Feb 20

Initial Thoughts on Surface Pro

So today, a new little toy arrived. Well…arrived is a strong word. In reality, I had a pre-order on the Microsoft Store, and then my local Best Buy got some in stock, so I cancelled my order and went and picked one up.

Below, you can see the Surface hooked up and driving my main 27″ Dell monitor, with a keyboard/mouse. Also, you can see I need to clean my desk. Anyhow:

That’s right, the Surface Pro is hooked up as my main computer, keyboard and mouse and 27″ display and all.

The Good:

The keyboard on the TypeCover is really comfortable to type on.
They pen is awesome, and I find myself wanting to use it most of the time
The system drove my 27″ external display at full resolution with no issues
I was able to install and play Starcraft II with modest but functional settings. Gameplay was reasonably smooth
I was able to get Ubuntu running in VMWare Player in under an hour, including downloading the player, an Ubuntu image, and all the packages I usually use. This is now a functioning development machine.
The horizontal swipe to move between active applications and the desktop is incredibly intuitive. I found myself doing this almost immediately. It seems to “just work” when it comes to app order, too. Hard to explain, but I was easily able
Win 8 “Modern” apps work really well on a touch screen. They also pause/degrade really well. I was watching Netflix and got an IM, tapped the notification, immediately taken over to the app, then a quick swipe and I’m back in Netflix, which resumes as though nothing happened. It doesn’t even re-buffer.
The screen is unbelievable. Seriously, stupidly sharp and vibrant.

The Bad:

Turns out the magnetic storage for the pen is the same as the power connection. I find this annoying since I set down the pen and then forget where I put it if it’s sitting at my desk
Speaking of – the power connector could use some work. I have to look at what I’m doing – it’s not deep enough to brute-force in like most laptop connections, and it’s not soft enough to click in under the magnet’s force like a Macbook
The trackpad on the TypeCover is OK, but not satisfying. I’ll admit to being spoiled by Apple here, they really do buy the best Synaptics gear. The trackpad on Cat’s Dell is similarly nice and tactile. I think the biggest problem I have here is that the right mouse button area is tiny.
The pen tricks me – there’s something about how I want to use it sometimes that doesn’t work. There’s a button on the side that clicks and draws a circle on the screen, but doesn’t seem to “do” anything. It just draws a circle. The control panel is of no help here.
Google turning off EAS hit Windows 8 pretty hard. Right now there’s no way for me to use the built-in calendar, contacts, or mail apps successfully. My hope is that MS will implement CardDAV and CalDAV soon enough, or Google will release a native Win8 app for Gmail/GCal. I can only see this as a choice Google made that hurt its customers as an attempt to harm Microsoft. For me, it just means I use the web versions of these apps (which is less convenient, but not destructive).

The mildly interesting

It’s taken me about an hour to get used to not pulling up the start menu for stuff like settings. While I know I can, there’s a new right-side menu. I don’t expect this change to take long to cement permanently
There are a few quirks around libraries not hosted on the computer. Things like my linux fileserver can be accessed in the desktop mode (by, say, Windows Media Player) but not by the XBOX Music app in Modern.
Overall, Modern seems to be a very Apple way of doing things – if you’re not on their system end-to-end, you don’t get to play.
Skype is tied to your login permanently, however keeping two accounts active is reasonably functional (work and home). I’m annoyed I can’t sign out of my personal skype and sign in to my work skype from the same account, but it’s not that big a deal since we’re moving away from Skype at work and the multi-chat program I found (IM+) works well enough.

Posted by Brad in Computing, Consumer Electronics, Good Ideas, Internet Technology, Mobile | No Comments

Nov 6

So I’ve been busy

I haven’t posted in a while. And that’s not because I don’t enjoy my occasional screed against the FCC, or complaining about certain tech companies being jerks.

I’ve been working on this!

push-poll.com

PushPoll is an incredibly easy way to quickly ask a bunch of your friends a question and get an answer, summarized, and delivered right to you. We’re currently in Beta testing, which means that if you sign up now, you can start sending polls for free! We’ve also got an Android app that notifies you instantly when you have a pending response.

You can also watch my lovely intro video:

And yes, we have an Android App, too.

