LIVEdigitally

My blog is hacked, doing my best to get it up and running again. Sorry about the quietness… I’m going to do a bit more video blogging anyway, but will get the videos here when everything is working normal. For now, my videos are here, more to come!!!

update: looks like GoDaddy fixed it!  not sure yet, but fingers are crossed.

Tomorrow morning you’re going to see a lot of headlines across your favorite tech blogs that will sound a little… extra-ordinary.  Small companies seemingly acquiring big companies.  Well-known individuals joining startups or other odd-fit engagements.  They will be, for the most part, well written.  And to a few dozen people (specifically: the writer, the writer’s best friends, and the named individuals in the blog post), fairly funny.  To everyone else? Smirk-worthy, at best.  Why?  April Fool’s - a fun day to pull pranks.  That is, if you are either extremely clever and funny, or you are an 8-year-old.  And I hate to say it (not really), but this basically rules out just about the entire techie blogosphere.

That’s pretty much it for my thoughts on the subject.  You’ve been warned.

JT the Curmudgeon, out.

ps – in order to provide anything entertaining or somewhat related, here’s Wired’s Top 10 April Fools’ Pranks for Nerds. enjoy.

There was a time when things like decency, self-respect, and privacy mattered, and that time was not too long ago. I’m not going to spend this post lamenting modern society abandoning the concept of self-respect, poise, decency, and other things which seem practically alien in our show-all, tell-all, midriff-sporting, trampstamp-pride (yeah, I hate the word too, but it’s appropriate) oriented culture. I may seem like one heck of an old fogie, but I’m talking about a time I remember that was less than 15, maybe even 10 years ago! With regards to the “living near the bottom” mindset America seems stuck in, I think (hope) it’s just a natural cycle and it will just get better in time. But when it comes to the privacy topic, I’m more than disappointed, I’m near outraged. And I’m going to point some fingers.

It’s hard to say when and where we decided to give up our rights to privacy online. Note that I’m focusing to the online world, and have no commentary regarding people’s ability to do things like steal credit card receipts, dumpster dive, or other methods of specifically targeting an individual, as these take concerted and directed effort. One could argue the entire concept of the “social web” might be in exact defiance of personal privacy. Some of the early players (this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all things social on the web!), in semi-chronological order:

• Geocities – instead of, well, not really existing online, you can have a home page! Unquestionably the first time people chose to give up personal privacy for some flirtation with Internet fame – but – it was at a time when there was little “networking” from one site to another, so a given person’s home page actually was it’s own disconnected “island” on the Internet (as opposed to the inherent connected nature of services like Facebook). Geocities deserves special mention for being the first (but far from last) time an individual could not only create their own customized page, but make it extremely ugly and hard to read. Privacy impact: moderate.
• Delicious - instead of keeping your favorite bookmarks to yourself, share them with the world! The reality of the potential harm here is fairly low, as one still has a local bookmark capability through the Web browser AND one can easily choose not to share a bookmark they don’t want shared. Privacy impact: negligible.
• MyBlogLog - instead of being able to read a blog post in relative anonymity, a “footprint” is left of the trail you have as you surf various blogs. Again, this is extremely opt-in, however, the mere enablement of this plug-in on a blog meant a third-party could specifically “follow” you as a unique Web surfer. Privacy impact: low.
• Flickr – instead of having to manually share your photos with your friends/family, automatically upload your photos into the public eye unless you specify otherwise. Flickr represented a massive shift in thinking, and I’d personally argue it ushered in the concept of “live in public” to the masses. Example search for pictures that are probably going online without consent of those who are actually in the pictures. Privacy impact: major.
• Friendster – technically not the first attempt at social networking, but the first one to bring it to a wide spectrum of users. I honestly don’t even remember what I did on Friendster, other than befriend the fake users others had so much fun creating (except for the management team, who clearly thought using the Internet for anything fun was a bad idea). Friendster marked the first time people really paid attention to “numbers of friends” as a metric of importance (ah, the implacable human ego). Privacy impact: moderate-to-low.
  
• YouTube – Take Flickr up a notch, by enabling anyone, no matter how dreary and boring, to have their own special place to upload pirated commercial personal videos. Prior to YouTube one was judged purely on their attractiveness (based on the best-looking picture of themselves ever taken, regardless of how long ago), but now we could take every embarrassing, awkward, and goofy moment we have, and immortalize ourselves online with it. It didn’t take long for YouTube to be the haven for people falling off skateboards, failed catapult launches, or (one of my personal favorites) take the video of your friend accidentally hurting herself and further embarrass her by putting it on the Internet – but don’t worry, she didn’t bleed or anything (now that is a great example of friendship!). Privacy impact: major.
  
• MySpace – It’s like GeoCities, but now with 10 times the ugly, and more ways to connect than ever before. Originally started as a way for bands to connect with their fans (and for fans to connect with each other), MySpace evolved (or devolved) into a haven for bizarre methods of self-representation, a lustfulness for comment-writing and a bizarre desire to have as many friends as is humanly possible. Today it’s a bit of a “black sheep” in the social networking world, but still has millions of people sporting the most outrageous color schemes (oh look, it’s red-on-red, hey thanks!) and online “bling” imaginable. Privacy impact: massive.
  
