LIVEdigitally

Monthly Archives: December 2010

Quick Thoughts: buying a new TV, cord-cutting, smart TVs, delicious shutdown, online privacy

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I'm on a Truck. With a TV.

Buying a new TV:  I came to the realization that my manroom, while great, was inadequately equipped with a mere 50″ screen.  So I decided to go big (then go home).  Spent a long while researching options, ended up with the Samsung PN63C590, Samsung PN63C8000, and the LG 60PK950 as my top three choices.  Two of these three had 3D and Internet connectivity, the other was just a big honking 63″ screen.  I went with the big honking screen and skipped on the frills.  I realized I don’t much like the current 3D experience in theaters or homes (makes me a little nauseous), and the likelihood that I’d want to frequently watch 3D at home was pretty low.  Regarding Internet apps, I’m not really impressed with most of the available apps, and I’m not very convinced that the current platforms won’t be obsolete within 12-18 months (looks like I’m not the only one who feels that way on both topics).

In a nutshell – the TV is awesome, manroom now operating at near-100% efficiency.

Cord-Cutting: So my new TV is great, and also huge.  And there’s an interesting downside to it being huge – the gaffes of lower quality video are worse than ever.  As soon as everything was hooked up, I turned on the NHL HD channel (sports channels seem to be at the top of the quality spectrum in the HD channel lineup).  All I could see were the jaggies and other terrible aftereffects of the highly compressed video Comcast delivers to my house.  So how did I make my TV look good?  I turned on my Xbox!  I think this “faux” HD experience is something that actually could cause cord-cutting in 2011 – far more than Smart TVs will.  More on this over on the Stage Two blog.

Smart TVs:  Speaking about Smart TVs (the continuity in this post would astound my high school English teacher), I read an article on “What Smart TVs need to Succeed” with the highlights being: Unlimited Content Access, Extensive Use of Apps, and Immersive Experience.  I think I understand that perspective, but I also think it is missing the boat.  People tend to compare Smart TVs to Smart Phones.  If you recall, the first several *years* of smart phones were some truly terrible products.  But when it comes to phones, that’s “ok” because they are low cost (relative to TVs) and owners expected to replace them in fairly short cycles.  TVs, on the other hand, are expensive and consumers tend to replace infrequently (unless of course they have awesome manrooms that warrant the upgrade).  A generation of underwhelming Smart TVs will likely put a damper on the entire industry.  What Smart TVs really need to succeed is great, intuitive, television-like user experiences.  And I will be blunt by saying none of them do it right now.  And I don’t see this changing for at least the first half of 2011.  Which is why we’ve got a new thing cooking in Stage Two’s labs, all about making a really good TV user experience.  Will show ya next year.

Del.icio.us shutdown:  Just like everyone else in the Web 2.0 era,  I used Delicious for about 45 minutes back in the mid 2000’s, then stopped.  I know there’s still a solid fan base, and a lot more people found it a lot more useful than I did, but Yahoo’s let it languish since about 6 months after purchase.  Other than buying a better domain for it, it doesn’t seem like the company cared about it one bit.  And now they are shutting it down.  I think this is pretty terrible, and as I tweeted… “irony of delicious shut-down? bartz could’ve made only $46.2M last year and still had a full-time TEAM on *improving* the product…”  Shame on them.  I’m sure there’s some great spreadsheet somewhere that shows why its the smart business decision, but the audacity of the entire Yahoo situation is just plain infuriating.  Highly recommended reading: Thomas Hawk’s letter to Carol Bartz.

Online privacy:  The entire concept of privacy is up for grabs these days.  Some feel it’s dead, some feel it must be protected at all costs.  I sit closer to the “protect my privacy” camp, and as a result am encouraged to see the government taking some form of action.  Unfortunately, I don’t know how much actual good it will do, but since the industry isn’t self-regulating, I have to assume it can’t make things too much worse.  I remain convinced that the mega-millionaires who run the companies who effectively control our online privacy have the incorrect moral incentives in place, especially considering they can pay their way out of the issues the rest of us face.

How-to Remove Spam from Mac Mail Search Results

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I’m a big fan of search.  Prior to my Mac I was using Google Desktop Search, and now Spotlight is a key part of my workflow.  As a Mac Mail + Hosted Gmail + IMAP user, I’ve noticed my search results always include Spam, and due to the ridiculous quantity of spam I get, most searches tend to overflow with it.  For example, here’s me looking for an email from someone named “becky”:

Yup, that’s a spamtastic result.  In fact here’s how much spam there is in my inbox:

Now for the good news.  It’s fixable.  Here are the simple steps you can do to stop seeing spam in your mac mail search results.  I’ve even included pretty pictures to help show all the required steps.

