Coffee Anyone?

August 5th, 2008 View Comments

coffee beans

coffee beans

I love reading the news and seeing an article that confirms what I’ve known in my gut all along. Basically this article from the NY Times Health section says that coffee isn’t bad for you and may in fact be good for you in moderate, non-Starbucks, doses. Anyone who has read anything about coffee knows that there’s a long standing debate about the health effects of America’s favorite stimulant. This article is basically a feel-good article for anyone who is as addicted to it as I am. I average 2 iced coffees per day using the Starbucks “grande” as my unit of measurement. Funny think is that I was thinking of trying to kick the coffee habit, but according to this article coffee is high in antioxidants and “Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance.” Everyone who knows me knows that I’m not really a morning person and without my coffee in the morning I can be a very cranky individual. That last benefit is probably the most important to me.

On a side note, one thing that really irks me about NYC is that the coffee here really does tend to suck. I KNOW you can find decent coffee shops around if you look, but I’m talking about the average cup of coffee. Deli coffee, diner coffee, 80% of the small cafes, and Dunkin Donuts all sell crap coffee. It really doesn’t surprise me that there’s a Starbucks on every corner. It looks to me like they filled a giant competition-less gap in the market. I just wish someone would figure out how to get a Coffee Bean or a Peets Coffee out here sometime soon.

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Finally the Carriers Begin to Understand

August 4th, 2008 View Comments

New York Times reports today that the carriers are finally starting to understand why everyone hates them so much. Talk is that the carriers are making moves to open their networks for software developers in order to make themselves more attractive to consumers, or something like that. As mentioned in the article, a key factor in the decision making process for the carriers is obviously a product of the early success of Apple’s App Store, not to mention the pre-App Store buzz surrounding jail-broken iPhones.

Personally, I think this is barely news-worthy (as in too little too late), and most likely misses the point all together. My take is that the success of iPhone applications has been in spite of the carriers (even AT&T), and that merely opening up the networks for application development is only the first step. As anyone who has worked on designing, developing and marketing mobile applications can attest, the problem Apple solves is much bigger than whether or not software can be developed for phones. Apple’s centralized and extremely consumer oriented approach to mobile software distribution is revolutionary, and I don’t see it’s success being repeated anytime soon. Let’s analyze the current problem:

  • There are too many phones and too many platforms in the hands of consumers, and many are difficult to develop on (Apple’s Solution: the iPhone)
  • Phone manufacturers (Nokia, Motorola, etc.) pretty much suck, at least as compared to Apple, when it comes to design and development of consumer friendly software (Apple’s Solution: amazing software design and developer tools)
  • In most cases software is extremely difficult to install on phones (Apple’s Solution: iTunes already installed on millions of computers Mac and PC alike and the App Store)
  • Distribution of applications is either centralized under the carriers themselves or completely decentralized in the hands of the developers. Neither of which is good at it. (Apple’s Solution: take the carriers out of the picture and give the developers a low cost or zero cost distribution channel)

Apple has made significant efforts to solve just about all of these issues and more by providing an end-to-end solution (from developer to consumer). I won’t argue that it’s perfect or that it’s impossible for someone else in the mobile space to reproduce (MS has a good shot). My argument is that it’s revolutionary in the same way the iPod and iTunes were revolutionary. Basically, the formula is similar to why Apple succeeded w/ the iPod and iTunes despite competition from manufacturers like Sony, ancient models for music distribution, and technology inept publishers. My gut feeling is that the mobile phone carriers will succeed in overcoming these hurdles just about as well as their counterparts in the music space – not at all.

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Net Neutrality Battle Hits Close to Home

August 3rd, 2008 View Comments

From Engadget talking about the battle for wireless solutions to stream HD within a household (basically replacements for HDMI cables).

While WHDI does not compress the bits in the video, it does not treat them all equally. The technology looks for what are the least significant bits, say, in a dark gray pixel next to a darker gray pixel in the background of a scene, and assigns them a lower priority than, say, a bright yellow pixel next to a black pixel in a race car moving across the screen.

Who says a gray pixel next to a dark gray pixel in the background of a movie is less important? What do you have against gray pixels? This looks to me like color bias and prejudice. Shouldn’t the Network be neutral, shouldn’t all bits be treated equally? I mean the Network is like a series of tubes with a bunch of garbage trucks driving in it: it wouldn’t be fair for them to pick up your garbage but not someone else’s.

Anyway, my point – the Network should not be neutral. The Network should be smart and opinionated, but it’s opinion should be based on the true qualities of the bits to be transferred, not on superficial things like what company generated them.