Tags: My Projects

Posted by Brad in Computing, Hacking, Internet Technology, Mobile, Programming, Rails, Ruby on Rails, Useful Tools | 2 Comments

Jul 9

Parse and/or Backend-as-a-Service

So I recently wrote a response of our findings with Parse over at YCombinator News. Here it is, since it might be handy and will rapidly cease being available as the thread drops off. So here it is: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Brad in Computing, Internet Technology, Mobile, Programming, Useful Tools, Web 2.x | 1 Comment

Feb 10

Your Time is a Scarce Resource and Your Trust is a Currency

…and I’m not going to waste either of them.

One of the biggest reasons I have moved almost entirely to Google+ is that I can actually selectively target my posts at specific groups of people. The model of public/private posts works great if everything you post is applicable to every person who follows you, but I think that model is going to change over the next few years. I have a broad cross-section of interests, and very few of my friends and professional contacts fall into most of them, let alone all. That means that every time I post, I’m wasting someone’s time. You might not care about my musings on the direction of a particular technology or industry. You might not care about the latest leatherworking technique I’ve learned. You might be utterly disinterested in adorable cat videos. I feel as someone who’s publishing this material, I should do my best to target my audience – to deliver relevant, timely content to you. Google+ gets me so close to that.

A while back I read (and disagreed with) the assertion that Google+ Circles are backwards. It didn’t really hit me at the time, but I think this makes a lot of sense upon further reflection. Sure, I could use Circles to limit what users see certain things, but that kind of granular privacy is only one-way. Why not make it better? Let me put out the things I want, but you only see the things you want. I should be able to set up Joinable Circles, where any user I’ve followed can be added to those circles – basically a subset of my public or semi-public feeds. In every other way, treat them like circles, but if I’ve added you, you should get to filter my posts.

Here’s what might my “Joinable Circles” look like:

[Tech News] [Telecom] [Media Policy] [Burners] [SCA] [Hackers]

And you, as someone I’ve followed, should be allowed to pick which ones you go in. Why not, right? By the way, let me know if you want to be added to any of these groups, but think you’re not already there.

Trust is different. I have watched over the last few years as people have used Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto as a blunt object to swing around whenever the company doesn’t behave as they believe they should. Facebook has effectively lost me (and many others) over their constantly shifting stance on privacy, user’s rights, and a questionable business model. Path recently felt the wrath of the internet when it was discovered that the iPhone version secretly uploaded your entire address book to their servers. In all cases – trust of the users drives fundamental adoption, evangelism, and retention. Every time a company chooses to put the business over user trust, they suffer. It will ultimately bring down Facebook (sorry IPO hopefuls). How much user trust are you willing to give up to go beyond a few dollars per user per year? Will you sell ever more access to my likes and interests? How creepy can you get with mining user data without crossing a line like Path (who’s only real crimes were the lack of disclosure and opt-out)? Especially in the case of services like Google+ and Facebook, these companies are asking us to trust them with everything, that they’ll only show the right stuff to the right people, won’t betray us to advertisers and oppressive governments, and really – can be in our inner circle.

At this point I’m relegated to a dumb consumer on Facebook – I no longer produce any unique or distinct content, most of my status updates are duplicated from Twitter (which for the reasons mentioned in the previous section, I’ve been using less) or occasionally cross-posted. Despite my more than 120 friends on Google+, I’m only really interacting with a few dozen. And while the “intimacy” is nice, and I love only having 11 people in my High School circle instead of 150, I feel the adoption isn’t where it needs to be to totally replace FB/Twitter. For now, I’m a man without a social network.

So here’s my promise to you, kicking off my 28th year on this planet (yeah, it’s my birthday):

I will do my best not to waste your time and to earn your trust.

Posted by Brad in Computing, Online Media | 5 Comments

Jan 21

Let’s Be Better

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake”

– Chris Dodd, Fox News, Jan 20, 2012 (originally found on Techdirt)

So, I’ve struggled with how to react to everything that’s happened over the last week, and really all the things that have led up to it over the past few years. The SOPA/PIPA protest and blackouts, the abrupt shutdown of Megaupload, the rise of Anonymous and their reaction to all of it. I have seen my government and my fellow citizens attack their own for being intelligent, for being hard working, and for trying to better the world. I let it slide when Congress was discussing breaking the Internet – the greatest engine for social, economic, and technological growth since the development of agriculture and the written word – to protect a small but powerful group. I shrugged it off when Congress referred to consulting the experts who built the Internet as “asking the nerds” if it would be problematic to change how DNS works. I joined in the protests of SOPA and PIPA, and did my best to spread awareness about the complete removal of due process, the risk to our free speech, and the cost of turning over the roles of judge, jury, and executioner to a private industry with everything to gain by holding back progress.