• Blogging – While there’s no specific technology at play here, the notion that one and all could have a “web log” aka a public diary became very in vogue in the latter half of the aughts (you know, the decade that just ended?). Blogs were key to creating the illusion that one’s deeper thoughts should be shared, in written form, with the world. Since there’s actually a decent amount of work required in order to blog, and most blogs are rapidly abandoned, on an individualized basis it’s not a big deal – except for those who go overboard. And yes, I do get the irony of this blog post. Privacy impact: minor-to-major (highly self-inflicted!).
  
• Zoominfo – You might not have heard of this one, but ZoomInfo.com uses all the content it can find about you to build a profile of who you are (or might be) – screenshot is below. On the plus side, they will allow you to effectively delete your profile, and it’s really focused on your business “identity”, but if you ever needed an example of how scary the concept of being stalked online is, this is the one. To be clear, the company itself is not doing anything wrong, they are simply finding information about you through completely publicly available sources, that’s the scary part. Privacy impact: N/A – they themselves merely aggregate stuff.
  
• Twitter – Without analyzing use of the service, Twitter is just a “public update” one can make, in 140 characters or less. Not a big deal. However, the cultural shift one is inclined towards after deep adoption of the use is where the problems show up. For those who actually use the service (which is not the majority of Twitter’s users), there is a sensation wherein it becomes more and more challenging not to share things. And for those with poor critical-moment-decision-making skills AND a lack of extreme discipline, Twitter is the ultimate tool in accidental self-representation online. Self-censorship is a difficult thing, and a tool like Twitter makes it way too easy to accidentally tell a lot of people something you’d rather have kept to yourself (and yes, we can make the argument that people should just be better about how they Tweet, but that’s like blaming bullets for shooting deaths). Privacy impact: massive.
  
• Foursquare, Gowalla, and other location-based services – Take Twitter (above), now apply it specifically to enable you to proactively tell the general public where you are at a given moment. This plus the free white pages is about the easiest way in history to explicitly tell thieves when your house will be unoccupied. Granted it’ll take a bit before the average criminal gets quite so sophisticated, but the mere concept of it should be giving you the willies. And if it doesn’t, check out Blippy. Privacy impact: so high it’s amazing anybody uses it.
  
• Facebook – The grand-daddy of them all. Over 300 million people use Facebook today, one could call it an individual’s “hub” of personality on the Internet, not to mention the best place to buy fake farm animals and even throw sheep at each other – awesome. Now when Facebook first launched, it was for (and from) college kids only – us old folks couldn’t even see what crazy fun was ensuing inside the closed doors. They then opened it up for anyone to use, however all activities were “private” within Facebook – only your “friends” (a term the service has effectively destroyed) could see your activities. This notion of privacy is what got people really using Facebook to share personal moments en masse. Facebook then, and this is the worst part, threw that precedent out the window. Facebook not only shares your content, updates, photos, friend lists, and everything else in public, it does so with the entire world! Privacy impact: words don’t describe.

I want to make sure I explain my premise again properly, as by now I’m sure some people just think I’m a loony laggard who doesn’t “get it”. I get it. I get how we’ve been tricked. I see it very clearly. Let’s face it, Friendster was clearly the “gateway drug” which led us down the path to sharing crazy intimate details in the public eye, and thinking how it’s expected. Heck, it was an easy path to follow, and it played into so many people’s desires to feed egos – finally it could be done unilaterally! The Internet basically enabled the individual to be famous. And if it’s not clear, fame sells – and sells well. But it’s at a cost – simple google searches showed me information like prominent bloggers’ home addresses, birthdays, and other data that makes identity theft (an actual real crime) something so easy that a clever hacker could probably write a web program to do it automatically.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg even went so far as to say something to the equivalent of “that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years” (source). Guess what Mark – you might not be at the helms of a huge company had you made that choice. I hear a lot of industries afraid to make certain decisions because of the “slippery slope” they lead to. Well, it’s happened, and there’s really no one company to blame. Sure, each played their part, and some more aggressively/offensively than others, but let’s face it – we all got suckered in.

Please note and be aware – your privacy has been in violation for a long time. Public records show home ownership details, birth certificates, licenses, and much more. These have been available to the lowest bidder for quite a while. I view this as a different (albeit serious) issue, as none of these are opt-in privacy flaws. But just because someone can do things like dumpster dive to find your most recent credit cards statements does not by default imply that one should sign up to Blippy and voluntarily throw this information info the public eye. Further, I’ll completely acknowledge that I am just as guilty as many others for living in oversharing mode – but I guess the first step is being aware that there is a problem.

