Zune come, Zune to go

So, in all the hullabaloo surrounding the premiere of the Microsoft Zune media player, just in case there haven't been enough comments about it already, I figured I'd throw in my two cents.
I got a chance to play with the good 'ol Zune last week when I went into J&R in downtown Manhattan. Like most people, I was impressed with the picture quality and ease of use of the player. So far, it has the largest screen and best resolution of all the players I've seen and physically handled, which to be quite truthful hasn't been that many.

That being said, the release of the Zune is classic Microsoft at its usual game of - It ain't ready yet, but lets get it out the door.

Potentially the one player that could have shaken the quintessential iPod from it's perch as top dog, Microsoft took a good thing and shot themselves in the foot. The player is quite clunky in size, I'm talking first generation iPod size here, maybe a lil bigger.

All that probably wouldn't be a problem if they did everything else right. The iPod is continuously successful largely in part to the ecosystem of iPod - > itunes music store and the classic plug it in and it just works philosophy. There have been numerous reports of how bad the zune software is, many from people who couldn't even get the software installed at all. Then of course the side effects of removing the software from your p.c and getting unexpected results.

What's even more terrible about this is that they've probably turned so many people gun-shy with this debacle that even if Microsoft learns from their mistake and releases a revision to the Zune next year with everything working, it wouldn't make a difference to those people.

Let's not even start on the branding, cheerfully shown on Zune.net - "Welcome to the Social". Really? that's the best they could come up with? Apple has nothing to worry about, at least not from the Zune.

There's nothing as sad as excellent potential in the wrong hands.

Behold the Vista

That's right folks, Windows Vista has gone Gold, RTM. In normal people speak, that means the code has been mixed, baked, basted, poked, prodded, iced and yes, ladies and gentlemen after all that is ready to serve - in seven flavors no less.

Look for it on your shelves on January 30, 2007

technorati tags:microsoft, windows, vista, gold, release

Blogged with Flock

Curses and Blessings

So, I've been quite busy over the past few months working on an in-house project which I will talk about soon. But part of the quagmire of nuttiness that I've been buried in has involved frameworks and wirings and structures and architechture and code and all sorts of things that are the stuff of nightmares. More to come on that btw.

As if that is not enough, it appears good 'ol Uncle Bill and his cronies are finally pushing out ie7 through microsoft update, consequently breaking sites that were otherwise carefully and thoroughly hacked to work in ie6 anyway. Thanks to their new semi-dedication to standards compliance improvement on the platform, one of the website I developed just got broken and here I am saddled with the unpleasant task to having to rewrite the layout for the site to work in ie7.

On the one hand, I'm brimming with curses. On the other hand I'm getting paid to per hour of cursing so what's the downside?

Thanks Uncle Bill. Time to get started on that list for Santa. I wonder if he knows anything about DOM, html and standards compliance.....

The Drive-in Web

With YouTube, Yahoo video and Podcasting gaining in popularity on a daily basis, video on the web is certainly nothing new.  Over the last year though, video seems to have moved up in the world with television networks.  This week, as most major networks ( cbs, nbc, abc , fox) are premiering their new season of shows, it's really encouraging to see the networks picking up from where abc left off last spring, bringing a lot of their programming to a growing web audience giving us the opportunity to catch up on previous episodes and previewing what's coming up next.  As the networks also seem to be realizing, it helps a great deal in promoting new shows that don't have an established audience.

For a long time, the issue has been which plugin/platform would be the best medium to deliver this content over the web along with the available bandwidth and names like Real Video and QuickTime come into play.  While pretty good platforms on their own, without a doubt, those mediums have always been plagued with the issues of installation and updates across different platforms, but lately, that seems to be less of an issue to many of them who opt for using flash video, a platform for which the word ubiquitous was coined.  The evolution of the new web continues.

Technorati, Aye!

So it occurred to me that it might be fun to try this technorati thing out, so I hunkered down and signed me up for an account.

I have to add this lil 'ol widget

Technorati Profile

and presto!, I can hang with the big boys now.

Too much fun

This here is just too much fun. Google maps flight sim

Oh, and quite a good read this here article from Paul Thurrott on Steve Jobs letting his mouth run away with him in the Apple WWDC which normally heralds good things from Apple, but turned out to be dramatically disappointing this year.

The future is now

I just saw this technology that was demonstrated at the ultra-cool TED conference in california - the intuitive pressure/touch sensitive interface for computing introduced by Jeff Han, a research scientist at NYU. The potential applications of this are mind-boggling.


Via Geekbrief.tv

Catching Up

The realities of developing a reasonably large project solo are anything but trivial. Hence, my lack of posts in the last month or so. Not that I was that regular at it anyways.

Here's what's been happening.

In case you've been under a virtual rock or better yet, are a video blog virgin, Amanda Congdon and Rocketboom have parted ways. Incredibly, I never really got into the video podcasting craze until this thing exploded. Rocketboom is currently back with interim host Joanne Colan, former MTV Europe VJ. Along the way, I discovered Geekbrief, hosted by Cali Lewis, totally adorable.

In Adobe news, Flex 2 got released. All details are here..