I buy my media. It’s probably been almost a decade since I downloaded media I didn’t pay for. I have an HD premium cable package, two Tivos, two Xbox360s, Netflix, Last.fm and for a while a Hulu Plus account. I spend more on media in a given month than some people spend on food. TVs, computers, a house-wide audio system – all of it fueling the creative people in this country and around the world to do what they love and to share in their creations. But all of it enabled, and given value, by technology.

When you create a disruptive technology, there’s always someone who goes from comfortable to on the defensive. That’s why you disrupt. The blatant admission by Hollywood that they had bought politicians and expect to have their laws passed, no matter the public outcry and no matter the damage done to our rights makes them an industry worth disrupting. I believe the “at any cost” approach to protecting creative works is harmful to our economy, our rights, our culture, and our world. We have laws in place that protect this content, and despite claims to the contrary, they work quite well. More people are making more money in movies and music today than at any point in human history.

I don’t think I agree with the actions taken by Anonymous in their reaction to the Megaupload shutdown, but I can understand the anger and frustration behind them. I don’t think using technology to attack groups or individuals gains any real support for your cause. No, I don’t want to make them the victim. I don’t want to in any way encourage empathy or lend legitimacy to the actions of the MPAA. I don’t want to continue the arms race of DRM vs. hackers. I want us, the technologists, to completely take them out by building services and products so unfathomably better that they cannot hope to compete, until they dwindle to nothing.

And I encourage every creative person out there to join us. Your work is valuable. You should be paid for it, no one argues that. Help us dismantle an industry that has systematically devalued your creative labors, stripped you of your own rights (as authors, and owners of your own work), and sold the fruit of your creative efforts for their own profits.

When you can’t win because the game is rigged, you change the rules. Rather than use technology to help groups like the MPAA and their members reach new customers and adapt to a changing market, we must use technology to accelerate their end. Every day, I work to expand the capabilities of technology. Join me. This year – build something amazing, disruptive, and wonderful. When Hollywood dies, and it will, it won’t be because we bought the most politicians, it won’t be because we hired the best lawyers. It’ll be because we served their customers better than they ever could.

I strongly support the sentiment in Y Combinator’s RFS9. At no point in my life have I seen an industry so aggressively bite the hand that feeds. At no point have I seen an industry so deserving of being wiped from our economy by the tides of advancing technology. Since I started you with a quote, I figured I’ll leave you with this:

“Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline. But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.”

– Y Combinator RFS9: Kill Hollywood

Posted by Brad in Bad Business Ideas, Internet Technology, Online Media, Television and Movies | No Comments

Nov 25

Amazon Bookmarklet

Found something particularly cool on the blog and feel the need to buy me a beer? Go one better – drag this link up to your bookmarks bar, then click it when you are about to buy something:

Brad Amazon

I’ll get around 3% from Amazon, you don’t spend a cent extra, and everyone wins! Particularly good during the holiday shopping season.

Posted by Brad in Uncategorized | No Comments

Apr 18

Is Usage-Based Billing Inevitable?

So I was just sitting in the annual sales meeting when our CEO asked “How many of you think usage-based billing* (UBB) is inevitable? How many of you don’t?”

I was the lone hand in the “don’t” category…my CEO included. When pressed for an answer (in front of a few hundred new co-workers, mind you), I managed to muster the courage to answer, “UBB puts service providers at an adversarial relationship with the providers that actually drive acceptance of their product” or something of that nature.

Think about it though – if we’d had usage-based billing in 2001, there’d be no Youtube. No Netflix. No Hulu. Hell, we’d probably not even have an iTunes store. More importantly, would you pay for a 50mbps connection if you couldn’t use it for anything?

