My cell-phone dilemma

As pleased as I’ve been with my 2.5-year-old HTC Kaiser cell phone (also known as the AT&T Tilt), it’s time to start planning my next phone purchase, which I expect to happen sometime this fall. For now, it’s a close race between the 4th-generation iPhone, the best Android phone with a keyboard available at the time and the best Windows 7 phone with a keyboard.

First, a history: I bought the phone in November 2007 in a $150 sale. This was just a few months after the iPhone launch and was clearly the right choice. Let’s remember that unlike the Tilt, the original iPhone lacked third-party apps (let alone multitasking), GPS, voice dialing and 3G data (with laptop tethering). Neither Android nor WebOS existed. Windows Mobile is still among the most open and hackable platforms around. I can download applications from anywhere, and developers don’t need approval from anyone. For me, the pros outweigh the clunky Windows Mobile 6.1 interface.

I believe in holding on to purchases as long as I can, so despite an explosion of innovation in mobile phones, I still use the Tilt. Even the AT&T support people are shocked. If Microsoft hadn’t made clear with Windows Phone 7 that my handset is officially a dead-end technology, I’d keep it another year. But I have a feeling that Google’s recently updated Maps app will be the last software update this phone ever sees.

So now the dilemma. I love the Windows Phone 7 interface, but I fear that Microsoft is trying to out-Apple Apple with a closed app store. If I have to choose between two closed ecosystems, I’ll go with the one that features the vastly larger ecosystem of apps and accessories. Apple is the safe choice, but I really, really want need a physical keyboard. Android looks promising, but the platform appears increasingly fractured, even worse than Windows Mobile was with two different OS flavors and multiple screen/keyboard configurations. WebOS looks increasingly like a dead-end, and nothing about the BlackBerry interface excites me.

On top of that, what’s with everyone producing phones with no removable battery or add-in storage? Apple might get away with it, but they’re cons, not pros in any iPhone evaluation.

UPDATE: It appears I may have dismissed Palm’s WebOS prematurely. HP is buying the company, which may give it a fighting chance. I’m just glad I don’t have to buy a phone right now.

I remember playing this game when it was called “Tribes.”

Halo, the seriously overrated Xbox franchise, is getting jet packs, making it strikingly similar to one of my all-time favorite games, “Starsiege: Tribes.”

Not that it’s a bad thing.

Things my 2-year-old daughter will probably never do

• Rent a movie from a video-rental store
• Purchase a compact disc
• Dial a phone number (in the original sense of the word)
• Use a non-VoIP landline phone
• Deal with a utility’s meter-reader

Am I missing anything?

Elena as a flower girl

Courier: Microsoft's dual-screen tablet "book"

This looks seriously awesome.

in reference to: Courier: First Details of Microsoft's Secret Tablet - Microsoft courier tablet - Gizmodo (view on Google Sidewiki)

Why all the hate on the Google Toolbar?

But maybe SideWiki should be a standalone Firefox extension.

in reference to: Google Sidewiki Is a Universal Commenting System for the Web - Google Sidewiki - Lifehacker (view on Google Sidewiki)

I’ll bet you didn’t know I wrote a book about Tango dancing

Open publication - Free publishing - More tango

 

It's true. As part of a technical writing program I’m close to finishing, I had to write a user manual, and the instructor assigned us topics she thought the students would know nothing about.

And she was right.

For the record, I don’t recommend producing long, carefully formatted documents in Microsoft Word.

Elena wakes up at midnight to make a phone call

This “conversation” was going on for 5-8 minutes before we started recording.

Proof that the Wiggles make kids go insane

And now the longer version

11 seconds of previously unseen material!

Elena’s first steps!

She walking. Now we’re in trouble.

Elena bath

Bathtime!

Kill the Newspapers

Marc Andreesen says killing the print edition of newspapers to survive. His thesis: the print advertising dollars have to go somewhere. Newspaper Web sites won't get all of it, but thanks to dramatically lower publishing and distribution costs, they'll get enough to be profitable.

He may be on to something. I hope one of the about-to-be-shutdown publications in one-newspaper towns tries this (I'm looking at you San Francisco Chronicle) to test this theory. What have they got to lose?

The meltdown continues

 

If I turned in a chart like this to my newspaper’s art department, they would call me to double-check that the last number wasn’t a mistake.

My Micro-Review of Windows 7

After much trepidation, I finally installed the Windows 7 beta on my laptop. With the possible exception of losing my VPN connection (Cisco hasn’t made a driver available yet), it’s been a really smooth experience. The beta is very stable and a big improvement over Vista.

I’m one of the few people who seem to actually like Vista, but 7 takes it up a notch. In a nutshell:

• It seems snappier than Vista and uses less memory on my machine.
• It ditches some of Vista’s big annoyances (I’m looking at you, UAC)
• It adds some nice features such as an improved and more useful taskbar.
• It resumes from hibernation and standby much faster.
• It updates the Media Center interface.

Windows 7 also extends the life of the laptop battery, but I have not had time to test that.

In other words, my observations seem to jibe with what everyone else has said so far. If the final addresses the VPN issue, there’s no question that I’ll upgrade when it comes out (the final is scheduled to launch in about a year).

Update: I installed it on my home computer, but it didn’t recognize my ancient GeForce3 chipset, which controls audio and networking. So I had to go back to Vista on that machine.

Check out my wife's cool inauguration graphic

Obama Inauguration

Happy New Year!

Things I’m looking forward to in 2009:

- Buying my first house

- Seeing my daughter turn 1

- An Obama presidency/Bush leaving office

- Final half-season of Battlestar Galactica

In 2009, I resolve to:

- Make better use of my time, money and other resources

- Procrastinate less (see above)

- Read more fiction

- Be more helpful around the house

- Re-do my professional Web site

- Finish my technical writing certification

- Grow more adept at Flash

Redfin defects from Microsoft to Google

I meant to mention this when I first read it over the weekend -- it’s been thoroughly warmed over now -- but real-estate Web site Redfin has switched completely to Google Maps from Microsoft’s Live Maps service. Redfin said it liked Microsoft’s technology, but that Google’s maps are much faster.

