excellent candidate and got sabotaged by Bush’s extreme negativism and Leninesque attacks. Today I believe McCain has changed, and is no longer the visionary leader I once respected (selecting Palin, distracting the campaign with a focus on “possible terrorist connections” and other shenanigans – elegantly summarized here). While I can’t say Obama’s perfect either, I believe this country will be better off with an idealistic visionary as leader than with more of the same style of “leading” we’ve seen in recent years. Note: if you would like to debate politics with me, please use FriendFeed, Twitter, email, or some other interactive tool for it. Thanks.

I think my blogging will remain fairly erratic in the next few weeks, until at least one of the above topics is settled (though depending on outcome, a sudden relocation to Canada may be necessary).

As your reward for getting all the way through this post, please enjoy the following video:

The Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 – a review

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Back to basics for me on LD.  This one is just a straight-up, old fashioned gadget review.

This wireless laser Desktop 6000 v 3.0 mouse and keyboard have some pretty cool features, though the keyboard suffers from some serious performance drawbacks.  I’ll start with the mouse, and then my impressions, and then the keyboard, and my further impressions.

The mouse is well shaped, comfortable, and has some nifty features.  The front thumb button lets you magnify a small section of the screen, and the rear button lets you move back a page.  In the settings area you can re-designate some different functions for those buttons.  The USB wireless “dongle” fits into the bottom of the mouse; this dongle connects both thhe mouse and thhe keyboard.

The mouse has worked great so far.  the plastic and rubber surfacing is comfortable and pleasantly tactile.  The “magnify“ feature is OK, but the back button is awesome.  When I use my portable mouse I reach for it, and I’m  bummed that it’s not there.   This is not an incredible innovation – features like this have been around a long time.  But efficiency is a funny thing: once you get used to a simpler / faster / more efficient mechanism, it’s hard to give it up.  Overall, I am very happy with the mouse.

The keyboard has similar whiz-bang features and a wrist-friendly layout.  I’m used to using my old-school Dell keyboard, complete with coffee stains and non-ergonomic design.  This new black and smoke gray model, with it’s ergonomic curvatures, enlarged “critical keys” and rubberized hand rests seems like a huge step up.  There are some hot keys as well with useful shortcuts and lots of customization options.  My favorite key is actually the “documents key;” you can use it to open a specific folder (like “My Documents.”  🙂  Again, efficiency is a pleasant thing, and easy to get used to.

Here’s the issue: performance has been spotty.  When I first plugged in the dongle and tried to type I saw significant lag.  For a minute or two the keystrokes would be fine, then all of a sudden no type appeared.  Then ten seconds later, it all appeared in a rush. I try to delete or backup knowing that I mis-typed something, but no type is appearing (or disappearing.)  Then I have to just stop and wait for things to realign.   Sometimes it would type fine for a minute, and then lag for eight or ten characters, and then catch up again.  Also, sometimes the keyboard seems to lose itself.  By this I mean that though I haven’t moved the cursor or moused into a new application, suddenly the keyboard seems to stop typing, and I am forced to click on something else, and then click back into the “typing zone.”  Not OK.

I tried moving the dongle to a couple of different USB ports, tried the “reset / reconnect” button, and also tried installing the software that came with the setup (I like to check for plug-and-play compatibility before installing software).   After doing all of that, the performance improved significantly.  Having shut down and re-booted a half dozen times while running these peripherals seems to have helped as well.   At this point performance is largely acceptable, though not quite equivalent to my old PS/2 connected keyboard.  However the ergonomics, hotkeys,  and overall shiny-newness makes up for a lot.  As long as they type-pace keeps up with the speed of the keystrokes, I think I will stick with it.  But I’m not throwing out my old keyboard just yet.

This rig costs $99 retail – you can purchase it from Microsoft directly, or from any number of alternative online and traditional retailers.  Overall I think it’s a pretty good rig.  If I were forced to give it a numeric score from one to ten, I’d give it a 6.   If performance were as solid as my old wired keyboard, I’d give it a 9.  There’s another great review of this item over at IStartedSomething with some beautiful pictures if you want some more info on this setup.

This review is also posted at 1TO10REVIEWS.