In Microsoft news, Vista will be delayed yet again, or wait, that's old news. Ah yes, Office 2007 will be delayed yet again. That's the most recent one.

Art Direction

In the process of coming up with a visual layout for a website project I'm currently developing which hopefully I should be blogging about soon, the importance of art direction as part of the design process became re-emphasized. I was having trouble coming up with a satisfying design concept so I started just adding and removing things without much thought. I was frustrated and eventually realized that that just was not going to do. The concept of design with a purpose was one of the first things I learned as a designer.

As far as Art Direction goes, it is a term without a specific definition. The words below help to explain what it is from this excerpt from our good friends at A list apart

What is art direction? That’s a hard question to answer. In the movies, art directors are usually responsible for creating the “look and feel” of the film. In advertising and print work, art directors (often teamed up with a copywriter) come up with “concepts,” the creative ideas which communicate with us on a gut level through such devices as theme, metaphor, and symbolism.

One of the first things a designer learns is this - "Good design informs". As I browse the web more and more these days, I get blown away by impressive designs constantly that inspire me to be better at what I do and give me ideas for my own work. Very often though, it is very easy to get caught up in just publishing a website based on a little bit here and a little bit there that you forget to think about what you are doing. Why is that icon there or why did you choose that color? What is the audience supposed to get from the design of the website? How does the design help the overall purpoose of the project?

For now, as I sit back and think for a little bit, part of my design process will involve asking myself - yes, it looks pretty, but why do like the design for a certain website that I want to borrow a concept from? How do I feel when I look at it and how did the designer accomplish that?
A little thought on those questions go a long way to help me build the concept for my designs and ultimately come up with something that isn't just visually appealling, but is aesthetically satisfying.

In terms of visuals, the CSS Reboot has some goodies.

Ajax a la carte

The Ajax phenomenon is everywhere. The buzz is palpable, undeniable,even suffocating sometimes. But undoubtedly, it is a technology that is way overdue. The limit of the web user interface as we know it - html, forms etc - was reached a few years ago and as technology can't be stifled, innovation had to come from somewhere. This is Web 2.0, the web re-inventing itself. It's almost the late 90's again.

I am typically one of the first to learn about new technologies, but I'm definitely not an early adopter. One way or the other though, it catches up with you and you can't help but join them. Here is a list of Ajax libraries and frameworks I've had a brush with recently that seem interesting. As with all web technologies though, caveat emptor (buyer beware)

1. Dojo Framework
2. Mochikit - not for the faint of heart
3. Prototype
4. Moo.fx - "The next little thing"
5. Spry Framework
   - Simple and elegant

Blazing Trails

In reviewing my blog roll this morning, I ran into a couple of awesome devevlopments that left me totally stocked.

HH0 Gas technology , a replacement for oxyaceteline or propane gas in industrial use which is sure to revolutionalize the world as we know it. Here's the kicker. It's derived from water. Clean, efficient, awesome!

For those looking for performance on the cheap, how does 4.1Ghz P4 at approx $130 sound to you? Yes, you read that right. It's not a hoax. Now close your mouth and let Tom's hardware let you in on the secret.

Smelling some roses

In line with that school of thought that says you should look up once in a while and smell the roses, I figure now that I'm having a creative block, I should exorcise some of the thoughts I'd been wanting to mention in the last few weeks.

I caught this totally awesome edition of Primetime Live on T.V a couple weeks back on Game Theory. Six sets of total strangers were tasked with finding another six sets of total strangers. In the sense that, the first six were paired up, two by two at totally different places in the city. None of either of those sets had seen any of the other sets. Literally. All they were told was that somewhere in the city two other people were looking for them. I can't begin to tell you how complex that exercise was, in a city of approx 8 million people. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Yet, they all found each other, somehow or the other. All of them, in about 6 hours or so. Blew my mind.

In other news, the webbys are back in town and the nominees for the 10th season have been announced. Congratulations to all the nominees for contributing to the best of the web

........

Uh, can you say that in English?

I'm participating in an open source project at the moment, a cool new server called "Red 5", something I may have mentioned previously. In particular, I'm am tasked at the moment with translating the geek speak of the developers into usable english and examples for the not so technically versed. But more than anything, I quite glad that this project sees the need for it on their website currently being developed.

More than anything, in my opinion, one of the many shortcomings of opensource and a large part of the tech world is the assumption that everything must be in geek. The reasons for the obscurity of many excellent open source projects is simply that they have no interest or to be fair volunteers who decide to help out with building an informative and user friendly website around their software product, and quite frankly, that's what it is, a product. More often than not, those websites look like after thoughts and when they are developed, they look like they were made by the geek who wrote said software who is content to type along all day on a linux box.

One of the advantages of being symmetrically brained (a new term I'm coining, go with me for the moment) is that while I am a techie in all senses of the word, I have a fully developed and active artistic side and can appreciate why Apple spends all their time simplifying everything for the end user. I like simple. I would pay for simple. There is enough complexity in this business with the alphabet soup of abbreviations, terms, protocols etc that are being develped on a daily basis that when I happen on a website that puts things in simple terms it is an amazing breath of fresh air.