That’s pretty much been my experience. I love showing people the 3-D and bird’s-eye view on Live Maps, but when it comes down to trying to find something fast, I always gravitate to Google Maps.

This is probably true of most of Microsoft’s Live services -- they’re just not fast enough. Hotmail has gotten noticeably faster in recent weeks, but everything else seems kind of pokey.

From my television family to yours…

Here’s a timely Christmas project I did a couple of years ago for a class I was taking. Enjoy!

Yes, I know. It takes forever to load. It was an intro to Flash class, OK?

CBS on the mortgage meltdown

It gets scarier.

 

Two sci-fi shows I thought were great but somehow turned out terribly, terribly wrong

1) Heroes. My theory on why the show started going downhill in season two: The writers abused time travel. Now, no one stays dead, so nothing has any consequence or finality. Lame.

2) Smallville. This used to be my favorite show, but has become downright unwatchable this season. No Lex Luthor, no Lana Lang. No Smallville even.

She crawls: video evidence

Two sci-fi shows I thought were going to be crap but actually turned out pretty good.

1. Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.
2. Star Wars: The Clone Wars

With a TV budget and skimpy one-dimensional character motivation, I assumed Terminator was going to be cheesy and repetitive. The first few shows seemed to bear out this assumption, but it is developing into a fairly complex story with unexpected depth and insight. As long as they don’t abuse time travel -- don’t get me started – I’ll keep watching.

Star Wars is a cartoon, and I’m glad I didn’t pay $10 to see the pilot episode in theaters. But if you’re a Star Wars geek, you’ll appreciate the abundance of Star Wars technology (you get to really see inside many of the ships in the movies!). Jar Jar was in last week’s episode, which I’m ashamed to say got my wife to watch it with me. But other than that, so far, so good.

Report: Comcast usage monitor coming in January

 It's about time.

From the Department of Redundancy Department…

Best of all, they’re selling franchises!

Why does this stuff always come out after the election?

Not that it matters now, but it turns out that Joe the anti-redistributionist plumber got help from welfare twice as a child, and says it helped his family work its way into the middle class and become productive taxpayers. That’s exactly how welfare is supposed to work -- if Joe actually paid his taxes, that is.

And more disturbingly, it looks like Sarah Palin was even less fit for the vice-president than we ever imagined. She couldn’t name the countries that have signed in to NAFTA (hint: there are only three, and they’re all in North America) and didn’t realize that Africa is a continent, not a country. If this were something on Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking'” segment, it would be funny. But knowing that this women came so close to the White House is scary.

(Both videos are from Fox, because me conservative friends wouldn’t believe it if any other network aired it.)

Scary retail anecdote of the day

Three weeks ago, I was looking for a laptop roller bag when I saw and fell in love with the Briggs & Riley @Work Compact Rolling Computer Case. I researched an online and in several physical stores but couldn’t find anywhere for less than $289. A woman at one of the stores told me they never go on sale, ever.

Yesterday, I was looking again at the mall when a salesman tried to sell me on that very bag. I told him I loved it, but it was too expensive. He asked how much I was looking to pay. I told him $200 -- he agreed to that price on the spot.

This was at a mall, not a flea market.

QIK | Streaming video right from your phone

Software updates

A lot of cool free software to talk about:

 

Zune 3.0

I don’t own a Zune, but I like the latest version of the device’s music-management software. In addition to new music-discovery features well-documented in other reviews, the application has a cool now-playing features, that acts as a sort of music screen saver. Here’s a picture:

My only complaint is the limited number of biographies. Not surprisingly, only the most popular artist have enough information for the biography mode (the rest show the default album-cover mosaic). But who at Microsoft is deciding who makes the cut? I understand that not all of my obscure techno-pop favorites are going to make it, but Nelly Furtado does? Seriously?

Download Zune 3.0 here.

Windows Live suite

I was most interested in Live Writer (for blogs), Live Mail and Live Photo Gallery.

The only big difference in Live Writer I can see is the ability to automatically upload and embed YouTube videos.

Live Photo Gallery now recognizes face for easier and more consistent tagging.

Live Mail now includes a calendar that syncs up to Microsoft’s online calendar (the online-only version isn’t well integrated into Hotmail, though).

Download Live here.

Google Maps Mobile (Windows Mobile version)

The newest version includes transit direction and thanks to a new algorithm for cell-phone tower triangulation , more accurate “my location” feature when not using GPS.

The java and BlackBerry versions of the application includes Street View, something I hope to see in the Windows Mobile version soon.

Download Google Maps Mobile here.

Live Search Mobile

The newest version starts up faster. This application has a user interface that’s not so intuitive and doesn’t have Google Maps’ handy “my location” feature that triangulates your position without the need for GPS, but I’ve found local search results to be more accurate.

Download Live Search Mobile here.

A green jewel in Golden Gate Park

Check out my wife's cool graphic.

Dropbox opens to public

The slick, file-syncing service I mentioned a few weeks ago has emerged from beta.  I highly recommend it.

MSNBC’s election logo looks like Bank of America’s

An eerie similarity -- or is it just me?

 

    

Funny

It’s as if Microsoft is reading my blog

Or a simpler explanation: my comments are so banal that millions of other users are saying the same thing. Anyway, the Windows 7 team writes about how its working to speed up boot times, the No. 1 complaint I have about Vista.

The team describes a very good bootup time -- “getting to a usable desktop” -- as 15 seconds. I’ll take it.

Comcast to institute 250-gig cap

I don’t know yet whether I should be outraged about this new policy, mainly because I don’t know how much bandwidth I actually use -- Comcast won’t tell me. By policy, the company won’t tell you how much you’ve used until you've already exceeded the cap. If you exceed the cap again within a year, Comcast cuts off service.

I got the warning last year after I went on vacation and a buggy program (TVTonic, the company that helped NBC bring Olympic downloads to Windows Vista Media Center) kept downloading video over and over again. Before I figured out what was going on, I pleaded with Comcast to tell me how much I had used and when the peak download times occurred, thinking someone was leeching my network. The Comcast rep couldn’t have been less cooperative.

