The Loom | Discover Magazine.

2010: My Fifth Annual List Of The Tech Products I Love And Use Every Day.

A solid list of winners on there; I’m with him on just about every single one.

(I just submitted this to the Obama campaign, from the Contact Us page. I urge you, if you agree, to do the same)

++++

Senator (and soon President) Obama,

I think the work done by the campaign has been amazing, in terms of the use of web technologies and properties to not only promote Obama but also to disseminate clear, understandable information.

I think it would be an exciting game changer if Obama were to publicly state, in the weeks remaining, his intentions to maintain a new kind of political "dashboard" site, that continues in the tradition of barackobama.com.

Rather than fade into the government woodwork and lose transparency, I’d like to see something like presidentobama.com or similar that tracks ongoing issues, policy positions, and breaks down bills, laws, and amendments in the same clear language and fashion that invites a two way conversation with the president and public.  Don’t let the social aspect of the campaign die; use the tremendous power of open and shared communication, and the skills you have demonstrated during the campaign, to foster a new kind of relationship between the public and elected office.   

I’ve followed you on Twitter, I’ve downloaded the iPhone application, and I would say there’s no doubt that you and your campaigns initiatives to use new communications mediums have played a role in my increased perception of involvement. Don’t squander the valuable and palpable connections you have made with people

Let’s see continued involvement campaigns, talk back features, community organization efforts. You have demonstrated your ability to mobilize and engage people to participate in the democratic process, perhaps more than anyone in recent history. Don’t leave that lying on the table when you walk into the oval office.

I had to choose a category to send this email, and I wavered between "offering the campaign a suggestion" and "a voting issue". I think this is significant enough to be the latter.

The current whitehouse.gov site has made interesting, but far too little progress in this area. Please take the time to continue the work you’ve started and change the face of the government and democratic dialogue, to instill or reignite a culture of involvement and mutual respect with the people, something that has been absent for far too long in America.

A concerned, excited, and hopeful voter,
Richard Goodwin

+++++++++

(This is a copy of an email response to a conservative/Republican/religious family member who sent me an article by Thomas Sowell denouncing Obama.)

There’s no way to convince you or you to convince me that one is right over the other. I like Barack Obama, can’t stand your guy (or your guy before him). It’s a very visceral thing, almost to the point I despise them, and will be hard pressed to change that because it’s a natural reaction to the fact that I don’t like the way they act, conduct themselves, or the things they believe in. The important thing to me is that I came to this decision on my own, and I have no forces influencing me to feel this way. Of course I reserve the right to change my opinion, but I can’t imagine what would cause me to do so at this point.

Such is politics, and it’s why the system is broken. When you have a wealth divide, when you have religious morals intermingled with law, when you have an electoral method and governmental structure that encourages people to achieve and stay in office at any cost, you have natural corruptors that prevent governing a nation of millions of unique individuals in any meaningful fashion.

Such is the way it has been since recorded time began, and it’s likely to stay the same way until someone figures out a better option. The only way to change things is to gain momentum and effect change; if you’re wrong, you’re wrong, but if you never try, you’ll never have a chance to succeed. What is being offered here is a very literal comparison between a group of people who think things are fine, and don’t want them altered, and a group of people who think that to change is the only way that things will improve. Someone who is happy with the state of things will trend to the former, and someone who is not will trend to the latter. It’s such a fundamental divide that it’s no surprise there’s almost a 50/50 split.

It’s times like these you do need a “rock star”…. The government isn’t made of one man, it’s made of lots of people that, by and large, are thoughtful, caring, intelligent people that want to do the right thing for the country and the world. But if you don’t have someone that has the affections of the people, and someone that can gather throngs in his favor to lead on initiatives of immediacy and change, then what good is the toil of the working government?

No matter how “well” the other side can argue that things are going, I think any reasonable person would be hard pressed to argue that we have achieved a new utopia; to pursue an existence that does other than strive for that end goal represents a failure in leader ship to me.

But that’s just how I feel.

Ladies and gents, all three acts are up, but only until July 20th!

Catch it now by clicking the image below or head to DrHorrible.com

Just found Twistori this morning, and I am very intrigued. It provides a realtime look at several “emotional” keywords as they show up on Twitter.

While not necessarily different from other search services like TweetScan in terms of functionality, it’s the form of the site that really sets it apart. The gorgeous minimalistic design, font selection, and smooth scrolling of updates really lend to the the emotion of experiencing others’ real time thoughts. If you are a fan of PostSecret, I think you’ll love spending a few minutes hours on Twistori.

A the time of this post writing, the blog/tweet/friendfeed-o-sphere hasn’t lit up about a mention from Jim Cramer of an unreleased Apple product called “Conversation”.