I read today (I’ve been working on this post for a while, so the timing is a little ironic coincidental) that people are starting to give up social networking for a variety of reasons – privacy being one of them. I don’t know if that’s necessary, but I think it’s certainly understandable. What I think is more important is for people to make certain choices about the public scrutiny they choose to live their lives under.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

• Make sure you are personally aware of the various nuances and ramifications of each of the services you use (for example, did you know that your status updates on Facebook will, by default, be seen not only by your network, but by their networks as well? – here are some tips for improving your Facebook privacy settings – go do them immediately upon finishing this reading).
• Think about how your choices to proactively share can impact not only yourself, but your family, coworkers, and friends. Take into consideration that you might think it’s adorable to put up a photo of your kid in some embarrassing moment now, but they might not appreciate it when they are an adult and it’s still on the Internet (and it will be)!
• Don’t forget about the future you – who may not want to have the world know about some incident better left in private.
• Finally, consider your real objectives. Do you actually care about Twitter followers? Does it matter to be the Mayor of your local Starbucks? Of course not, and there’s nothing wrong with having some fun and frivolity – but remember that it all comes with a cost. When you proactively give up free information, companies are profiting from it.

Your privacy is an asset. Take care of it.

Saw on Mashable that some designer posted “actual” photos of the “tablet”.  I’m no photography expert, but they looked wrong from the beginning.  I can’t say I’ve 100% proven it, but I’m pretty sure they are not correct.  Here’s the photo (source):

Looks pretty, right?  Yup, and props to the guy who did the photoshopping to make it work.  My first issue with the picture was the basic reflection of the tablet in the screen.  I’m pretty sure there’s just no way the Apple logo from the MacBook desktop background would be so bright that it would reflect not just onto the tablet screen, but then be visible in the tablet’s reflection back onto the MacBook itself.  Here’s specifically what I’m calling shenanigans on:

Just to take it a step further, I grabbed my camera and took a couple of shots of my MacBook and my Droid Eris, just to see if I could capture a similar effect.  I couldn’t even come close – here are two pics, one without and one with flash (I presumed the flash would help create the reflection):

Even without the camera, there’s literally nothing I can do to get a reflection of my phone onto the glossy screen of the Macbook.

Updated: just found someone who knows Photoshop well enough to prove the fakery.

As a last point, if you were going to leak some photos, wouldn’t you have one in someone’s hand?  This is just a weird way to do it – but that’s only my opinion.  I’ll wait to see it in Steve’s hands on Wednesday.  Which I’ll have to do remotely, cuz I don’t get invited to such things.

What would the Consumer Electronics Show be if it didn’t have it’s fair share of weird, wacky, zany, and otherwise silly technology proudly on display?  It’s easy enough to catch the 3D displays, the ultra-slim TVs, and other hot new stuff. But seeking out the “take a picture of yourself and print a custom press-on nail kiosk” take a lot more effort.  Here were some of my favorite fun things at the show:

DIY Personalized Press-On Nails
Thanks to the digital camera and modern inkjet technology, the trappings of instant print-your-own-anything are here to wonder and delight. Custom shirts, hats, mugs, skateboards and stickers have been all the rage of late. But that era is now past, thanks to the make your own press-on nail system. It’s funny, but in reality, someone’s going to make a killing setting these things up in malls across the country.

The Changhong Panda
Not sure why the panda was there, what the company was doing, or really anything other than there was in fact a six foot tall panda. And his new friend Adam.

The Sony Bloggie
This camera hits home with the “we’re gonna try to appeal to them bloggerators” marketing pitch. Yup, from the company that basically invented portable music, numerous industry standard playback formats, the plasma display, and more. Next year they’ll ship the twittie, a micro-camera.

The “real” headphone
If you think your ears are the only part of your body that can hear noise, well, ok actually you are correct in that regards. However, if you think hearing noise is just about the external part of your ear, well that’s where you’re wrong. Turns out your entire head can absorb sound, it’s a concept called bone conduction, and it’s actually been around for a while. But nobody’s quite mastered the art of the demo and pitch like these guys:

Programmable Color Keyboards
Let’s face it, keyboards are boring. Every other accessory, from mice to USB drives, come in hundreds of flavors and varieties. But thankfully the wait is over, you too can have a customized keyboard. American Flag pattern? Got it. Rainbow? Check. Jersey Shore theme? Sigh, it’s inevitable.

The 4th-gen iPhone?
Could this be it?

(no – it’s just a 3/4 size knock-off by some random Asian manufacturer. it might turn on, probably can make a phone call or two, but there’s definitely no app store)

Automatic Bottle Opener
Just think of all the wine bottles you open over the year. If you are American, it’s a grand total of about 6 bottles per year (as opposed to your French cousin, who is closer to 40). Assuming you exert about 12 calories per bottle opened, just think of all the muscle energy you’d save if only you had a gadget to perform this laborious recurring chore for you. Ta da:

Space Station Styled iMac Workstation
In all fairness this isn’t really as goofy as anything else on the list, in the right kind of office this could actually look pretty interesting. Not *my* office, but…

The Nickelodeon Oxygen Bar, Massage Center, and Nap Station
Why wouldn’t Nickelodeon, a popular children’s TV network be at the Consumer Electronics Show? And why wouldn’t there be an Oxygen Bar in the middle of a booth? And why wouldn’t there be a place for people to just chill and, well, fall asleep? And while we’re at it, why wouldn’t we think of the same network that brings us shows with insanely loud music and bright colors to “inspire” our children as the same place to deliver us such a restful location? Convergence.