I figured out the problem on my own and have been in Comcast’s good graces ever since. But to this day, I don’t know how close I’m coming to that usage cap. While 250-gigabytes sounds like a lot, I use my Internet for downloading movies and TV shows on Xbox Live, playing video games online, my Vonage phone line, Skype video calls, streaming Brazilian radio stations, uploading and of course, regular Web browsing and e-mail.

Maybe that adds up to a lot of data; maybe it’s well short of 250 gigabytes. The bottom line is, I’ll never know, thanks to Comcast’s poor customer service.

I understand that Comcast needs to make a return on its investment. But by keeping users in the dark until they’ve exceeded the cap, the company is going to chill a lot of legitimate uses of the Internet. And that is going to make its service a lot less valuable.

Photosynth goes public

I’ve written about this cool photo mapping/modeling technology before, but now Photosynth lets anyone create their very own photo set.

HP updates the 2710p

The 2730p is a refresh of what I consider the best laptop I’ve ever owned – it also happens to be a good Tablet PC.

The best part is that the older 2710p’s are going for about half price, refurbished. If I had to get a new laptop, I don’t know which one I’d choose (my wife would probably break the tie and suggest I get the 2710p).

What I want in Windows

Contrary to popular belief, Vista is actually pretty good, assuming you have 2 gigs of memory, a not-so-ancient graphics and updated drivers.

But in response to this call from the top Microsoft program managers, I will say this: it needs to startup, shutdown, hibernate, sleep and resume much, much faster. As it stands now, it’s more convenient to check e-mail on my wife’s iPod Touch than it is on my own PC. Seriously.

P.S. And don’t make me use UAC to move stuff around in the Start Menu.

Live Mesh, SugarSync invites

I just filed a story on file-syncing/online-backup services and have a few beta invitations to Live Mesh and Dropbox for anyone who wants one.

Both of these services work pretty well, though Dropbox sometimes fails to update files quickly to connected computers. And Live Mesh isn’t yet available on Macs. But that’s why they’re called betas, right?

Leave a comment with your e-mail address if you’re interested.

Update: It looks as though Live Mesh is now open to everyone, so no invite needed.

More baby video!

Firefox 3 is pretty darn good

Firefox has long been my primary Web browser,but I was waiting until my add-ons -- especially Google Toolbar -- were compatible before installing the newest version on all all of my machines.

So I’ve finally installed it and must say, version 3 is a dramatic improvement.

Huge photo dump

I just posted a bunch of new photos from my recent romp to Brazil on Flickr. I have more, but I've used up all my Flickr bandwidth for the month. I highly recommend the slideshow option.

Livescribe Pulse Smartpen

I mentioned this electronic pen in a story I did a while ago about note-taking tools, but it looks like it's finally out for sale.

It's a pen that records your handwriting at the same time as it records audio. So in addition to your written notes, you have an actual recording to refer to later. After you're done with, say, an interview or class, you can point to a particular place on the paper, and the pen plays back what you were recording at the time -- sort of like OneNote for paper.

The pen also makes it easy to transfer note to your PC and upload them to the Internet to share, audio and all. I wish OneNote were as easy to share.

This could be a seriously cool tool for journalists -- I'd get one myself if the price were a little lower. If anything ever happed to my 2710p, I'd seriously consider buying a cheap laptop replacement and one of these Smartpens.

The Pulse does need special paper, and it doesn't look like they sell a reporter's notepad. They do sell a Moleskin-type journal pad that cost $25. Ouch. The company says you'll soon be able to print out your own special paper on any laser printer.

Reviews: Gizmodo, New York Times.

NASCAR on Fox

I was flipping through TV channels (procrastinating on my Argentine Tango user manual for my technical writing class) and came across this on Fox. I've never been a racecar fan and am particularly wary of NASCAR because of the whole redneck thing.

But I have to admit, Fox makes it pretty entertaining. They have a very high-tech setup, with cameras on the ground, on the hood of each car and even inside the cars to see what the drivers are doing. A ticker near the top of the screen shows where each driver stands, and real-time labels make it easy to identify each car. And at the bottom of the screen they'll show a car's throttle and brake readings. Very cool.

Smiling on cue

 

Wow, this blog is turning into a regular "look at my baby" site.

Elena smiles

Somehow, she woke up in a good mood this morning.

Testing MoBlog

This is only a test.

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

Elena is a month old

Has it been a month already? Has it been a whole month since I last posted to this blog? Was February the last full night of sleep I had?

It's been an amazing and exhausting time for both Andrea and me -- especially Andrea. But other parents tell us it gets better.

Elena has been especially fussy today, so it looks like we're in for a long night -- it looks like she's a little colicky.

So that's why I haven't posting -- or doing much of anything outside the home -- recently.

She's here!

Andrea's in labor!

Google Fixes Gmail IMAP Problem on Windows Mobile

Yay! It's actually useful again!

Andrea is full-term!

She's convinced that baby Elena is coming early. We'll know within three weeks or so.

MacBook Air

I'm at MacWorld today covering Steve Jobs' keynote. I was really impressed with the super-thin MacBook Air -- until I found out it has no Ethernet port and an "integrated" battery that can't easily be replaced.

It makes you wonder just what market Apple is targeting here. Business users are the natural market, but I can't see many corporate buyers overlooking these details.

The four stages of CES

Stage 1: Denial

Set up every possible appointment you can. That's the whole point of a conference, right?

Stage 2: Shock

Sudden realization that you might not have much time to walk the show floor, eat or go to the bathroom because you've set up too many appointments.

Stage 3: Bargaining

Running progressively later for appointments, make apologetic phone calls, try to rearrange schedule.

Stage 4: Acceptance

Brazenly skip every other appointment; use the extra time to run to remaining appointments.

Ouch.

Making room for baby

Andrea and I just signed a lease for a bigger apartment and have begun setting up the baby's room. Figuring out the Ikea set-up manual will probably be the easiest part of parenthood.

Gmail IMAP is next to useless on Windows Mobile

I was aware that Google's e-mail service had a problem in which HTML mail accessed through IMAP on Windows Mobile devices shows up as blanks, but it never bothered me as much as it did today.