Let’s be honest with ourselves. Everyone talks about having everyone pay “their fair share”, how “heavy users” are just free-loading on the poor grandparents who only use the internet once a week to check email. They bring up examples of “I don’t get all the water I want for free. Or all the electricity” True. I don’t get to just go to a library and check out all the books I want. Or watch all the TV I want, or read all the articles in the newspaper I want.

Oh wait.

That’s not what UBB is about at all. It’s about stopping competitive services. It’s about slowing down innovation in the internet space (especially over-the-top video) and extending their outdated business model just a little bit further. It’s about protecting video revenue at the cost of consumer choice.

And c’mon, if you’re designing your network for the retirees who barely understand what a computer is? You’re doing it wrong. And you certainly shouldn’t be asking for legal protection to continue being that bad at your job.

My CEO (on another topic, actually) said it best: “Do you really think you’re going to win by standing still?” UBB is all about standing still. Services providers have seen their business model change, and most of them, rather than change along with it, are trying to find a way to return to the era of $100/mo services. All these companies have seen their core business declining – first with home phone lines, then just as they started making the shift to video, down goes video. Why do I need an $80/mo video package on top of my $40/mo internet, if I can spend $50/mo on their super-high-speed connection (introduced to compete with the Cable company) and get the rest from Netflix and Hulu?

Your local service provider is terrified of becoming just a dumb pipe to the internet. They’ll fight tooth-and-nail against any real competition, because then they have no edge, no way to lock you in. It makes sense from a business perspective, but it is profoundly anti-consumer.

But all this isn’t why I don’t think it’ll happen. To get back to my point – who’s really driving faster internet and broader fiber deployments in this country? You can bet it isn’t the tiny little rural phone companies. It’s Google, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Amazon – companies that have made their fortunes in software and computing, and know digital delivery of services is the next great frontier. These companies wield tremendous economic power, and know that their ability to innovate in the space will be significantly reduced. They can even make the argument (rightly so) that it will harm the competitiveness of American innovation, and start to leave us behind against countries like South Korea, Switzerland, and France – places where high speed internet is not only faster and cheaper, but more widely available. Who in their right mind would argue it is “necessary” to slow down innovation, because we’re going too fast and a few legacy companies can’t keep up? I mean, who besides the recording industry?

Sure, there will be some places where UBB might take hold. You can point to cellphones, Canada, etc. Each of these is a bad example. In the case of cellphones, voice and text messaging has become cheaper to the point where many carriers offer truly unlimited minutes and text messages (in some cases, for as little as $59/mo). Data caps? They’re lowest on the network that refused to update its infrastructure, and non-existent on Sprint’s 4G network. And Canada? Well, the government quickly realized it was extremely harmful to their national interest, because it was limiting Canadian’s access to the broader market. They are amid a plan to reverse the laws requiring UBB. What changed? Netflix came to town.

The only place UBB will actually work is where there’s no competition. Sure, you can act as an abusive monopoly, avoiding competition by stacking the laws in your favor. But you’re also inviting some local lawmaker who wants to stand out in an election to come down hard on you. First time someone shows up in town with unlimited internet? You shed customers, en masse. Heck, it’s not long before cellphones become a competitor for UBB-structured telcos. Only one bill, more convenient…sound like the shift away from landlines to anyone else?

In simplest terms though, Usage Based Billing is an admission that a provider can’t actually deliver the service they sold. It’s like selling me a package of 300 channels and then getting upset (and charging me more) if I watch more than 10 shows a week. And that’s just stupid.

*Usage-based billing (UBB) is a general term for the idea that home internet use should be billed (in whole or in part) based on the amount of data you consume, rather than the speed it is delivered. Options include per-gigabyte, per-month usage (like $1/gb), tiered access with overages (like your phone minutes used to be/still are), or a number of other possibilities.

Tags: ubb, usage-based billing

Posted by Brad in Bad Business Ideas, Internet Technology, Telecom, Television and Movies | 2 Comments

Nov 10

Am I Wrong to Expect an “Open” Device?

A while back a friend of mine and I went back and forth on the distinction between a computer and an appliance. We could both point to obvious examples – a laptop is undoubtedly a computer, my dishwasher is undoubtedly an appliance (circuit boards and all). After some back and fourth, we hit an impasse: he thinks the iPad is a computer; I think it’s an appliance.