There’s not much more to see at the link, beyond Jim saying that “Conversation” will have a massive impact on instant messaging, like [I infer] the iPod did for experiencing music.

With that blurb, and the name, what could Apple be cooking up?

• A real time social network, tying together iPhone and Mac users [and probably Windows]? Arrington@Techcrunch says he saw something like this, but from a third party. The concept and execution by the third party is compelling; this is usually a red hot sign that the mother ship wants on board. (See past instances of Apple incorporating things like widgets, search (nee Sherlock) and virtual desktops
• Some kind of new hardware communicator? Doubtful, they have a lot of bets on iPhone right now, and another hardware form factor/purpose seems unlikely. They want you to believe/love/live in the iPhone
• A mega update to iChat? This one is a possibility, but see my first point; I think it has to tie into iPhone to be newsworthy and make a huge impact
• Something everyone else but me already knows about? Quite possible
• A gaffe by a hyperactive stock picker? Maybe

What do you think it is?

Update: 9to5mac says he’s talking about iChat AV? Can’t get to the video to find out; why did he use “Conversation” as a name?

Update2: Apple files [first of many] IM related patent(s)?

Hooray for Easy Install on VMWare Fusion. I had a new VM up in about 3 clicks, ready for capturing some screenies of our product install! (Minus all of the Microsoft updates that had to be applied, for which I cannot fault VMWare )

test from quicksilver….

[I might as well jump in here while I still have time to return the D40 in my hot hands.]

Recently I picked up a Nikon D40 DSLR to “replace” my Casio EX Z750 P&S. The Casio has served me pretty well, but I wouldn’t say I ever had more than a handful of shots out of hundreds that “wow’ed” me, based simply on their detail and image quality (counting out artistic design/prowess here). I enjoy the MPEG4 movie mode which gives me pretty decent 640×480 video in relatively small file size.

I’m a gear head in most aspects, but in terms of photography SO FAR, I’m not a huge fan of dial twiddling; so moving up to a DSLR I am looking for simply the best photo quality vs powerful control, where quality to me seems to be:

• color accuracy and saturation,
• sharpness of of detail/focus
• depth of field/bokeh which seems to really accent “people shots”

This doesn’t involve me making sophisticated artistic choices and coaxing them out of the camera at this stage, just basic composition and the occasional manual adjustment. The camera is a “consequence” more than a conscious decision for more power.

The D40 has opened my eyes to how much sharper a photo can be, but I fear most the “lug factor”: a bag, two lenses (maybe one to compromise), and caps/misc., versus “slips into my pocket”.

Right now I’m going through my library of older photos and trying to gauge “would I have carried a DSLR to his event?”. So far I’m running about 60-70% if I stretch my imagination, but still have a significant number of P&S-only opportunities (business travel for example where it wouldn’t be acceptable to lug a camera bag around to dinner, etc.).

So, for someone who is CURRENTLY (note my emphasis) still learning the “art”, shooting mostly people and scenery, and that means needing to be able to be ready at ANY TIME for a photo, it pretty much seems to mean owning both a P&S and a DSLR. Not to mention, video recording (of which I do probably 30% of the time when carrying P&S) is not yet a reality for DSLR, and furthermore it seems like interesting video opportunities also seem to come up in “non-bag-worthy” situations! (keep your minds out of the gutter here

The good news is the DSLR doesn’t seem like it will be obsoleted for years, as the still-hot-selling 6mp D40 shows. For important family events, and “events” that you want to remember forever, it seems like it will remain a great companion “IF”. My “if’s” are:

• if I can just justify the cost (after adding the 55-200mm to be my “day to day” lens (not too close at 55, decent zoom it looks like at 200mm….btw what is that in “ZOOMRATINGx” in regular/bridge cams?)
• if I can get over feeling self conscious about carrying it; at my test event I got tons of “paparazzi” comments which didn’t help. BTW, you can see those photos in my SmugMug gallery here. (comments welcome!)

It looks like we’re on the cusp of a new generation of P&S cams (competition spurs innovation) that should bridge the gap further with decent (at least 5x) zoom, respectable non-MJPEG video, decent low light performance, and manual controls while still being pocketable. That said, I still don’t see the same image quality (see my attributes up top again) becoming par with DSLR, without a technology shift (likely in sensor type/design) for a year or two a least (based on development timelines for hardware). Comments welcomed!

So, I’m not sure there’s a resolution (har har) here. I still want (do we ever really NEED?) a replacement camera (or camera(s)), to give me the following:

• better than 3x zoom
• image stabilization
• better movie quality (720p in a compact file format ideally)
• good low light performance
• ideally pocketable
• good sharp pictures with accurate and vibrant saturation (and low noise)

I don’t ask for much do I?

Comments warmly welcomed!