I got an urgent e-mail from work asking me to check a typo in a graphic I had sent last night sent -- it came in the form of a PDF (this actually makes a lot of sense when it comes to formatted graphics). Not only could I not read the message using Windows Mobile's default e-mail, I couldn't download the attachment, either.

Forwarding the message to my Yahoo account from the phone's e-mail software didn't work, because the message had been ruined by that point. So I had to log in to Gmail's Web interface and forward it to Yahoo from there. What a pain.

Maybe this is a Windows Mobile problem. But it doesn't matter -- a lot of people use the OS, and Yahoo has figured it out. Google engineers are aware of the problem, but apparently, don't consider it much of a priority.

Journeyman is actually a pretty good show

I didn't really like the first couple of episodes of this series about a San Francisco journalist/time traveler, but kept recording it for some reason. With a dearth of new programming on due to the writers strike, I finally got around to watching the shows piling up on my Windows Media Center. And you know what? Journeyman really grows on you.

Now I'm all caught up on the first half of the season and can't wait for the second half to begin. I hope it doesn't get canceled. It's one of the more sophisticated sci-fi shows I've seen on TV (one of the strengths of Battlestar Galactica) in a while -- and has been far better than season 2 of Heroes so far.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for sci-fi stories centered around journalists.

Update: Oops. Too late.

Vista SP1 release candidate

I went to the "install fair" at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus this weekend to get an early peek at the long-awaited service pack 1 for Vista. The event gave Microsoft engineers a chance to see how the install process goes on a variety of machines so they can tweak things before this week's public release. The entire install process took about three hours on my machine, but the folks at the event said many people there (including me) ran into a problem that caused a hiccup -- it should be fixed before the service pack goes public.

Unfortunately, I had to uninstall it, because it messed up the sleep function of my laptop. I don't know if this is because my 2710p's sleep feature is nonstandard or whether it's a bug in the Vista service pack, but I can't afford to have anything wrong with my laptop, so I'll just have to wait for the final release. I do plan to install the service pack beta on my home machine to see if it improves reliability. We'll see.

General update

Between my Flash class, apartment hunt and pregnancy (Andrea's pregnancy, actually), I haven't had much time to do any real writing. Today, I'm at a venture capital conference in Half Moon Bay between sessions. Anyway, here are a few odds 'n' ends:

• My iPaq 6915 died. Or more accurately, it stopped syncing to PCs through the USB connection -- which for my purposes, is the same thing. A repair and badly needed battery replacement looked like it was going to be $100 or so, and who knows what else was about to go wrong with it? So I replaced it with the AT&T Tilt, which was going for half price Thanksgiving Day weekend. I'll write more about it later, but it's a pretty nice phone -- powerful and 3-G network ready. My data plan went up another $20, but it connects at true broadband speeds, dulling the financial bite a bit. I can even share the Internet connection with my laptop over Bluetooth. So no more hunting around for Wi-Fi.
• Andrea has reached the 7-month mark of her pregnancy. She's starting to feel the physical discomfort of having another person inside her. The baby is very active, which is a good thing.
• Google Maps has added a "send to GPS" feature that lets users send a destination to their TomTom device. I haven't gotten it to work with my TomTom Navigator 6 software, though.
• And in other Google Maps news, the mobile version of the service added a feature that shows your approximate location without GPS. It triangulates your position using information from your phone carrier's cellular transmission towers. Kind of handy, but a little creepy, too.
• And this is a little old, but Microsoft's Live Search mobile application has added a feature that lets you use voice input. It works pretty well and comes very handy in certain situation.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Holiday tip: There is no finer Thanksgiving Day desert than Coco's Harvest Pie. You can thank me later.

My Xbox is back

Better, stronger, louder. With a different serial number.

Microsoft must be sending already-refurbished consoles to replace newly broken units in rather than waiting to complete the actual repair. In any case, I'm glad to have a functional console back so quickly -- three weeks from the time the old one broke until the refurbished unit was on my doorstep. Just in time for the Thanksgiving weekend.

I can feel the heat coming out the back of the new unit, so it looks like the fix involved much better heat transfer out of the system.

The only downside is that -- because Xbox Live purchases are tied to the hardware as well as your user name -- I now have to be connected to the Internet to play my purchased arcade games, even though they're saved to my hard drive. I hope Microsoft is working on a way to transfer the licenses permanently to the new box.

Facebook test

Facebook test

My first Flash project is online

Here.

Forgive the silly "credits" button. I was about to turn this in when I realized I hadn't met all of the instructor's requirements, namely, a rotating object and a gradient fill.

Christmas-themed Ring of Death

Is this a brand-new kind of hardware failure for the Xbox 360 or a holiday decoration?

Happy Anniversary

Andrea and I have been married one year. Wow, time flies when you're in love.

I just felt an earthquake.

This one was scary.

All the neighbors (and me) just ran out of their houses, which I'm sure is not what we're supposed to do. But I think it's a natural reaction.

Details here.

Fun while it lasted

My Xbox 360 gave me the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" last night, the flashing red signal indicating a general hardware failure. I've heard estimates of fatal defects in up to a third of all Xbox's. From the anecdotal evidence I've run across, though, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the total was closer to two-thirds.

Anyway, my machine just fell out of its original warranty, but thanks to the warranty extension Microsoft announced last spring, I'll still get a free repair.

Unfortunately, this process will take about a month. This wouldn't be so bad if my Xbox didn't also serve as a media extender; in addition to no Halo 3, it also means no recorded Heroes, Smallville, ER, 30 Rock, Bionic Woman, etc. So what am I supposed to do in the meantime -- read or something?

Update: In related news, GameStop is reportedly scrapping its Xbox replacement plan.

Since when does an Osama story call for a "wacky" headline?

From the Washington Post's Web site today:

Do they have interns working at the copy desk or something?

A practical use for Photosynth

I've written separately about Microsoft Labs' Photosynth and Live Search Maps before, and now I can write about them at the same time. Microsoft apparently has incorporated the former into the later.