SpeakerShoes
This is clearly the first generation of products from CONTROL, as a prototype for next year’s edition which’ll have the phone inside. I think I can summarize by saying “missed it by that much”.

Forget 3DTV, CES was all about E-Cigarettes
I am not exaggerating nor incorrect when I state there were more demonstrations of “e-cigarette” products than there were 3DTV products. Why? Because every third or fourth Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, and other manufacturing representatives were showcasing them in their booths. As I am not a smoker, I don’t get the appeal of regular cigarettes, but I am willing to wager these don’t quite replicate the experience.

Automatic Head Massager
Unfortunately there were no demonstration units to try out. I am a big fan of all massage-related technologies (and if someone from Panasonic wants to send me that amazing $6000 massage chair, I will happily accept it as a permanent featured addition to the man-cave). Not sure how the head massage feels, but I think you can slip it an extra $20 for a happy ending.

And for the perfect combo…

That’s it for my CES wrap-ups, coming in the next few days will be some thoughts and analysis on the trends and themes for gadgets in 2010.  If you aren’t satiated yet, here’s Engadget’s “CrapGadget” post, oddballs from CNET, and a huge list of lists of lists of CES stuff from Robert Scoble. Thanks for reading!

If you didn’t hear about it, a device launched this week called the WikiReader. Appropriately named, it’s a small gadget that gives you access to Wikipedia.  It’s $99, has no WiFi (the entire Wikipedia site is effectively downloaded via SD cards), and does nothing but Wiki. Which, as I started to say, sounds great, if only…

There weren’t way too many other ways to do exactly this AND it weren’t another single purpose device! This thing seems like it was dreamed up in a lab by someone back in 2004 and brought to market 5 years later. What’s next, CitySearchEr and PocketEvite? There’s such a radical amount of momentum in favor of multi-purpose devices that I am stunned this got to market. Here’s a list of all the other devices that already do the exact same thing, and more:

• ANY smartphone. Not just the 40 million iPod touch/iPhones, but all the BlackBerries, Windows Mobile devices, and oodles of Symbian, Android, and other phones.
• Many dumbphones. It may be a terrible experience, but even my little Samsung Alias has a Web browser and EVDO connectivity.
• The Kindle.
• The Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.
• All netbooks and laptops.

In fact, the only two categories of devices I can even think of that do NOT have Wikipedia access (the real kind, through the Internet) are most GPS units and the misbegotten Peek. Neither of which are exactly the industries I’d be betting on either.

So how about analysis from another perspective – potential market. By the way, since I managed to anger the entire tablet community with a recent post (all dozen of you! hah, i kid, i kid!!), please note that when I say “no market potential” what I *actually* mean is “extremely slim” but that just sounds silly if you repeat it often enough..

• College Students – nope. They all have or want iPhones and/or laptops. At any time when they’d need such a device, they have another device that will do the same thing. And it’s just not sexy enough to win for materialistic/emotional appeal.
• High school students – nope, see above.
• Travelers – nope. They rent GPS devices and have phones.
• Businessmen – what? come on.
• Mommies – per the wife: “and why do i need that??”
• Reality show contestants, zookeepers, and carnies – hmmm

For my final point on this topic, if i consider the $99 for a WikiReader vs $199 for the “small” iPod Touch, it’s basically a no-brainer.  While one could argue the Touch is 2x the price, the reality is those who are dealing with the discretionary income to buy an portable Wikipedia device are barely, if at all, impacted by its price point.

I’m sorry to be such “a hater” on the product, and recognize that there are a bunch of people out there who put a crazy amount of effort in making this happen. I just wish organizations like yours would seek external product marketing counsel before bringing something like this to the market.  Someone, somewhere should have been making a go-nogo decision once you had the concept figured out, but before investing the actual energy in finalizing things.

All of them.

Wired claims 2010 is the year of the tablet. Let’s face it, however much they sound dreamy (even I’ve speculated on wanting one in the past), in practical reality tablets generally suck.  They are both a worse laptop than a laptop, and a worse touch-input device than a piece of paper I can scan with my cheapo HP all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/sock darner combo device.  So this is my “I don’t care what they say in the focus group, nobody’s buying your crappy tablet” intervention blog post.

Tablets suck at handwriting recognition. The dream of a touch-screen is you can easily edit/mark up your documents, and, as if by magic, the edits transform into your Word doc in a useful manner.  Instead you get edts tht looh lik ths, intermixed with the occasional number and odd symbol.

Tablets suck to carry around. It’s too big for your pocket, and probably too big for your murse.  Which means you need a laptop bag.  Which means you might as well carry a… laptop.

Tablets make you tired. The ergonomic problems with a laptop are bad enough. Where am I going to carry the tablet such that constant use doesn’t get exhausting?  The only worse user interface is the full hand motion system from Minority Report. Seriously, have you seen Tom Cruise’s biceps? they got huge after *that* movie!