As someone who’s proficient in operating systems, but in general a recent Mac switcher, I typically try to stay out of these crazy debates around which is better.

This article over on the Computerworld blog raises some interesting and–truth be told–valid points, when looked at from a certain perspective and as applies to certain people.

That said, the points he raises are applicable only to edge cases for the most part. If you look at the core use cases and functionality of the day-to-day computer, which include document and multimedia editing and creation, secure and reliable operation, and ease-of-use, I believe that Mac is going to win hands down each time.

One oft cited reason that I’ll turn to yet again is the “appliance” concept: the fact that the hardware and software design end to end is managed by one company. I’d like to illustrate some points as to why this approach resonates with me. (Note, for those less techy than me (stand proud by the way!), simply replace “appliance” with your favorite consumer product, like “TiVo” everywhere you see it in this article ).

• The “attention to detail in the user experience doesn’t necessarily stop at the borders of the original point of sale: even after market applications have style guides and rules that they are expected (thought not forced) to follow. Failure to do so often results in a tangible after market backlash on the part of the consumers (or more likely the technical digerati) that can affect the word of mouth popularity of an application.

  While this kind of reactivity can seem harsh, in general it serves to continue the unity and betterment of the platform usage experience. When everything works the same way, and that “way” is easy to understand (easy being subjective, but often measurable to a degree by testing), the overall experience tends to be more pleasant.

• Creating an [operating system] design with specific parameters will generally result in a project with better definition, purpose, and function than a general design: As someone who writes sofware requirements, this one is near to my heart. If you create something that must do A through Z, it is likely going to be less efficient at B, C, and D than if you had just focused on B,C, and D as your core use cases. By focusing on Mac specific hardware platforms and usage models, the experience and reliability of the system is maintained. (Yes, this is true even though the Mac now runs on “vanilla” Intel platforms; the hardware support matrix is miniscule compared to even the least general purpose Microsoft OS.)
• Starting from scratch is sometimes better: I love the writings of Joel Spolsky, and in this article he espouses the virtues of NOT restarting a software project from scratch, which we could debate at length for a whole other blog entry. However, the concept of starting from scratch with the operating system as Apple did with the NeXT-inspired (powered/authored/purchased) OS X is a very powerful one, and necessary I believe if you want to distance yourself from others that are simply “iterating” on a decades old platform. Apple chose to do something risky and potentially very rocky: enforce a move to OS X, while providing a less than elegant but wholly workable scheme of letting OS 9 apps run in a sort of virtual environment (until fairly recently). Rather than continuing to build on the legacy platform, which would have stifled OS innovation (we have seen with Vista), they made a conscious effort to move people over at the risk of [further] alienation of their user base. Of course, with an appliance, starting from scratch (or a very minimal base) is generally the only way to create a reliable, tightly controlled experience. You don’t expect or care that your appliance runs every application you’ve ever heard of….you want it to do what you bought it for, in some cases with some reasonable expectation of after market expansion, in the most efficient way possible. Which leads me to my next (and even more subjective) point…
• When you turn on an appliance, you want it to work in the same way, and as efficiently, as the same day you bought it: This one has been resonating with me the more I use my MacBook Pro, and the more I hear and see tales from long time Mac users. As each new round of Apple hardware is introduced, inevitably you’ll hear someone say something like “Well, I sure would like a reason to buy the new [MacBook Plasma] but my G4 is still doing everything I need quite well.”
  In my experience, the architecture of OS X has served amazingly well in this aspect: users of even older hardware still have the same pleasant and efficient experience every time they use their computer, even if they have had the same version of the OS installed and running for years.
  I’d like to contrast my recent experiences turning on my XP machine that had been sitting idle for a couple of months after using my MBP in the interim (and then vice versa). Some background: I had tried switching a few months ago when first getting the MBP, but travel and other circumstances resulted in me not having the time to completely move over. As a result, I was on the MBP for a few months, while the XP machine was my primary; then I moved back to the (idle) MBP to continue my switching process.

  What I found when temporarily going back to the XP laptop (which is a fast Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM), the boot was terribly slow, and applications ran noticeably slower than I had recalled, even though I had been using it as my day to day machine before last shutting it down and switching to the MBP. In comparison, when switching back to the MBP, which had lots of software installed, and had been through the abuse of a power user/tinkerer, still booted as fast and operated as efficiently as when I had shut it down.