Using Photosynth's photo-transition technology, maps users can now scroll smoothly between separate high-resolution birds-eye photos. In addition to being very cool, the effect makes the birds-eye feature of Live Search Maps much easier to use.

Microsoft also improved the layout and user interface and upgraded its driving directions -- it will incorporate traffic into your route, for instance. And this might be just my impression, but the whole thing seems to have gotten a bit snappier.

I meant to write about this earlier, but I got to put Google Maps and Live Search Maps in a head-to-head competition a few weeks ago, on the morning of a traffic-clogging accident on the Dumbarton Bridge. Google showed the traffic flowing freely on the bridge; Microsoft correctly showed the bright red "standstill" line, along with a pop-up description of the accident.

So far it hasn't been enough to get me to switch away from Google Maps, but it's a step in that direction.

Bebel Gilberto is (or, was) Starbuck's song of the day

I have this album, but I haven't listened to it enough to form a strong opinion about it either way. I didn't think her last album was as good as the first, but that's probably because she didn't have the famed producer Cazuza as a collaborator.

Between Bebel and Ceu, someone at Starbucks seems to be really into Brazilian music.

Speaking of Ceu, she's coming to San Francisco on Nov. 3, which happens to be Andrea's and my first wedding anniversary. So we're going to the show. With the baby coming along, it'll probably be our last concert for a while.

Andrea's online graphic

Very cool.

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/graphics/7433/rocknroll_marathon.swf

Another glowing review of the 2710p

An excerpt from tablet enthusiast site jkOnTheRun:

This new model is a design marvel that rekindles the love of using a Tablet PC, and that's why I bought one.

. . .

It is not only a great Tablet PC but also a stellar thin and light notebook computer, something that other OEMs have attempted to do but none as successfully as this in my book.  The hardware components are a decent compromise for providing great battery life while still providing very good performance, even under the resource hog that is Vista.  HP has done a good job making sure that the entire package works as flawlessly with Vista as anything I have seen yet.  The thin and light design is stellar at providing a great OOBE and daily usage.

The 2710p vs. the x61

I feel a little more reassured now about my tablet PC purchase. The Houston Chronicle's tech guy reviewed the Lenovo x61 (the tablet I was considering for more than a year) and the HP 2710p head to head. Like me, he gave the 2710p the slight edge.

For me as a journalist, it really came down to two things: the 2710p's integrated microphone (for recording interviews) and the "night-light" feature, which illuminates the keyboard in dark rooms.

ASU in the New York Times

Guess what? ASU is crowded! And it's hard to find parking!

Stop the presses!

Busy, busy, busy

Posting will be a little lighter than usual over the next couple of weeks due o a confluence of events this week.

• Season premiere of Heroes.
• My discovery that Amazon.com is selling Battlestar Galactica season 3 downloads. Believe me, you won't find this (legally) anywhere else -- it's not even on DVD yet.
• My Flash animation course at the local community college (which despite being online, actually has deadlines).
• Halo 3, which assuming I've timed things right at GameFly, should be coming this week. To its credit, GameFly seems to have ordered many copies in anticipation of demand.

More news on the baby front: the chromosome tests came back today, and it's definitely a girl. Andrea, as you can probably imagine, is thrilled.

Newspapers should stop defining themselves as newspapers

News is about information, not the obsolete product it's printed on, says news consultant Vin Crosbie.

News organization that print news on wood pulp must stop defining themselves as 'newspapers' because that traditional definition intrinsically limits what they should do. Likewise, news organization that have always transmitted audio news clips on set schedules must stop defining themselves as 'news radio.' Etcetera.

...

However, the basic fact is that each is a news organization. The problem is they're internally organized to produce products that are becoming obsolete.

Obsolete? Yes, the likilihood is that consumers in the future won't want to receive a daily news report printed on wood pulp or even the online analogue of wood pulp (despite some video and animation added). Nor will consumers want to receive audio or video sent to them in a schedule or program line-up that they can't control or re-arrange. The era of the 'newspaper' in the United States, Canada, and many other countries, is over.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Times Select Is free; Times Reader is not

I'm probably one of about 12 people who care, but the New York Times' decision to make all of its Web content free doesn't extend to its software Reader, which I've written about before.

That's too bad, Reader is something I might have used, but its not something I'd actually pay for.

Question:

Is it wrong to play a game designed for kids just for the easy achievement points? Or just lame?

It's (probably) a girl!

Though we can't really be sure until the chromosome tests are complete, two sonograms on two continents seem to indicate that we're having a baby girl.

Everything looks good, and the baby looks healthy. And as you can see, she moves around in her sleep as much as I do.

 

P.S. After strolling through the "related videos" links, I see that sonogram videos could be considered their own subgenre on YouTube!

OneNote for Mac?

After a deluge of requests, Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit is gauging users' interest in an OS X version of OneNote .

I didn't realize there were so many other fans of Microsoft's note-taking software out there. When I was considering getting a Mac, one of the things that kept me in the Windows camp was the thought of not being able to use OneNote natively (this was before Apple switched to Intel, making dual booting and robust virtualization possible). I completely agree with one of the comments on the page I linked to: OneNote is probably the single best piece of software Microsoft has ever produced.

Apparently, a lot of people like it as much as I do. This is quite a surprise, because it seems as though Microsoft barely promotes it. Most people I talk to have either never heard of it or think it's something you need a tablet PC to use. 

This Mac-love is even more surprising considering that the OS X version of Microsoft Word includes some of OneNote's main features, such as time-mapped audio recording.

Time To Re-Learn Cursive

finally got a new laptop computer, replacing my six-year-old

Sony Viao srx77p with HP's new 2710p convertible tablet. At about $1,900, it was pretty expensive for my budget (I've been saving up for more than a year), but I can safely say it is, by far, the finest laptop I have ever owned.

The purchase decision was a tight race between this and Lenovo's/IBM's ThinkPad x61s, also a convertible tablet. I was looking for an ultraportable tablet with a comfortable, full-sized keyboard and good battery life. Performance wasn't as much as a factor, though I wanted to get something that could handle Firefox, Word, Outlook and OneNote running simultaneously -- and still feel fast in a few years. And I knew I would need at least 2 gigabytes of memory to ensure Windows Vista ran smoothly.

