Category Archives: General

This past Saturday, my beautiful wife gave birth to a little boy, a.k.a. BabyToe.  At present, I really haven’t decided what my comfort level is with putting pictures and videos online of him.  I think back to personal issues that confronted Russell Beattie several years ago as well as Kathy Sierra earlier this year.  I’m very aware of how much of my life is exposed via my blog, various social networking sites, twitter, flickr, youtube, etc, and while I’m comfortable with that personally, I don’t necessarily need to extend that level of exposure to my family.

As a “on-topic” item, here’s a list of all the gadgets I took to the hospital

• Digital camera (Canon SD700is) – usage: approximately 600 photos in 48 hours
• RCA Small Wonder – usage: lots of video, easy download to PC, easy edits, worked great, no silly videotape needed 
• Laptop + EVDO card – usage: sent photos to family at night, made Muvee mix of especially cute photos
• iRiver clix – usage: made awesome relaxation playlist for labor, never used it
• QuikPod – usage: tripod for extra video recording, still love my quikpod!
• Cell phones – usage: mostly ignored

Anyhow, I am thrilled to be a father of a healthy little boy.  I’ll certainly share the details of me getting obsessed with my stroller purchase, which was fun – hey, it really is the ultimate gadget if you think about it.  The blogging is probably going to remain somewhat sporadic (yes, even more than usual) for the next few weeks, but it won’t go away.

If anyone would care to share their thoughts on the balance between privacy/security and sharing, I’d love to hear them!

If you still use an office phone, this is the single best headset I’ve used to-date.  It’s the GN Netcom (Jabra) 9120 and includes the ever-so-awesome “lifter”. The sound quality is great, as is the range.  It’s comfortable.  Just get it! 

It’s on Woot today (blog post here) for a low price of $139.  Love it!

I honestly can’t imagine that I have a single reader who is not either a subscriber or a frequent reader of Engadget, the world’s largest tech/gadget blog.  The site, run by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block (who recently wrote his 5000th post!), averages 25-40 posts per day, all with the latest scoops of new products coming your way (or occasionally, the ones you’ll never get to see depending on the country you live in).

When I left Sling last year, one of the areas where I knew I wanted to focus some of my personal time was in writing. My blogging activity soared (well, plummetted then soared).  However, when I was given the opportunity to write a recurring column for Engadget, it represented a new level of writing in my eyes.  While I try to make sure the content I write here is always interesting and thoughtful (I said “I try” didn’t I?), there are basically no expectations.  I write what I want, when I want.

With my new column, however, the standards are much, much higher.  Millions of people read Engadget each month, and my writing must be a contribution to that readership.  Also, as a veteran who has actually built the gadgets for a living, I really want to bring a different perspective for the readers.

So, I proudly present my first piece, “Ins and Outs: Is buyshifting the future of television?” which is coming in two parts.  It’s fun to see a whole discussion in the comments pop up in just a few short hours!  I hope you enjoy it, an if you have any topics you’d like to hear me write about, drop me a note or comment here.  The column is “Ins and Outs” and the focus is the cross-section of entertainment and technology.

How r u?  U OK?

Somewhere back in the 90s one of the versions of MS Word included a built-in spellchecker that finally, actually, really worked.  While typing, any misunderstood word gets instantly highlighted, and better yet, some clear tpyos even get automatically corrected.  There was being grammar checker too, but it not working as good, unless, of course, you write a “fractured sentence” (an error description that is truly on a par with PC Load Letter).

And once God Microsoft gave us spellcheck, all became better.  Peace and prosperity ruled the land.  And we started getting lazy.  Very lazy.  Just as the spreadsheet killed the need for learning math, spellcheck apparently killed the need for learning how to spell.  Both of these are a shame in my eyes, as I enjoy both activities, and as a very slightly (ok fine) somewhat geeky kid, I really excelled at both back in my day. 

With the surge of popularity of both instant messaging and online chat rooms in the later 90s, another blow to English arose.  In IM-land you can have a quick conversation about anything, and nobody’s paying attention to a little typo hree or tehre.  You’d have to really utterly manggle (sp?) a word for your conversation partner to say anything, and that assumes they recognized the mistake.  With IM, some form of “Quickie” English began to emerge, where phrases like LOL, LMAO, IMHO, BRB, gained a lot of popularity.