  This mirrors the experiences I mentioned before of the older G4 users: even though they had the same (in many cases original) installation of OS X (with of course the free “dot” releases), running on “older, slower” machines, they were still [generally] as pleased with the day to day efficiency and operation of the machines as when they first started using them. No “boot slowdown”, no feeling of “registry bloat”, the machines didn’t stop shutting down or sleeping because of rogue device drivers, etc.
  At the recent BarCampAustin, when we sat down around a table in a meeting room and laptops were whipped out, an smorgasbord of Mac generations showed up: MacBooks, PowerBooks, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and even an iBook if I recall correctly. Everyone quickly got to working and nary a peep was heard about “arg, why isnt this working”, or “dont you hate it when”, or “this machine is sooo slow”; by and large, everyone was happy with their computing experience, to the extent that it simply faded into the background as an expected occurrence. In other words, the computers functioned like an appliance, working (for the most part) on day 600 as on day 1. In my day to day use so far, I find this to be true as well, and quite frankly now find XP to be unbearably laggy after my core set of applications and addons are finally installed to make it a useful day to day machine.

Now, not every situation is going to mirror mine, or the experiences of the people I referenced. You can argue that such measurements are subjective, or that I’m comparing different processor architectures, or that I’m leaving out huge arguments about how Apple has vendor lock in or misleading marketing practices.

While any or all of these may be true, the point is, I’ve gone to great lengths to try and describe a concept that is so so simple and expected, but is so rarely well executed in the computing industry: the role of technology as an enabler and experience, not as an obstacle.

I welcome your comments!

(This will make no sense to anyone that doesn’t know what this is, but I’m contributing to Google by duplicating the info here.)

I was helping a friend get their new cable modem up and going, and we couldn’t find the WEP key anywhere. It turns out that for this model, the information is as follows:

Factory default WEP keys are 128-bit, and the key is the cable modem MAC address plus 14

zeros. Example: 00028A861 11800000000000000

So there you go, future newbies to this cable modem.

This may be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen! Big HUGE thanks to Aaron Belafonte!.

It’s here. It’s live. It’s free. (for now!)

After [a long time] in the making, I am happy to announce that my company, Symantec, has launched our first software-as-a-service: Symantec Online Backup, part of Symantec Protection Network. Symantec Online Backup is designed to be an easy to use, highly reliable online backup service for Windows computers (currently 2000, 2003, and XP, with others on the way).

For the next month or so, you can get a completely free 10GB promotional account to kick the tires and test it out.

Backup is seamless and automatic, and we do all of the fancy things you’d expect like:

• no scheduling needed
• runs as a system service
• we capture and transmit only the changed bytes of files
• we keep a comprehensive history of the file versions so you can recover back in time if needed
• every aspect/configuration (of which there are purposely few!) can be managed from a web browser, anywhere, anytime at secure.spn.com

As the first of many versions and services to come, it represents the foundation upon which we’ll continue to improve and innovate. Please feel free to signup and try it out, and send feedback either through the built in feedback mechanisms, or directly to me. We also have forums available at https://forums.symantec.com/syment?category.id=spn that I’ll be bouncing around on.

This is where typically someone would end with a “now time for some rest”, but our 24/7 service never sleeps See you on the service!

Richard
Product Management – Symantec Protection Network

“Invite-pong” (or “Invite-tennis”): The back and forth exchange of email when people are trying to settle on an acceptable meeting time/date.

• Definitely, Maybe – Ok, I like Ryan Reynolds and Isla Fisher (for totally different reasons )
• Persepolis
• Youth Without Youth
• Inkheart – for the kiddo (mostly)
• National Treasure: Book of Secrets – if I don’t get to it by end of year. (file under “guilty pleasures”, and it opens on my birthday)
• The Band’s Visit
• untraceable - It’s Hackers meets Enemy of the State meets The Net meets Fear.com. Figure that one out.
• Charlie Wilson’s War – also on my birthday, and it has the great P.H.S.
• Be Kind Rewind – This could go High Fidelity or it could go Pick of Destiny
• Harold and Kumar 2 – Primarily on the strength of the great N.P.H.

My Xbox one continues to serve me well, but is unable to handle the newer hi-def quality media that I want to watch. I like the “instant on” capabilities of a console, but unfortunately most of the newer systems out don’t fit the requirements:

• WIDE codec support. If you can find it, I want to be able to play it. In HiDef. With AC3 From an ISO file Unfortunately this seems to pretty much mean a Windows based PC or appliance (or one with an insanely dedicated firmware update team behind it)
• “Always on” or “instant on”: no waiting for 2 minutes to boot, and no worrying about whether it actually will “boot” or was “properly shutdown”
• Quiet: Xbox 360 I’m looking at you here <grrrr>
• Wired ethernet option: HD streams are not always reliable over even 802.11g
• 1080i output (1080p would be nice, since my tv supports it)

I’ve heard good rumblings about the SlingCatcher, which is essentially a video transmitter from the PC, which means it should support anything your backend PC can. Not sure when it even comes out, or how reliable this is.

Ideas in the comments please!!