I had read as many reviews as I could find. Most of the amateur/enthusiast sites were spot-on about the 2710p's strength and weaknesses. The least useful review, surprisingly, came from CNet, which slammed the 2710p for using a trackpoint-type cursor control -- something that barely warranted a mention in Cnet's "Editor's Choice" review of the Lenovo X60 (each was written by a different staffer).

Here's my quick-and-dirty summary judgement of the 2710p.

The good: The 2710p is light, sports a decent battery life and has a keyboard that rivals Lenovo's legendary feel. It also packs some handy features Lenovo lacks, such as built-in camera, integrated dual-array microphone (which means I can easily record in-personal interviews via OneNote) and a pop-out "night light" that illuminates the keyboard when it's dark -- this will come in very handy when I'm covering keynote speeches at tech conventions. And then there's the wow factor -- it looks stunning.

The bad, as well-documented in most of the online reviews:

• the power switch is hard to slide, as is the screen latch.
• There's no easy screen-rotation button accessible in both laptop and tablet modes (the screen rotates when you "transform' the machine from a laptop into a tablet and vice-versa, but if you shut it down in tablet mode and decide to fold it into laptop form when putting it away, it could boot up in the wrong orientation).
• The ambient light sensor, which saves battery power by ensuring that the screen is no brighter than it needs to be, is in the worst possible place. In tablet mode, most people will wind up placing their arm over the sensor when writing, constantly dimming the screen.
• The digitizer pen pops out too easily. It still takes force to pull the pen completely out of its holster, but I'm still worried about losing it.

Still, I'm pretty happy with my purchase. I'm not sure how the machine will stack up against Lenovo's famously tough machine in terms of durability, but the marketing material listed several features designed to put business users at ease: DuraKeys, chemically strengthened glass on the screen, and a motion sensor that parks the hard-drive head to protect the machine when it's dropped or jostled. The case is also made of a magnesium alloy, which is supposed to be pretty tough for its weight, and coated with something called DuraFinish to keep it looking newer longer. And did I mention how nice it looks?

Finally, about the cursive. I've been using the tablet feature, and the handwriting recognition is atrocious -- even after I spent an hour training it to learn my style. Maybe it's me, but no matter what I do, it just won't recognize my lower-case a's, lowercase d's and a few other stubborn letters.

But it reads my cursive script, which is quite messy, flawlessly. So I'm re-training myself to write in cursive. This is not as easy as it sounds. I know cursive is probably much more efficient, but for some reason, I've always preferred block letters, even after I became a newspaper reporter. (Thanks to the Internet, I now see I'm not the only one who feels this way).

Here's what's wrong with cursive: capital U's and V's, which are far too similar; the awkward capital T; the goofy-looking, three-humped lowercase m; and the stupidest cursive letter of all time -- the capital Q. Lowercase k's, meanwhile, have become the bane of my existence.

Wish me luck.

My (not-so-hot) photos:

Embattled Attorney General Resigns

This comes about six months too late, but at least it's finally happening.

I was struck by this detail of the news accounts:

A senior administration official said today that Gonzales, who was in Washington, had called the president in Crawford, Tex., on Friday to offer his resignation. The president rebuffed the offer, but said the two should talk face to face on Sunday.

Gonzales and his wife flew to Texas, and over lunch on Sunday the president accepted the resignation with regret, the official said.

I hope the reporters confirmed this narrative, because it sounds like pure fiction -- or at best, political theater. I'm betting that the resignation was part of a deal Bush made with Congress in exchange for expanding the the government's wiretapping powers a few weeks ago.

And I love this little gem:

On Saturday night, Gonzales was contacted by his press spokesman to ask how the department should respond to inquiries from reporters about rumors of his resignation, and Gonzales told the spokesman to deny the reports.

He couldn't resist one last lie.

Embattled Attorney General Resigns - New York Times

I'm having a baby!

Actually, Andrea is. But I helped!

Now that we've passed the crucial 12-week mark, we're entering our public beta phase.

10 AMAZING ways to get your article on Digg!!!!!

Remember the days when a journalist could just write a story and leave all the editing, publishing, promotion and distribution to other people on your newspaper staff? No longer.

In this crazy Web 2.0 world of ours, everyone is a one-man news operation. And if you want to get read, you've got to get dugg. So here are some helpful pointers on how to get noticed by Digg and other social bookmarking sites.

1. Break your article into a numbered list of easy-to-digest snippets. People love top-10 lists, how-to's and collections of Web sites, software, etc.

2. Hype Promote the article's contents (see headline above). Little words like "amazing," "unbelievable," "mind-blowing," etc., go a long way. And use at least five exclamation points in the headline (any combination will do; you can spread them throughout the headline or save them up for a big bang at the end). And don't forget to CAPITALIZE key words!

Bonus tip: Combinations of these techniques can be especially powerful. Trust me!! You'll get INCREDIBLE results!!!

3. The best predictor of future performance is past performance, right? So don't be afraid to repeat yourself or previous Digg posts. Most people have short attention spans and need to be reminded of things. If someone points out the dupe, argue that there might have been someone, somewhere in the universe who hasn't read it before and it therefore deserves to be a top-rated story.

4. Rumors -- no matter how ridiculous, poorly sourced, silly or illogical -- are fair game. And there's nothing wrong with making wildly speculative claims or draw overreaching conclusions about minor new developments. Accuracy is highly overrated.

5. Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose!Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose!

6. Linux rules; Microsoft sucks. The sooner you get that through your head, the happier you'll be.

7. Make more friends. Or submit your own articles.

8. To draw in more readers be as vague as possible in the headline and the summary. Examples: "Something very INTERESTING is going on at Google!!!!!" and "What will those Japanese inventors think of NEXT!?!?!?!?!?!? The answer may surprise you..."

9. People like nice, round numbers. So if do don't have enough material, fill the list with something lame. Like this.

10. The best predictor of future performance is past performance, right? So don't be afraid to repeat yourself or previous Digg posts. Most people have short attention spans and need to be reminded of things. If someone points out the dupe, argue that there might have been someone, somewhere in the universe who hasn't read it before and it therefore deserves to be a top-rated story.