1. Go to your gmail (or hosted gmail) inbox, then click on settings:

2. Go to the “labs” tab, find “Advanced IMAP Controls”, and enable it.  Don’t forget to save changes along the way!

3. Return to settings, click Labels, and uncheck the “show in IMAP” option.

4. OK, all done with the gmail side of things, let’s switch back to Mac Mail.  First, close Mail (not 100% sure you have to do this, but it worked for me), then relaunch it.  When open, scroll all the way down on the LEFT side of the screen to find the “gmail” area of your folders.  Find your mail server, and right-click (aka command-click) on the word “Gmail”.  In the options menu, click “synchronize” (by the way, not 100% sure this step is required either, but again, it worked for me).

5. In a moment, your spam folder should disappear, as if by magic…

Ahh, yes, the joy of hidden spam.  Which is the only good kind of spam.  Well, that and no spam, of course…

And just to confirm, here’s the same search for our mysterious friend becky:

And there you have it.  Thanks to commentor “Andrew Wynn” on this post (scroll way down).  By the way, you can use this method to hide other folders as well, such as personal content, automatic filters, etc.  Hope this helps!

Microsoft To Launch Tablet at CES: Again

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If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then Microsoft needs a straitjacket.

How many times has Microsoft tried a tablet? At least four, over the past eleven years. How many times have they failed? Four. Today the New York Times is reporting that Microsoft is taking aim at the iPad and will introduce several tablet PCs at CES next month.

People familiar with this device said it will run the Windows 7 operating system when in landscape mode, but will also have a layered interface that will appear when the keyboard is hidden and the device is held in a portrait mode.

[SNIP]

The applications will not be sold in an app store, as with the Apple iTunes model, but Microsoft will encourage software partners to host the applications on their own Web sites, which will then be highlighted in a search interface on the slate computers. It is unclear if these applications will be ready for C.E.S. as most are still in production.

Making hardware is not that hard. Almost anyone can build a tablet computer these days. Making a great tablet is very hard. I’d even wager that the team behind the iPad looks at their product and all they can see is future improvements. That said, it is clearly the best tablet we’ve got so far. It is hard to replicate the iPad’s usability. It is hard to capture intuitive and repeatable gestures. It is hard to capture Apple’s mindshare and market position.

It seems these days that Microsoft is reacting instead of leading. Their fundamental approach is “iPad is not that good and doesn’t meet the needs of business professionals.” And that plan just isn’t working out for them.

What happened to the Microsoft that invented Windows? Remember Start Me Up? What happened to the company that built Office and the Xbox? I want to root for Windows and Microsoft. I want Microsoft to deliver simple, beautiful technologies to people.

And just like I have for the past few years, I’ll be skipping Ballmer’s CES demo. Not that I don’t want to be there. It is that I feel like I have been there before. I will hope for something amazing. I would love to discover that I missed the best keynote ever. But instead, if it even mentions Microsoft one note, someone should have a straitjacket on hand just in case.

My cord-cut TV set-up

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Following my last post, I thought I would explain my personal cord-cut situation and highlight what is working for me (and what isn’t) as I try to enjoy TV without cable.

First off, the main source of video entertainment (both TV and movies) is Netflix accessed via a Roku box.  Yes, we don’t get the latest content and yes, the selection is somewhat restricted, but there is enough there that keeps our interest.

I’m also a huge fan of webTV, which I access on Roku or online from my computer (my wife thinks I’m nuts, for a bunch of reasons of course, but my webTV hobby is one of them.)

The big gap here is sports. I get around this because I’m simply not a sports fan, so even if I had cable I wouldn’t watch a lot (or any) sports. (Full disclosure: I saw, and loved, the Vancouver Olympics on cable before I cut it)

I did get an MLB.com account (and jump on the bandwagon) to watch the SF Giants in the World Series. I loved the experimentation of it all and found the experience to be good.

The one sport I do enjoy (and miss dearly) is Formula 1 racing. Right now, I have no good way to follow my favorite fast cars. I read some of the updates online but that is a very sad alternative to watching a thrilling race live.

Also, HBO… That is another huge gap in my viewing pleasure that I miss. We get a lot of the shows on DVD via Netflix but it would be beyond fantastic to have a streaming solution.

As far as news and current events, I get that online, in magazines (I love magazines) and increasingly via electronic magazine purchases on my iPad.

My next moves? Well, I’ll be getting an HD antenna soon to watch over-the-air TV. This will let us watch some interesting shows and hopefully some big events, like the Oscars. I was considering Hulu Plus on Roku but it sounds like that offering isn’t as complete as it could be, so I may wait it out.