There is then the question of why there is a lack of visual/user interface designers in the open source world. Even the opensource graphics software tend to sport terrible interfaces. Is it that they are not invited to participate on open source projects or is there more complexity. - a topic for my next post. Definitely something I should look into.

For the moment, catching up on blogs that rock,I caught the podcast of Jason Kottke (kottke.org) and Heather B. Armstrong ( Dooce.com) at South by Southwest today. Interesting insights.

Also, the podcast of Jim Coudal and Jason Fried of Coudal Partners and 37signals fame.

To be continued..

Origami a la Microsoft

Microsoft releases the Ultra Mobile P.C platform codenamed "Origami", what appears to be a much smaller version of the tablet pc. It comes with touch and writing recognition software which allows you to use it with a stylus/pen or by touching the screen.

It appears to be an interesting concept with a lot of room for growth. What makes it really cool in my opinion is that it runs the full Windows XP operating system and therefore almost any software that can run on said OS. But referring to the room for growth, the two hour battery life leaves a lot to be desired.

Visit: Microsoft UMPC

When you're smling, the whole world smiles with you

So I was riding the ferry yesterday, tired out of my mind and of course consequently cranky. I rest my head back to take a nap and five seconds later, I hear a cackle and a cute little "helloooo". I open up my eyes and there was this adorable little baby on the other side of my seat smiling at me. She played peekaboo with me for the rest of the ride.

Sometimes, you just gotta enjoy the moment. I'm going to take a cue from her and have a good week. I hope you all do, you know, all two or three people that read this blog.

:)

Hit the ground running

I'm baaack. Boy, that feels good to say. Although technically, I've been up and running for a few weeks now, unless you buy a new computer, sometimes dealing with repaired or upgraded computers is like watching a patient in post-op. You hope for the best, but ya never know.

So, it's been two weeks now, computer is out of recovery and it is now bigger and badder than before. This new computer comes with a mirrored hard drive setup. My days of living dangerously are over. I of course now have to catch up with a bunch of projects that were left hanging during the crash.

In the mean time, the world keeps moving. While I was out, so to speak, two projects I monitor constantly had releases -

1. Good ol Macromedia Adobe had an epiphany and decided to release Flex framework for free. A new beta is up for downloads at the Adobe Labs.


2. PHP framework - Prado v3 is now at alpha
   

And to all, a good night. NOT!!

So, It's never a good sign when you ask your computer to reboot, and said computer reboots... and then takes it upon itself to reboot, and reboot, .. and reboot.

All in all, I'm sitting here at 5:00am on a Monday morning, technically the end of my workday, watching my week about to go down in flames. This is my primary work computer, my workhorse. I have backups on one other system and my laptop, but I'd like to think that this is the one that the other computers look to for guidance and advice.

I forsee a very long day ripping out computer parts and booting and rebooting and ripping out more computer parts to save this one. It's very much like surgery, only a little less messy. Oh oh, there it goes again about to reboot. Somebody get me the paddles

CLEAR!!

And the Shout Out goes to

It's been an explosion this last year or so it seems, of good stuff on the internet. Reminds me in no small way of the early years of the dot com boom. Everybody was discovering the internet, everybody started a dot com and I couldn't aquire enough e-mail addresses. I stopped the count at 15 which I believe was offerred to me by Britannica Online. Hey, it was free, I took it. I'll figure out what to do with it later.

So, fast forward to 2005 and there appears to be a resurgence of good things, many in no small part to the competetive prodding by Google, the hosts of this here blog. 2.6gb email boxes, web 2.0 applications, open source versions of practically every type of software you need, from office applications to streaming media players ( kudos to the guys at vlc) and lots and lots more. You just have to look.

And now, the good guys over at OSFlash are making strides in what seems like every type of opensource flash app available, helping in many ways to promote the platform. When you're in the middle of it, you never realize how many people don't use words like Flash, and Flex and FlashCom on a daily basis until you're speaking to a colleage who incidentally also does web development, though in Java and he doesn't know about Flex or that Actionscript 3.0 is coming soon.

So, I'm going to do my part in giving a shout out to the cool guys over at RED5, also part of osflash and say, keep doing good work guys.

Opensource ROCKS!!!

Welcome to Macromedia - Now Adobe Systems

So, I finally ordered Macromedia Studio 8. After all, despite all my ranting, I really do love the company, even if I don't care for the new daddy.Expectations were high. Finally, after all the anticipation, the exercise in patience, I broke down and ordered Studio 8 bright and early on a Monday morning. It was even more exciting to see that there would be free shipping. Now all I had to do was wait. and wait. and wait

[3 days later - Order status:"pending"]

Ring ring. Thank you for calling Macromedia - Now Adobe Systems.

Hi Adobe systems, why is my order still pending?

Three phone calls, a dropped call and about and hour later]. Uh, we ... don't know. It appears to be a result of the merger, things are sort of being moved around. We'll call you.

Uh, Okay. I guess. (I mean, what was I supposed to do?)
If you have any further questions

[Update]
So, they finally call me 8 days after my order. We've shipped your Order! We'll send you a free book to compensate when we eventually get to it.

Make of it what you will