Tablets can’t share nicely with others. So let’s pretend your tablet comes with some fancy new visual editing tool.  Well, how do you get that useful data back to the other 99.9% of people you have to interact with?  PDF?  I don’t think so.  Although I do assume that Apple would make some proprietary app that *would* work well, but that’s not the point.

Tablets suck at hiding smudges. The spittle residue on my MacBook screen is fairly intense.  I can’t imagine how my greasy french-fry-eating fingers are going to make any tablet look.  And yes, I’ve seen your iPhone, and I carry wipes around just so I don’t have to put it next to my head.  Gross.

Tablets are bad Web browsers. I still applaud the CrunchPad team for their hard work, but I have no idea why anyone thinks surfing a Web page on a tablet with fingers is better, easier, or faster than doing the same with my laptop.  Ditto for anyone else’s tablet.  Plus, when I have to input anything, which is always, I don’t really want a virtual keyboard that will, by definition, work worse than the one on my laptop.

Tablets are priced poorly. What’s the “magic” price point for this thing?  $200? No way it’ll be any good.  $800? Buy a MacBook.  $500? Buy a 3G NetBook.  There is no price point that makes sense, other than as a gimmicky product for those with too much money lying around.  Who will, for the record, all purchase one as soon as they come out.

Tablets suck at everything else. IM? Won’t work well. Video chat? Won’t work well. Spreadsheets? Nope.  About the only other thing a tablet will be good at is a finger painting application, which my 2-year-old would love.  For about 5 minutes until his short attention span moves onto the cardboard box he was playing with yesterday. Oh, and FreeCell – a tablet would be a killer FreeCell device.  Awesome.

So there you have it.  Sorry teams Apple TouchBook, CrunchPad, Windows Tablet Home Premium Ultimate 7 Edition (service pack 8), I know there is crazy hard work and tremendous effort going on in the labs.  But I think until literally all of the above problems are solved, this is a non-category.

But if you do figure it out, I’m buying!

You remember that feeling when you’ve done something kinda wrong, and you kinda get caught doing it, and everyone yells at you for doing it, and instead of just shrugging your shoulders, admitting you goofed, and moving on, you back yourself into a corner and fight tooth and nail for it?  As far as I can tell, this is Facebook’s situation with not removing Holocaust Denial groups.  Before I dive in, I want to thank Michael Arrington for keeping this topic alive and his ardent support of the issue.

Here are the key issues as I see them:

First, regarding Holocaust Denial.  Here’s the results of the Google search for “is holocaust denial the same as anti semitism?” The answer is a resounding YES.  Fundamentally, while there are many anti-Semites who do not deny the Holocaust, there are no Holocaust Deniers who are not anti-Semites.

Second, regarding Censorship/Freedom of Speech.  Freedom of speech is a government issue, not a private company issue.  Private companies may censor away, and they may do so legally.  Facebook can choose to do whatever they want.  Further, even free speech advocate Alan Dershowitz agrees.

Third, regarding precedent. Facebook doesn’t allow the Ku Klux Klan to have a group.  Breastfeeding women pictures are banned.  In other words, Facebook can identify hate groups and content they don’t like and has already taken it down.  This is a crucial issue to me.  Had Facebook never taken any proactive content cleansing actions in the past, I think they could sit safely on the sidelines.  Instead, they are basically taking the position that the KKK is bad, but a Holocaust Denial group is not.

Fourth, regarding actions. I’ve seen numerous commentators (on TC) ask the equivalent of “are we supposed to monitor every conversation for anti-Semitic content and delete those too? Nope. This isn’t about one-to-one discussions, nor even private groups.  This is about public groups, which rapidly turn into breeding grounds for hate crimes (which is why FB turned off the KKK’s groups).

Fifth, regarding public vs private discourse. Another issue I’ve noticed is the claim to the effect of “why bother taking down the group, this kind of hate happens anyway, and it’s better to be out in the public.”  The argument here, of course, implies that if we can see the discussions these people are having, we can keep an eye on them for potential actions they might take.  This is one of the silliest positions I can imagine taking, as if those who are about to commit hate crimes are just so unbelievably stupid they would do so in public. Utter rubbish.

I’ve been trying to rack my brain as to why Facebook would continue to maintain their position on this one.  It certainly seems odd to me that the decision-makers here really believe leaving the groups up is the right thing to do.  As I’ve looked back on other actions FB’s taken in the past, I’ve noticed one trend that seems to make the most sense in this craziness: FB doesn’t like being told what to do by anyone.  They do a (crappy) site redesign, get told by the media and users alike, and stand proud.  They take down pictures of nursing moms, get vilified by the press and women’s groups, and stand proud.  And here we are again, doing a wrong, getting caught, getting called out on it, and again, standing proud.

On one more tangent here: personally I don’t get how anyone can be proud that they are standing up for some of the worst people on Earth.  I wish they wouldn’t.  There’s enough places for hateful people to rally together and commit atrocities.  Facebook could decide they stand for the right thing, not the wrong.