Two other disclosures:

1) I’m actually skeptical that this whole cord-cutter thing is a really huge trend. I think people will come back to cable once the economy improves and once cable companies up their PPV game. Cord-cutting will increasingly be a viable option, but it won’t have huge adoption in the mainstream.

2) For the record, I’m not a cord-cutter out of some religous hatred for cable companies. They aren’t my favorite companies in the world but they’re better than oil companies. I’m a cord-cutter for fun. I think it is fun to fiddle with gadgets and find ways to watch TV on my own terms.

Plus I’m super-cheap and I love saving the $60 a month. (If you cancel Comcast Xfinity triple play and get Internet and a landline separate, the savings is about $70… not a lot but I’ll take it.) Factor in the $10/month for Netflix and you walk away with $60 in your pocket and a chance to play with all the inputs on the back of your HDTV.

Is cord-cutting real?

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We’ve all heard about the recent declines in cable subscriptions as of late and the digerati are breathlessly declaring this to be the ear of “cord-cutting”. The real test of the cord-cutting phenomena will be once (or if) the economy ever picks up. As stated:

Neil Smit, president of Comcast Cable, acknowledged in a recent call with investors that some customers had dropped cable for free signals. Company executives also said they expected business to rebound with the economy.

That may very well happen.

Thus far, despite all the brou-hah-hah, the relative number of cord-cutters has been small and it has mostly been low-margin customers, the type of customers cable companies don’t want anyway.

You could reasonably assign those customer losses to the crappy economy and anticipate customer increases once things get better. If that happens, then “cord-cutting” has been a fad. But if the downward trend in customer subs (or the upward trend in cord-cutting) continues when (or again… if) housing and/or employment picks up, then the cable industry is in trouble.

I’m a fan of the cord-cutting movement (as a cord-cutter myself), but I’m skeptical about how real this trend is in the mainstream.

There are a number of wild-cards out there besides just the economy. For example, high-profile channels like HBO start making their own moves could nudge cord-cutting from fad to trend:

(Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeff) Bewkes has suggested recently that HBO could be sold directly to consumers on the Web.

HBO going online is a big WOW.

Also, the big question is of course sports, and how/if you’ll be able to access outside of a cable subscription.

The question ultimately comes down to money. Yes, Netflix may have almost 17 million subscribers, but under its current deal Starz, a key supplier of content  to Netflix, makes only 15 cents a subscriber, compared to the $2/subscriber it makes off of cable companies.

Until content owners and distributers start making that kind of coin, marquee content will remain elusive on cord-cut TVs, which may squash the cord-cutting revolution.

Why Trying To Destroy Online Information Is A Dumb Idea

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Trying to put a muzzle on the internet is dumb. The nature of the web encourages users to create and share material easily and information wants to be free.

As we should have learned from the Streisand Effect, attempting to remove online information can have unintended consequences. That is, trying to delete “unwanted” websites only draws more attention to the content on said websites and makes the person attempting to stifle information look like a complete tool.

Take the recent outcry against Wikileaks. In attempting to remove the informationfrom the web, critics have only amplified the reach of the Wikileaks website. And even if the site is shut down, the information on the site can never really be destroyed.  Further, if it goes away, there’s a more-than-average probability that something else will return in its place, only less individually targetable.

Remember the end of Star Wars (the real one, not the one with the racist puppets), Obi Wan Kenobi tells Darth Vader that he can never really be defeated. If Wikileaks is struck down, it will only become more powerful than we could possibly imagine.

The recording industry and Napster serves as a classic example of what not to do online. The RIAA saw their files getting shared by music enthusiasts and immediately tried to shut down the system through legal means. The results? The RIAA did get Napster to go legit. They also then birthed distributed clones, now in the form of bit torrent sites around the world.  Only this time they are unstoppable.

What if, instead of the world of RIAA lawsuits, underground file sharing and billion dollar iPods, there was a different industry response? What if the music industry had worked with music fans to share content (for free and for profit), connect people with bands that they love and help individuals, music and technology converge in a positive, fun way? Isn’t that vision preferable to the world we inhabit today?

What is true for the record industry specifically is also true for the internet in general. When information appears that outrages, shocks, angers or offends you, the answer is not to destroy that information. This only leads to more websites, prolonged lawsuits and increased attention for the unwanted content.

Instead, individuals and organizations should recognize that information – once it is online – is almost impossible to erase. A better engagement strategy works with established structures of information and tries to compromise, collaborate and adapt. Do not try to forcibly take things offline.

I don’t exactly know what “should” be done with WikiLeaks.  I just know that taking it down is unquestionably part of the path to the Dark Side.