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Cheap and Can’t Add

August 3rd, 2008 View Comments

From looking at Apple’s App Store you’d think calculating a tip is the most difficult thing in the world. Seriously, here’s a list of the applications I could find. I didn’t even bother to read the details of each because this is just freaking ridiculous.

Combine this list with the list of calculator apps (SalesCalc – $4.99) available and the fact that there are at least three applications that let you keep track of how much people owe when splitting dinners (DutchTab – $2.99, Meal Splitter, and Meal Splitter v2) and there are only three possible conclusions:

  1. People are cheap
  2. People can’t add
  3. Developers have absolutely no imagination

Look people it’s simple 10% (for crappy but still tip worthy service) take the total and just move the decimal point to the left one. 20% do the aforementioned then multiply by 2. Or if you like to keep your credit card bills nice and neat, do what I do – do the math above depending on the service then round up to a friendly number with a 0 or 5 at the end of it. I know what you’re going to say – What about the old multiply the tax by 2 trick? Um if you know that one, then you don’t need my help or the help of 26 different applications now do you?

My question is – what the hell am I supposed to tip the folks at Starbucks for pouring a $2.60 grande unsweetened iced coffee? Hell if they get 20%.

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There’s No Hope

August 2nd, 2008 View Comments

Time to go buy a bicycle, cargo shorts and some candles, because according to this video there’s no hope. This video confirms my theory that Republicans and Democrats just represent two sides of the same wooden nickel.

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Yea I’m a Harry Potter Fan, So What?

August 1st, 2008 View Comments

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince trailer.

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Tell me what’s wrong with this picture

July 31st, 2008 View Comments

What's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with this picture?

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David Pogue Makes Sense, We Should Listen!

July 31st, 2008 View Comments

On David Pogue’s newsletter today he talks about how poorly designed user experiences affect people. The title of the post is “It’s the Software, Not You“. He mentions a couple common user experiences with poorly designed, or mediocre interactions.

  • An airline kiosk that asks the user to enter detailed flight information even after the user has swiped his credit card (Note: Probably a poorly thought out security measure)
  • A taxi point of sale interaction that only allows the user to select set dollar amounts for tips no matter what the distance or quality of the ride (Note: $0 was not an option)
  • The irritating Windows software installer wizard (Note: He suggests a fantastic solution)

This reminds me of the MOMA kiosk I mentioned in a blog post a while back that required users to make selections at the kiosk then go to the counter to finalize the purchase – isn’t the whole point of automating a process to avoid making people go to the counter?

All of the user experiences fail at two things:

  1. They don’t use information they already know, and instead rely on the user to make up for their ignorance/laziness
  2. They don’t understand that people don’t want to use software, they want to accomplish tasks

Every time I am asked to design an interaction, I pray I don’t forget that the goal is to, at the very least, make it easy for people to accomplish their goals and, at the very best, make it enjoyable. I have failed numerous times at designing experiences, but I hope I’m learning from my mistakes.

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Knol

July 29th, 2008 View Comments

So I’ve read a lot of complaints, like this one, recently about Google’s launch of Knol. Jason Calcanis from Mahalo wrote a great post about Google becoming a content company that raises some excellent points about the potential affect it could have on startups and “Google-dependent businesses”. My first reaction to reading these posts is – what took you guys so long to see this, and really what’s the big deal?

The following issues are frequently mentioned:

  • Google giving Knol’s unfair advantage in search results – I noticed that when Googling for “Knol” Wikipedia’s article came 3rd and Knol itself came 4th. Odd. The only advantage I saw was that the Knol folks bought the top ad slot. I would wager they actually had to budget some cash and compete to get that slot though. Take a look: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=knol&btnG=Search
  • Regarding Pagerank specifically- Since when does Google release exactly how they calculate Pagerank? Oh and I don’t remember anyone complaining when Video Results from YouTube started appearing at the top of the page except for perhaps some video startups that no one cares about who are still living off of VC money.
  • Regarding Publisher Competition – As far as I know, anyone can create a Knol, and monetize it. In fact, isn’t this just another place where content publishers can create awareness for their content and make money? Oh and Google hosts it for you, provides great tools for collaboration and publishing, and it’s free. Maybe now some non-technical folk will feel comfortable putting what they know on the Web. If all of your traffic and some of your revenue comes from Google (see Google dependent businesses), shouldn’t you either thank Google or engage in marketing alternatives? When it comes down to it, if you’re scared about losing traffic, do something about it.
  • Google “becoming” a content company – Google is and always has been a publisher. Remember the lawsuits about Google publishing copyrighted material in search results? Now consider that Google runs YouTube, Blogger, Picassa, Maps, Orkut, Earth, DoubleClick, Adwords, Books, etc. Google has been a content publisher since day 1, but Google is not a content creator. Someone still needs to create the content in the first place. This gets into a whole other rant about why a whole lotta folk have to rethink their distribution methods. Basically, they should have been working on this since the invention of the Web, and if they haven’t they should go out of business.
  • What about Wikipedia - I love Wikipedia. It contains the sum total of human knowledge and mis-knowledge to date. Of course there are some problems. Many domain experts don’t feel comfortable with it because anyone can edit, it hosts a ton of content that no one can make money on, they don’t like it when multiple articles address the same topic, and educators don’t trust it as a source. Knol seems to address those problems. We’ll see how it plays out. I think it’s a good idea to have some competition.