I think they either need to do the right thing and take down these groups, or stop taking down the KKK groups and nursing moms pictures.  As was eloquently said, you can’t get a woman half-pregnant.

I’m coming up on 2 years into my MacBook/OSX life, and while I’m not quite a drooling fanboy, I am most certainly drinking some of the Apple flavored Kool-Aid.  Why? Because everything just works, almost all of the time.  Seriously.  I do have the occasional frozen application, and have been forced to reboot against my will periodically, but it’s a rarety.  And I still miss Windows keyboard shortcuts, iMovie is horrendously bad next to Windows Movie Maker, and Mail/Calendar could use some help too.  But for the most part, I heart my MacBook and recommend them to everyone who asks.

Yesterday, however, I had one of those “What The What?” moments with an Apple application.  One of those “I’ll bet Steve never saw this user flow” before thoughts.  Here’s the rough sequence of events…

1. Inside iTunes, I went to the Store.  Easy.
2. Looked for TV Shows.  Easy.
3. Found Kids category. Easy.
4. Found Thomas the Train.  Easy.
5. Bought an episode.  Easy.
   While my wife and I *rarely* entertain our son with TV programming, we had a long day in front of us and wanted to have a lot of backup ready, just in case.  Thomas the Train, muted, was our selection, mainly because we didn’t have the ability to buy old Montreal Canadiens hockey games.  Which, of course, are perfect for children of all ages (as long as you remain in the years prior to 1994).
6. Paid for the episode. Easy.
7. Watched the episode download to my hard drive. Easy.
8. Closed the lid. Really easy.

   several hours later (yup, after about 7 hours the moment struck – we were exhausted, kids missed nap time and we were just out of steam to keep anything interesting)…

9. Opened the lid. Easiest step so far.
10. In iTunes, clicked Library, then TV Shows. Easy.
11. Found Thomas the Train, double-clicked on the episode. Uh oh.

Here’s the first dialog I saw:

I was being asked to authorize this computer.  Now, as an interesting point, I’d never, ever, purchased anything from the iTunes store before. Here’s the problem – I was offline by now.  And I was pretty sure what would happen next, but I clicked through anyway.  As a result, here’s the next screen I saw:

And huge whopping frustrating FAIL.

So my note to team iTunes: when a user makes their first purchase from your store, you should probably get the authorization thingamajigger to happen at the same time.  If not, warn them, in a big honking font, media will not play until you authorize your computer (and you will need an Internet connection for this). Don’t worry, I’m still BFFs with OS X and everything, but this is an easy thing to fix. And even if it only happens to a tiny fraction of a percent of your customers, it’s too easy not to do it better.

Want a quick way to confuse a customer?  Throw a new version of something on the market.

In the software world this is accepted, and typically expected, though nobody really likes it.  New versions cause support and communication breakdowns between customers and vendors, and create extra work for software teams to test and maintain.  But again, with software, it’s just the way things go.  You can choose not to upgrade something and keep using the old version, or be on the cutting edge and try the pre-release “beta” version of something.  Again, software is easy when it comes to versioning.

Hardware, on the other hand, is a little trickier.  When my MacBook has a firmware upgrade, not only is a reboot in order, it takes complete control of my system for a while.  The same is true for my cell phone, my Slingbox, and other gadgetry I own.  Upgrading a device usually requires a dedicated application/program to do the work for you.

But how do you upgrade a cable?  Well, it turns out you don’t.  You buy a new cable. And you clearly tell consumers the difference.  Unless you are HDMI, in which case you upgrade the standard from 1.3 to 1.4 and require a new cable, despite not renaming it. This, my friends, sucks.  Here’s a little vision of the future for you:

Random customer in Best Buy: “Hi, can you help me find an HDMI cable for my plasma?”

Best Buy employee: “Sure, do you need a 1.3 or 1.4 cable?”

RC: “What is that, metric?  How about 6 feet?”

BB: “Hah, no, I meant what version HDMI cable?”

RC: “One that works with my plasma.”

BB: “Here, I’ll show you the two cables, see how the ends are different?  Which one looks like the one on your plasma.”

RC: “Gee, I don’t know, why on earth would I remember that?  I sure remember when they were red/yellow/white, or red/blue/green, or S-video.  Now I have a plasma, and my son said I should get HDMI.”

BB: “Yes, well you need to know if it’s the 1.3 standard or 1.4 standard.”

RC: “What’s the difference?”

BB: “1.4 is faster!  It can send Internet content too!”

RC: “I’m going home now.”

and… scene.

To be clear – I think the new technology is cool.  But why couldn’t they just call it something completely different?  A “point upgrade” for a cable?  Really?  Bad idea.  According to a graph I saw on VentureBeat there are over a billion HDMI cables already on the market.

As a technologist, I “get” the upgrade as a concept.  But as a consumer I dread the support calls I’ll inevitably get from friends and family members with incompatible devices, equipment, and cables. I certainly don’t want to have a call like (I’ll let you find the source to the following, as it’s one of my favs)…

Okay. Did you use the Intensifier Disc?
Yes.
Turn the controls 18 degrees to the left?
Did that.
Are you in Europe? Do you need an adapter?