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Paint: Behind the Scenes

Too funny.

Google mobile

I noticed today that links to New York Times stories from Google's personalized mobile homepage go straight to the Times' mobile Web site rather than Google's "mobilized" version (where Google intercepts and reformats the regular site for mobile phone users).

I like this. As handy as Google's reformatting is for many sites, I'd rather see the true mobile version for sites that have one.

I know (semi)-famous people!

Andrea's first multimedia project appeared online today (she did all the 3-D stuff and helped with some of the other things).

And a friend's Web site, CostHelper.com, got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal.

Kudos all around.

Live Search for Mobile

Microsoft has updated Live Search Mobile, a search and mapping application for Windows Mobile- and Java-equipped phones. The new version offers movie showtimes, better GPS support and the ability to cache previously viewed maps for faster performance.

It's a lot like Google Maps Mobile, though if forced to choose, I'd have to give a slight edge to Microsoft on this one. Though I prefer Google Maps on my PC -- it's the snappiest online mapping service by far -- I've always liked the way Microsoft/MSN/Live maps look. It's the closest thing I've seen to "real" paper maps. Now, I can get the maps I like in a service that's just as fast as Google's alternative.

Anyway, both are handy little applications to have on your phone.

Separately, Microsoft also updated its Live Search Web service for mobile phones. Among other things, the new version lists search results across multiple categories, much like Google's standard PC Web search. It's pretty handy -- I'm not sure why Google doesn't do the same thing its mobile searches.

Still, Google's mobile search gave me much better results in two quick tests.

On Google, a phone search for "7-11" listed nearby stores -- Microsoft gave me what looked like completely random results.

A Google search on "Harry Potter," meanwhile, gave me local showtimes for the movie, a couple of recent news stories, J.K. Rowling's official site, the official Harry Potter site, the Wikipedia entry and more. Microsoft gave me the Wikipedia entry, some photos (a nice touch, actually). It had a space for news stories and local results (showtimes, etc.) but they were empty -- despite knowing my home address. So Google was far more useful in both situations.

It seems Microsoft has a little more work to do.

The Future of Journalism, part 534

"Recovering Journalist"  Mark Potts notes the Wall Street Journal's precipitous revenue plunge, but worries more about the industry's lackluster and unimaginative response so far.

His ideas, paraphrased:

• Accept that the Web and mobile devices are your primary publishing platform, not the printing press. Even better, stop printing the newspaper altogether and move entirely to the Web.
• Get local. Very local.
• Embrace user-generated content and bring readers into the conversation.
• Give readers' social networking tools to help that them interact and flourish under your banner.
• Find ways to make your company essential to your advertisers' businesses by providing them with non-advertising services.

I don't quite agree with that last point, especially when he gets into some of the specifics he has in mind. But the rest of it is spot on.

 Meanwhile, Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 notes what he calls the "10% problem" newspapers face going online. 

What you find, with some modest rounding, is that print circulation is about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue is 10% of total ad revenue — the economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be.

In other words, it's not newspapers that are lagging in this technology transition -- it's advertisers.

Maybe the industry is trained to think that, for display ads, bigger is better. Many are resistant to newspapers publishing in a tabloid-sized format for the same reason -- they don't want to pay the same amount of money for smaller ads.

Maybe newspapers are fetching less for online ads just because that's all they're worth. With online ads, advertisers know exactly what they're getting for their money.

Maybe they're realizing that they've been overpaying for decades.

In any case, I hope my industry, to paraphrase of Jeff Jarvis, can survive long enough to solve this dilemma.

Two brands I love come together

I use both Answers.com and Dictionary.com (along with its sibling, Thesaurus.com) several times a day, so I take a keen interest in Answers.com's purchase of the company that publishes Dictionary.com.

The services overlap, but I've found Answers.com, with its handy 1-Click Answers tool, a fast way to look up stock symbols and company addresses. And Thesaurus.com is my synonym finder of choice, calling up more synonyms and related words than any online reference tool I've ever used.

I'm not sure what, if anything, the merger will change, but I'm happy to hear that both services will remain operational. I'd be especially happy if the company were to create a right-click popup thesaurus like the one it created for Answers.com.

Source: Download Squad

Journalism as a service

In a post about the fight at the L.A. Times about whether to run front-page ads, Jeff Jarvis makes an interesting point about journalism as a service vs. journalism as a product.

But what is the LA Times as a local brand and service — note: service vs. product — going to look like in five years and how is it going to get there? How can it get far more local than it is today? How can it build broader networks of people and content and advertising? How can it pay for all that development and experimentation? And how can it survive long enough to get there?

While the distinction may seem semantic, I think the industry's mistaken impression of itself underlies its fear and loathing of readers' migration online.

As a product, newspapers are doomed -- and their demise is coming a lot faster than many of us realize. But as a service, journalism and the journalism business have unprecedented opportunity. The sooner journalists start thinking of their business as a service, the better equipped they'll be for the changes ahead.

Source: BuzzMachine

Windows Media Center: not ready for prime time

When my ReplayTV 4040 finally gave up the ghost last fall, I thought very carefully about its replacement. I had three main options: 1) Buy a TiVo. 2) Pay someone on eBay for a new hard drive formatted and loaded with ReplayTV's proprietary software. 3) Get a Media Center PC (or upgrade my existing PC to handle TV recording).

I didn't like the TiVo option, because that would have meant shelling out for a monthly subscription fee, and feeling left at the mercy of TiVo, which can change its terms and features at will.

Getting a new hard drive for the old ReplayTV would have been a cheap option, especially since I had gotten the lifetime subscription option when I bought it in 2001. But I wasn't sure how much longer ReplayTV would stay in business. For all I knew, the only reason the device was still getting programming guide info was because someone forget to turn off a server somewhere.

So the Media Center PC option was looking more attractive. I liked the idea of being able to easily add on more capacity by adding standard hard drives and new features with software upgrades. And the programming guide info was free.