Without going into too much detail, it came down to device control. On my computer, I don’t have to check with some central authority for permission to do something. If I want to stream video from a server I own, that’s my business to try and figure out. If I want to run peer-to-peer software for transferring copyrighted works or hack open the OS to lay bare it’s most core functions, that’s my business. Heck, I can wipe the whole thing and put on a new operating system. That’s obvious, it’s a computer. By contrast, I don’t expect my toaster to allow me to re-write its pizza algorithm and provide me the tools to do so. It’s an appliance.

I realized I had an expectation that my friend didn’t: I expected that if I own a computer, it is mine to do with as I please. Even if it conflicts with the pre-existing business relationships of the vendor. Or the network operator. Or even some ill-conceived international trade agreement. He didn’t think so. He felt that as long as a company was up front about what you are and aren’t allowed to do with the device, it doesn’t really matter. That’s why he felt the iPad (or iPhone, or iPodTouch) were all computers – they could install software and add new functions. I pointed out my XBOX could, and so could my DVD player. Heck, my router can do that.

For those curious, the crowd-sourced definition did us no good, since it applied to many things neither of us thought was a computer. However, for the sake of completeness, it is:

A computer is a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data, and provides output in a useful format.

–Wikipedia, entry for Computer

What has me up late wondering though – am I a dying breed, or just off in my definition? Am I wrong to think that I own the devices I buy? Will the next generation even realize what they’ve missed growing up in a world of appliances? Sure, there’s software out there that might mess up your phone or break your tablet, but right along side it is wonderful utilities that let you make free VOIP calls over a cellular data network, analyze security systems for flaws, or view video content that doesn’t come from a company-approved source. Even something as simple as shopping for products that the device maker deems immoral. Do our appliances deserve that much control over our choices?

But then I got an Android device. Sure, it has all the locked-down, appliance-like feel of an iOS device. But there’s one crucial difference:

That little checkbox means the world to me. It means, “You’re an adult. Safety or freedom. Your choice.”

With that, there’s hope.

Tags: android, ios, iPhone

Posted by Brad in Cellphone, Consumer Electronics, Musings | No Comments

Sep 27

It’s not What you do, but Why

Recently came across this video. First off, I’ll share it (and share alike!):

Now you can watch that nor not, but the gist of it is that a real connection with others (in marketing, professionally, etc), comes not from what you do, but why you do it. This is something I’ve long strived (striven?) for myself, and understanding of why I do the things I do, what captivates me about them and why I’ll stay up until 5am working on some projects, and can’t bring myself to do others.

The “why” of me isn’t something I can verbalize easily, but I’ll give it a shot:

I want to improve the lives of others in a meaningful and long-term way. Usually with technology.

I know it sounds lofty, but I look back on all the things I’ve enjoyed, all the challenges I’ve really loved tackling, and they pretty much all come back to that.

I need to get my project blog up soon. This doesn’t feel like the right place for some of those projects, but I’d like to track and share more. Still tracking to October 1. We’ll see how my week goes, or if I slip that in lieu of another project that I’ve been enjoying.

Posted by Brad in Good Ideas, Motivation | No Comments

Sep 21

Mirror (Working Title)

Crowd-sourced online media responsibility, whether they like it or not

This is the project write-up for a little something I’m working on. I’d like to hear your feedback.

Executive Summary

There exists online many sources of information. Modern search engines do little to actually validate the information, they merely rank on the popularity of the information. This has given rise to a large number of articles consisting of nothing more than repetition and guesses.
Mirror gives users a way to quantify individual stories for their originality, accuracy, and value. When a user visits an article that others have rated, that rating shows up on the article, prominently displaying things like “Reprinted from elsewhere”, “Copy + Pasted Press Release”, or “Author Doesn’t Understand Subject”. This immediately alerts readers to the nature of the article, and they can then elect to continue reading, or go elsewhere.
Mirror runs as a browser plugin, laying a ranking on top of the page, and offering the user a chance to contribute. A “bookmarklet” function will also exist.
Mirror ranks users and weighs their opinion accordingly. Users who often agree with the general community consensus are rated higher, and their rankings count for more.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Brad in Online Media, Useful Tools, Web 2.x | 2 Comments

Point to Point

Technology and Me