I hope when HDMI 1.4 comes to market it has a completely new name, like HDMI-PRO, or S-HDMI, or something other than a number. Ditto to the USB 3.0 people, by the way.  There’s a certain point where the numbers have to go bye-bye, and mass-understandable concepts must take over.  This is one of them.

I bought my first digital camera in the late 90s, it was a 1-megapixel Kodak that weighed about 14 pounds.  I took terrible pictures onto my spacious 16MB compact flash card, which I copied onto my Toshiba Tecra (running Windows 98).  The ~500K files had fun names like DCP0001.JPG, and I created folders named “Family” and “Vacations” and even created subfolders like “1997″ and “1998″.  Every now and then I’d email a picture or two to a friend or family member, who would look at it in email, and promptly delete it.  Printing a picture was generally a nuisance, and my best guess ratio of pictures taken to pictures printed was around 500:1.

Fast forward to 2009.  My Canon SD850is takes 8MP pictures onto a 2GB SD card (small by current standards), each of which is ~4MB large.  iPhoto automatically sync’s the pictures, which have fun names like IMG_0001.JPG, and stores them in folders named “Apr 5, 2009″ and similar.  Every now and then I email a picture (a manual, tedious process since I don’t use MacMail) to someone, who looks at it and promptly deletes it.  Printing a picture is generally a nuisance, and my best guess ratio of pictures taken to pictures printed is around 500:1, though might actually be as low as 1000:1.

So what’s changed?  Well, I can use Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, Kodak Gallery, or one of many other sites to host and store my shared photos. The most recent version of iPhoto also has built-in tools to share with Flickr or Facebook, which has certainly improved the process a lot. Of course, I believe in maintaining a certain amount of privacy to familly photos (which represent >95% of my pictures), so only my “Flickr Friends” can actually see most of the pictures I take.  Which means I have to manually generate “shared links” and manually email these to my family, since the bulk of them are not on Flickr.  Further, most of these family members need occasional assistance in either saving local copies or printing photos (and before you go making comments, these are college-educated people who speak multiple languages and have many other fine skills).

In other words, photo sharing still sucks.

The whole concept around requiring membership to sites is stupid, though in an industry where metrics are “registered users”, it’s clear why these companies want it.  Terrible user interfaces dominate these products and services (go sit with a regular person and watch them navigate Flickr for a while – you’ll be stunned at how confusing it is).  Printing photos is easier, yet still a royal pain because most photo collections are unmanaged.  Managing photos is near-impossible due to the change in usage patterns from film cameras (instead of being film-conscious and taking a minimum number of pix, we now opt to take as many as possible, since we know the storage is effectively unlimited).

None of the services seem to recognize the concept that we might, on occasion, want to use a removable drive instead of the one in our computers.  Photo backup, the single most important feature for digital pictures, is effectively a non-existent feature.  I actually know people (again, smart people) who opt to purchase new memory cards when they fill up, rather than synching to computer hard drives.  Facial recognition is finally making the rounds to facilitate “Tagging” – another feature that makes the techies happy yet utterly alienates everyone else.  Other confusing terminology has resulted in me receiving dozens of unprintable photos, yet the sendor being completely unaware that they aren’t sharing full resolution pictures to someone else.

As the kids today say, epic fail.

Here’s what I’m *still* waiting for:

• Automatic Backup: Okay, if nothing else, build more backup features.  Ask anyone who’s ever lost photos how upsetting it is.  Heck, Geoff Barrall pretty much started Data Robotics (the Drobo company) because of losing photos! Nobody should ever lose a digital photo, ever.  Ever!
• Group Albums: I have a BBQ, and create an album on Flickr called “JT’s MegaAwesome BBQ”, and give a link to all the attendees.  Anyone with a matching email address can, wait for it, upload the photos they took.  They don’t need to “register” or “create an account”.  They don’t need to download special software.  They don’t need to “synch” something.
• Standardized Tagging: Oh look, there I go calling it Tagging again. Call it categories or keywords or tags or whatever you want, but here’s the thing – standardize it.  Make my iPhoto tags automatically transport to my Flickr tags and have them easily usable when I want to print on SnapFish.  Also, auto-suggesting tags as people type (based on popular tags) would sure help create a consistency around terms (rather than seeing photos tagged with “Paris, France”, “Paris”, “Paris 2009″, “Paris Vacation” etc)
• Improve the Sharing/Printing: Every photo program or web service should have BIG buttons that say “email to someone” or “share”.  Pushing these buttons should make it really obvious as to whether or not they are sending the Original/Printable version, or just the quick one to view on their screen.  Further, when the recipient receives pictures, make it really obvious to them as to whether or not they have received a printable version, and if not, an obvious way to get it.
• Work with more address books: Don’t make me “friend” everyone on a proprietary system.  Just talk to my local or gmail address book (or Facebook friends, or Plaxo contacts, or whatever), let me save groups/names, and easily update those I want, when I want.  Even *evite* has this part figured out!
• Support numerous, flexible storage systems: If I have some pictures on my local drive, others on my wife’s computer, more on my USB drive, some online, and others on my NAS or Pogoplug, so be it.  Somebody needs a photo sharing system that is able to understand the concepts that (1) photos are unique, (2) multiple copies of the same photo will exist, (3) photos will be stored in numerous places, (4) some of the storage locations will not be available at all times (ex: backup drives), (5) all photo metadata should always exist with the photo, regardless of location, (6) facilitating moving these photos around is a good thing.  Got it?