Still I had no intention in paying $2,000 or more for a decent-looking PC for the living room (my new wife was clear that she wouldn't tolerate an ugly PC tower next to the TV). Fortunately, I knew I could use the Xbox 360 I had received as a wedding present -- which was already connected to the TV and stereo system -- as an extender. In other words, the ugly tower PC would remain in the computer area, where it belonged, but record all my shows and play them through the TV.

Since I already had the Xbox 360 and could find cheap tuner cards for my Vista-ready PC (the Media Center software is now standard with Vista Home Premium and Ultimate), the economics looked good too.

I encountered a few hiccups along the way. Vista ran poorly on my old machine, so I had to upgrade the memory. But this is something I would have had to do anyway. And my first choice of tuner -- an external USB tuner with no hardware video encoder -- was, ahem, a learning experience.

But after some trial and error, I got everything working.

Six months later, I find the setup more and more frustrating. I don't know whether its a hardware issue, still-poor driver support from ATI (tuner) and Nvidia (graphics card) or Vista, but the setup is getting less reliable by the day.

Sometimes the PC crashes when the Xbox tries to connect. At other times, tuner failures mean a show never gets recorded at all. And then there's the all-in-one ehrecvr.exe hangs, which mean shows don't get recorded and already-recorded shows can't be played.

I understand that new operating systems need time to work the kinks out. But Vista has been publicly available for 18 months or so already, and my patience is wearing thin.

When it works, the Media Center setup is excellent. But it's just not reliable enough to recommend. And if a geek like me can't get it working reliably, I'd hate to see the average consumer try to use it.

Ah yeah!

It looks like Gears of War is getting a sequel of some kind and/or a PC version. Interesting.

If the PC rumor is true, it might be just what Microsoft needs to boost its "Games for Windows" initiative.

Advisory: Video contains violence and a swear word.

What the...?!

You may have noticed that things have changed a bit. For one, I've changed the name of my blog to "Kenny Dirt Jeans." I liked the old name, but it referred to something -- a TV cartoon -- that I don't own. I wanted something I could truly call my own. As to what it means, well, that's a long story.

I've also moved off of Tripod onto Blogspot. I had planned to do this before the Europe trip, but it proved to be a bit more complicated that I had anticipated.

Why fix what ain't broke? For an HTML newbie, Blogspot is a lot easier to use while offering most of the flexibility of my old do-it-yourself approach. Also, the ad-free version of Tripod costs $5 month and doesn't let you host your own ads; Blogspot is free and does.

I tried to keep the visible changes to a minimum, but I also used the move as an opportunity to tweak the look and feel a bit. I still have a bit of work to do in that department, but it should be easier now.

Anyway, welcome to the new site.

Who needs the Kwik-E-Mart?

Apparently, Mountain View, Calif., does. This 7-11 has been converted to the fictional Simpsons convenience store as part of a promotion for the upcoming movie.

Update: More Kwik-E-Mart photos (not mine) here.

Update 2: Even more.

The inevitable iPhone post

Actually, this post is about the ultimate reporter's tool, which I'm not quite convinced is the iPhone.

I've been thinking about this topic since last year, when I got the Hewlett-Packard iPaq 6915 smart phone. I do all kinds of journalism-related tasks with it, including getting directions (Via the built-in GPS), sending and receiving e-mail, surfing the Web (painfully) and recording interviews when I don't have access to my OneNote-equipped laptop. In a pinch, I could even write and file a short story with it. I've actually gotten pretty proficient on the tiny keyboard. (I'm writing this post with it from a park.)

Still, it's far from perfect. The camera isn't good enough for newspaper-ready photos (or Web site-ready, for that matter), and the mobile version of OneNote isn't nearly as useful as the full version. I've tried taking notes with it, and it wasn't pretty.

From what I've seen, the iPhone is even more flawed as a reporter's tool. But it got me thinking again about how close this ultimate device might be to reality and what it might mean for my industry. What will the newsroom of the future look like? And will everyone be a potential journalist?

I love upgrades

One of the things I love the most is when something I already use and like gets better. And that's what has happened with Google Maps and Plaxo.

Google Maps, which long ago passed by beloved Yahoo in the online mapping arena, added a new feature that lets users change the routes generated when asking for driving directions. This can be useful if you want to, say, avoid a particular area on your route or take a scenic detour.

It's a feature would often use in Microsoft Streets & Trips (can you tell I'm a map nut?), but now it's free. This is on top of the very cool "street view" feature the company recently launched.

Here's a demonstration from the Google folks:

Plaxo, meanwhile, just launched version 3.0 of the service that focuses much more on online calendars.

This is exactly the right move, I think. The 6-year-old company is best known for its address book synchronizer, an Outlook plug-in that automatically updates contact info changes of Plaxo subscribers in your address book. But most users didn't know that the plug-in was also a pretty easy way to synch your Outlook calendar, notes and tasks between different machines. Everything happened in the background -- no fuss, no muss.

The new version (which incorporates Plaxo's acquisition of HipCal last year) takes that several steps further. First, Plaxo beefed up its online calendar offerings, making it easier to access one's own schedule online and letting users publish free and busy times so other users can see it. Even cooler, Plaxo now lets users sync Outlook with Yahoo and Google's online calendars. Very Web 2.0 of them.

The new version is still in beta -- and it shows. In my tests, it took the service several hours to update Google Calendar after I made changes in Outlook and vice-versa. But if the company can getting working as advertised, it'll attract a lot of attention.

Heck, Google might even buy it.

Newspapers Should Embrace Online Aggregators

Amen. 

The problem that newspapers and other traditional media brands have is that they still see branding as a function of controlling the distribution channel, rather than branding each unit of content that must now live and survive on its own in a disaggregated online media ecosystem.

But the real missed opportunity for newspapers is in optimizing their content to convert user who find their way to newspaper content via search and other aggregators into subscribers and direct users of the brand. The New York Times, having learned from search master About.com, is using this approach with its Times Topics pages, which rank high in Google for generic terms and draw users in to the universe of NYT content.

Source: Publishing 2.0

Europe, consolidated

I merged the London and Paris photos into a single slideshow. If you'd rather browse individual photos or see larger versions, just click on any picture.