Some thoughts after trying to use Knol. It almost crashes my browser on every page load. I have no idea what they’re trying to load into the page, but it’s a bitch to browse. I never get search results for anything I’m interested in. It’s slow. It’s going to take a long time for it to catch up in content. I still haven’t seen a search result for a Knol on the first page of Google results other than when I searched explicitly for “Knol”.

\Yes, this is my second post in two days talking about Google. Yes, I am a fan. Yes, I don’t care how big the bandwagon is or even if they become an evil empire. Google is far and away the most useful company on the Web today.

How did you find my blog?

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iPhone 3G Impressions

July 29th, 2008 View Comments

So, I bought my iPhone 3G the day it came out. The lines and heat were ridiculous, but I got lucky and was able to cut in line when two of my friends decided to give up, drop out of line, and go home. Even with being able to skip in front of a few hundred people I still waited at least three hours. Here are some of my observations on the phone and the process.

  • Waited in line for hours but the activation process took all of 5 minutes. The whole time I was in line I was wondering why the Apple Store had employees standing outside and milling around instead of all hands on deck activating phones. It would have been nice to see them processing requests outside basically walking around with a bag of 3G’s, a tablet (if Apple made a tablet) and a credit card reader selling/activating phones. They could have at least had a VIP line for existing iPhone customers. Oh and when is someone going to build a credit card reader addon and point-of-sale software for the iPhone/Touch?
  • It was so hot one of my friends who dropped out of line was absolutely exhausted. Waiting in the sun ruined her weekend.
  • Met the CEO of a startup. We talked shop – user experience, how to make content actionable, etc. He’s in closed beta right now so I’ll save commentary on his stuff till a later date.
  • I got a black 16gig. I like the plastic better than the metal, and it fits in my pocket better. I just wish Incase would hurry up with their Slider case for it.
  • I now have 1700 songs and 1 movie on the phone with an assortment of apps. Oh yea, there is about 3gigs of free space left for all the pictures I don’t take.
  • The voice quality and volume is way better. No doubt about it. Although I will say voice gets a wee bit “peachcanny”.
  • 3G is a ton faster than Edge. It’s not even close. I’ve actually mistaken my 3G connection for slow wifi in some cases. I know this isn’t the same for everyone, but the coverage in NY isn’t bad. The 3G also has a significant range increase on detecting wifi signals.
  • Battery life is about the same. I charge just about every day. I don’t mind because I use the internet and apps on the thing constantly. The only sure-fire battery killers are games like Super Monkey Ball. I’m on wifi most of the time I’m browsing and I think all of my settings are close to default, although I do check email every 15 min.
  • Favorite apps so far are: Shazam, Pandora Radio, Twitteriffic, and Urbanspoon.
  • Least favorite apps are: Where, Loopt, WordPress (cause I can’t get it to work), and AIM.
  • App updates for Facebook’s app and Pandora have definitely helped.
  • Syncing takes forever because it decides to back up the phone every time. I’m sure I can figure out a way to turn this feature off if there is one, but I don’t have to sync nearly as often anymore.
  • Some things are slower. It seems like typing has hiccups – doesn’t matter what is being typed or in which app. Contacts are slowish, and every once in a while the sound effects don’t make noise. I am starting to think it has something to do with how I hold my phone and the proximity sensor not the actual phone though.
  • It’s crashed four times since I got it. AIM crashed it twice, Super Monkey Ball crashed it once, and Facebook once. No data loss that I know of.

Let’s see. I think that’s all I got right now. If you have any questions post a comment. Oh yea, I definitely like it much better than my previous iPhone, and I’m actually surprised to hear myself say it.

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