I’m sure there’s a lot more to be done to improve the overall sharing experience.  Better search across photo networks.  Better systems for favoriting across multiple sites and services.  Smarter album/set creation and management.  The list goes on.  What’s amazing is how far we came for a few years (until about ~2005ish), and how little we’ve progressed since.  I believe there remain tons of opportunities for existing players, and if none of them make any smart moves, then maybe some new little players will emerge to take them on.

eStarling makes several WiFi connected digital photo frames, and I’ve been playing with their Impact V for a bit.  I’m impressed.

From the moment you open the box, eStarling does a pretty good job holding your hand and making use of the frame pretty simple.  You have all the usual options for displaying pictures that past digital frames have lead us to expect, including memory card slots that accommodate a couple different card types (SD, MS, MMC.)  But what’s way more interesting to me is the wireless and social mechanisms for displaying pictures.

When you pull the device out of the box, a greeting card immediately invites you to plug in the frame and connect it to your wifi connection (beware: this frame is much cooler if you have a wifi network.)  Once you’re connected, the frame prompts you to visit their website and activate your account.  Once you do you will get an email address dedicated to your frame, and you (or your friends and family) can email pictures to your frame.  You can also log into your account on their website to upload pictures from your computer to your eStarling account – these will then appear on your frame (it took my pictures about 15 minutes to show up.)  One of the neatest features is the social component – you can link your frame to a variety of social websites and services, including Facebook, Flickr, Phtobucket, Picassa, Twitter (not sure about this one), YouTube and more.   In addition to these services, you can also subscribe to RSS feeds – popular ones like National Geographic or even a user-designated feed.  You can also post small videos to play on your frame if you so choose.

I did have some issues with some of the social services.  For instance, I linked my Flickr account to my eStarling frame.  It was a pretty simple, one-click connection which presumably links up eStarling’s service with Flickrs API.  Two issues presented themselves though:

1. After clicking through the Flickr to link up the accounts, instead of a “Success, awesome job, well done!” screen, I was presented with a page full of gibberish.  There was no message to tell me whether I had successfully linked the account.  I didn’t know for sure until photos started appearing on the frame.

2. When those photos did appear, they weren’t mine.  They were photos of friends mine, people to whom I am linked on Flickr.  But none of my own photos made it into the frame.  Now, I like my friends and all, but I don’t need their photos on my frame.  Whether it’s going to sit in my home, or in my parent’s home, I want my own pictures on my frame.

Ultimately I was forced to use the “custom RSS” feature and take my Flickr account’s own RSS feed and manually link that with my frame.  Even after doing that, only my most recent set (about 20 pictures or so) showed up on the frame.  I don’t really know how to pull specific sets or additional photos from Flickr into the frame.

The frame has an eight inch display (800×600 pixels) and the clarity is pretty darn sharp. (Any blurring in the images in this post is due to the photographer, not the frame.)  It’s a touch screen interface, and there are light-up touch screen buttons along the right side.  You must use the touch screen in order to connect to the wireless network, but almost everything else can be accomplished through eStarling’s web portal.   The touch buttons let you skip through photos, or jump back to menus to select specifc photos, or access settings for the frame.  But I found the touch buttons a little finicky to use – fortunately the included remote also allows you to control action on the frame.

Lastly, there’s packaging.  In the unboxing I discovered very little wasteful or non-recyclable material.  There was one small piece of closed-cell foam for padding, and a foam sleeve for the frame.  Everything else was cardboard, including the majority of the boxe’s padding.  5 gold stars for being conscious of the environment.

Overall I was impressed with the frame.  The picture clarity, the simple setup, and the social components were all fantastic.  I love that it’s wifi, and I dig the fact that I can update the photos remotely, up to and including if the frame is in another state (or country.)  However, I do think the web interface and tools need a little refinement.  They are feature-rich but lacking in the fine points of usability.  Some improvements could include better feedback to user actions (letting you know if you succeeded in linking an account), and better fine-tuning of services (to include / exclude friends’ photos, etc.)  They don’t need more options, they just need to refine and improve the ones they’ve got.

eStarling Wireless Digital Photo Frame on 12seconds.tv

Daniel Lim at Slashgear also wrote a nice review of this frame.  If I were forced to give this frame a numeric rating, something which I am loathe to do, I would give it an 8 out of 10. They did a good job.  I just hope they keep improving the little sucker, especially the web interface and options.

This post is also available on 1TO10REVIEWS.