Quickie English gets even better (or is that worse?) when it comes to texting.  When texting, not only aren’t you getting feedback on a mispelt word, thanks to technology like T9 you might accidentally insert the wrong word into your sentence. But don’t worry, it’s just a text, who cares, right?  A recent study shows all this Quickie English might be causing some problems to Old Fashioned Written English.

I’m a fairly traditional person, but I am also one to know languages evolve over time.  For example, the word “connection” was spelled “connexion” through the first half of the 20th century.  Read books authored in the 18th or 19th century (sorry, e-books and audio-books on your iPod are not acceptable substitutes for this exercise), you’ll find all kinds of minor variations on common words.  Should the next edition of Webster’s include definitions for R, U, and LOL?  If these “words” are here to stay, then yes, language should evolve.  It must.

Update: I really wanted to find a way to link to this post, one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long long time, but I just couldn’t find a way to fit it in context.  But it does fit, somehow.  So, call it a non-sequitur, and just accept “cheezburger” into your spell-check dictionary, ok?

These days it seems like not a single night goes by when some company is throwing a party for the tech masses to attend.  It sure makes San Francisco seem like a very lively place, I must say.  It also makes it a bit more tricky to try to get some top influencers to join you for dinner for the evening. 

By the way, those exact words could’ve been written in April of 1999 or 2000.

Anyhow, I did manage to convince 1615 of them to come to the latest Geek Dinner, and they are:

• Daniel Riveong
• Jamie Odell – in charge of product management at Jaman
• Nick Douglas
• Mehrshad Mansouri – freelance consumer tech/new media PR
• Andrew Kippen
• Robert Scoble
• Brad Kayton – in charge of marketing at 4homemedia
• Jeremy Toeman – spends way too much time on his couch
• Sam Levin
• Brian Curtis
• Christian Perry
• Karl Long – in charge of gaming and social media at Nokia 
• Dave Mathews
• Marjorie Kase
• Jim Schaff – domo arigato Mr Drobo-to (domo)
• Jason Vagner – head carnie at Big Tent

The ’round-the-horn’ topic of the evening was about digital cameras, and the upwardly spiraling ever-increasing megapixel count.  Personally, I feel we’re reach a bit of a ‘saturation point’ wherein consumers won’t be easily persuaded to strive for higher MP cameras.  This doesn’t include professionals or prosumers, of course.  It proved an interesting topic, as quite a few different opinions came to bear:

• Some agreed.
• Some thought it would just keep going up and up as the technology improves. 
• Some thought that the industry would follow the CPU industry, and focus less on the actual megapixel count and more on the features & benefits
• Some thought a technical “leap forward” would occur, and we’d get to a whole new plateau of digital camera technology

As is becoming the norm, I had a bag of gadgets to pass around for inspection.  My favorite remains: my quik-pod.  I also had Samsung’s NV10 digital camera (which sports a very interesting interface, worthy of a look!), my trio of bluetooth headsets, my Samsung SCH-u740 phone (now in black), and the NETGEAR SPH101 Skype phone.

No giveaways this time, but instead I gave the floor to Jim Schaff of Data Robotics to present the Drobo.  In interest of fairness and the fact that we’d drank a lot of wine, he had 2 minutes to present and the group was welcome to barrage him with questions.  Disclosure: I am now consulting for Data Robotics, but this specific activity was unrelated to the work I’m doing there – Jim just wanted (a) to come to dinner, and (b) asked if he could present the gadget.

I definitely don’t want Geek Dinner to get all commercialized or anything, but if there are other cool startups that have products they want to show off (or even giveaway), feel free to reach out.  No guarantees, and it’s going to be totally at my discretion.

We also had a short video shot at the dinner.  Next time, we may have even more…

Thanks again to all the attendees, I hope everyone had a great time!

ps – is it ironic that I picked the specific night based on the schedule of a friend who was in from out of town, and that friend didn’t show up?  I think that’s irony, but I’m not positive.

While the numbers to-date are showing Vista’s uptake is going well, I can’t help but feel the launch isn’t up to the expectations of Redmond.  I’ve seen influential folks like Chris Pirillo leave the OS while Mark Evans muses on the “beginning of the end” of the Windows OS.  Personally, I’m utterly stunned by the missteps that surround Vista so far (and I’m not talking about a PR firm giving laptops to bloggers, this doesn’t even scratch the surface to me).

First and foremost, I think the company should not have approached the OS from a “upgrade from XP” perspective.  Almost every complaint and headache report I’ve read about or witnessed has to do with the upgrade path.  I think life coulda-woulda-shoulda been a lot better for MSFT had they simply made the OS a pre-install only.  The only exception I’d consider is large corporations whose IT staffs have complete lockdowns on the office computers.

Fundmentally I think the biggest flaw with Vista is the suite of confusing editions.  Home. Home Premium. Home Ultra. Home with Tartar Control.  Home with Techron.  As a general rule, the more FUD, the less buying (you can ask the high definition DVD marketplace for a reference on that one).  But rather than just complain about, I’ve got my own set of Vista Editions that I think make a lot more sense in today’s world.

Vista for Laptop
Simply put, the Laptop Edition has lots and lots of power management services, and they are all extremely accessible.  Airplane/Endurance mode, Presentation mode, Email/Web mode, Productivity mode, etc.  Each mode is predefined for different goals, and all are tweakable for power users.  I’d also like to see a “rapid charge” mode that helps me out when I need to juice up just before a flight.  Further, all these services are completely removed from desktops.

Vista for Gaming
During Bill Gates’ keynote at CES this year it was mentioned that there are 200 million PC gamers around the world.  Well, how about a Gaming Edition, in which the user can easily turn off EVERYTHING not needed for the game they want to play.  You’d basically get two options: networked or not, and all the other services are automatically shut down while you play.  And better yet, they all come back automatically when you are done.

Vista Small Business Edition
Designed specifically for companies with NO IT administrator.  No need for Domain/Workgroup management.  Assumption of POP3-only email services, probably no Exchange or other Windows servers.  Easy integration for shared hosting for both calendaring and file transfer.  Simple file sharing, simple security, etc.  Also should be optimized for telecommuters, with easy VPN integration.

Vista Corporate
This is the opposite of the SMB Edition above.  Assume an IT administrator is in place, and wishes to totally lock down individual applications, services, etc.  Lots of configurable settings that are easily deployed across vast number of PCs. 

Vista for Home
Unlike the current approach to Home, which is basically just dumbed down Business, this version puts an emphasis on personal use computing.  Easy media sharing, playback, recording, etc.  Tight integration with devices, especially printers, MP3 players, and digital cameras.  Really strong security features, but with a wee bit more intelligence than the current setup.

Vista Servers
Okay, I’m not really much of an enterprise computing guy, but I know the world needs servers, and I know MSFT makes em, so make a whole category dedicated to the space.

That’s my list of what I consider the missing Vista editions.  By the way, most of the functionality I’ve described above already exists in Vista today, this is really a case of cleaning up the product line mess.  I’m sure my list isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly easier to choose from than Home, Home Premium, and Ultimate.

Robert Scoble is a prolific writer, he averages about 7ish posts per day.  Some are short, less than a paragraph, some are over a pagelong.  I applaud him for being able to do it, it’s clearly some kind of mania gift (j/k Robert!).

Engadget, which is written by a team of writers, posts twenty to forty times daily.

I, on the other hand, average about a post or less per day.  I’ve gone multiple days in a row without blogging.  As a result, I’m sure I don’t get nearly the traffic all the top/”a-list” blogs get.  I’m pretty okay with it too, as I have a different philosophy on the content.

Personally, I can’t keep up with the top blogs.  I miss a lot of what they write, because I don’t really have the time to read it all.  I instead have to scan through titles, picking and choosing what’s interesting.  But when it comes to the “b-list” bloggers I read, I never miss a post.  Further, I tend to read and even get involved in the conversations I see on these blogs, who typically feature one to three new stories per day.

But I’m still a less frequent blogger than most of them.  And again, I’m okay with that.  There are some who think of the blogosphere as a giant conversation – I don’t personally agree.  I think it’s a lot more like a bunch of people shouting simultaneously, hoping to get the most attention.  For example, as I write this post, the “topic of the hour” at Techmeme is Google buying DoubleClick.  At this point, there are 25 distinct posts on it, and that’s just per Techmeme’s logic.  But most of the contribution to this “conversation” is the same theme rehashed.  Is there really much value left for me to add to this topic?  Not so much.

I’ve taken to the realize the following 4 keys to how I blog

1. I try to avoid topics that are being covered to death.  Why?  Because I assume, dear reader, that you seek out your news from more than just me.  If not, well, I’m flattered, but a little concerned.
2. I try to cover topics where I have particular domain expertise.  I’ve spent 10 years dealing with digital media, convergence, digital home, consumer electronics, etc products.  I spent the bulk of the past two years running extremely successful viral marketing and blogosphere/community engagement programs.  When those topics come up, I chime in (again, assuming I’m not the 500th poster).
3. I intentionally leave a story I like above the fold. Last week I wrote a post about why I gave up on mobile email.  I liked it a lot.  I felt that people who are visiting my site for the first time should read it, and didn’t have anything really pertinent to replace it with.
4. I write long posts.  While talking to Om Malik two weeks ago, he advised me to shorten my writing.  He’s absolutely correct, I should.  But I’m not good enough to do it yet.  So essays are just my style for now.  I’ll try to get better about this, but I guess I have a lot (in my mind) to babble about.

So, maybe I’ll never make it to the “a-list”, but I’m okay with that.  I enjoy the blog as it is, and if you’ve made it to this sentence, well, I guess you do too.

Some journalists’ individual presences far outreach their publications.  If Walt Mossberg wrote for NY Times or CNET, he’d still be Walt Mossberg.  Most industry people know Gary Krakow by reputation, the fact that he’s on MSNBC is just a small part of his story.  In some cases, however, the brand of the publication carries the weight.  For example, I read National Geographic every month, but couldn’t name a writer there.  A few lucky people straddle that world, and one of them is my friend Ryan Block, the managing editor for engadget (a tech blog that a few people seem to read occasionally).

Ryan hit his 5000th post today (here it is), which puts him just a wee bit ahead of the ~290 I’ve written, and in roughly the same time span I might add.  I chatted with him for a bit, was curious to get some of his thoughts down, and rather than get all prose-y, here they are in nice, easy to read Q&A format…

Ryan, do you think you have another 5000 posts ahead of you?

I honestly didn’t think I’d make it to 5k because I thought I’d run out of things to say about technology – I guess I was wrong!

What are some of your personal favorite posts?

I have a lot, actually, many are sentimental…

The Engadget Reader Meetup: The Aftermath (part I, NY) – that’s the event where I announced I was quitting my day job and blogging full time.

Engadget Lovecast 069 – 02.14.06 – it was really fun to play romanceologist for a day with nerd-love questions (plus i got to tell my lady I love her on the air).

Were there any stories that you personally broke/covered that you were really proud of?

FairUse4WM strips Windows Media DRM! – one of my proudest moments writing about technology.

Live from Macworld 2007: Steve Jobs keynote – where literally millions of people followed our liveblog coverage of the iPhone launch.

As the managing editor of the top tech blog, I’d assume people have a lot of mistaken thinking about your glamorous life.  What are some misconceptions you’d like to clear up?

The biggest misconception about me, and thusly engadget, is this perception of bias for/against certain companies. I’ve been called an Apple fanboy and a Microsoft fanboy by readers in the same day. It’s super frustrating because we feel it’s very important to be equally critical of all companies – large and small – and these perceptions of bias are usually reflections of peoples’ own biases.

Another interesting one is the idea that we swim in gadgets and get tons of free gear. While we do play with lots of toys, we don’t keep anything. We give it back or give it away, always.

On average, how many hours per day do you think about gadgets?

How many hours a day am I awake?  That’s totally fine with me though, it’s a lifestyle, you have to really love it.

If you could go start a brand new blog, far far away from tech/gadgets, what would the category be?

Well, i had a kind of pseudo-blog a couple of years back where i published short fiction.

But if I were starting a new one today and it couldn’t be about robots (i’ve always wanted to do a robot blog) I think I might do something of a book, magazine, publication, and media revue

On a final, more serious note.  Do you ever get mistaken for a member of a boyband (and if so, which one)?

No! Moby sometimes though, it drives me crazy.

Now to give us a better, more well-rounded picture of Ryan, I pinged a few people who are close to him.

I asked Dave Zatz (former Engadget blogger) for his favorite Ryan Block post:

Blu-ray vs HD DVD: State of the Division – the post was written before either platform launched, and at a time when there was tons of uncertainty and speculation – I think Ryan did a great job laying out the situation and specs.  Plus it had charts.  And I like charts.

Peter Rojas, cofounder of Engadget and Chief Strategy Officer of Weblogs, Inc (a.k.a “Ryan’s Boss”), selected the Live from Macworld post as well, adding:

Ryan’s amazing coverage that day helped established Engadget as more than just another gadget blog – it showed we had the chops to be a world-class tech publication. I’ve never been prouder.

I threw this at Peter as well, “Tell us something about ryan that we all don’t know, but should”:

He really loves Ultravox.