Even though I can't get my pen drive to boot Linux and run VMWare that doesn't mean others are sitting by idle.  The folks at MojoPac may be on to something equally cool.  They've created some sort of virtual machine app to allow you to take your PC with you.  I haven't had a chance to try it yet since I don't have my pen drive with me and I don't have enough guts to throw it on my portable drive ;-}  Rumors have it that it's still a bit beta but how big of a bit is the question.

Also on my list of "Hey, that's kinda cool" was Zillow it's a neat little home valuation tool.  It's a nice example of what I would call a Web 2.0 app.  I found it interesting because my wife is selling houses now and I thought she might find it useful.  What I don't understand is the fascination with writing "real estate" applications.  I can name maybe half-a-dozen people who are planning or who have done some sort of real estate app.  They seem to fall in one of three categories:  Visualization, Matchmaking or Lead Generation.  What I don't understand is that in the face of the 100s of previously unsuccessful attempts to change the way people buy and sell houses, developers still think they have something unique.  Guess it's just human nature to ignore the overwhelming statistics in favor of something you want to believe in.

I've been a bit lazy with my blogging and I can feel how it's backing things up in my head.  I always have a lot on my plate, and now that soccer season is almost over I'm going to use the extra time to plunge into a couple of more ventures.  I'll try to be a bit more diligent with my blogging since it really does allow me to offload some of the noise.

Also wanted to mention that I finally dropped my wireless carrier Cingular.  They suck!  I had been with AT&T for 8 years and stayed with Cingular after the acquisition.  After very poor customer service, bad phone service and just plain unhelpful reps I told the wife I wanted to switch (we're on the same plan)  She tried to work it out with Cingular which ended in her stamping out of her office yelling "They can kiss my ass!  I'd rather not have a phone at all then to talk with those assholes one more time!"  (editors note: this wasn't the exact quote.  The real one had many more expletives ;-})  So, long story short I have a Chocolate phone from Verizon and I couldn't be happier.  The phone itself is kind of weak and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with fingers bigger than Nichole Ritchie, but so far my experience with Verizon has been fantastic.  Phones arrived and worked perfectly.  The Chocolate doesn't have a speaker phone standard but there is a software upgrade available.  Rather than risk flashing the ROM myself via Bluetooth (don't think I'll make the same mistake 3 times ;-}) I took it to the Verizon store at lunch.  They flashed it for free and (get this) were curious and efficient!  I know, shocked the hell out of me too.  So far ever time either I or my wife has had to deal with someone at Verizon it has been a good experience.  Sure hope that doesn't change.

Ok, one more techy site to point out.  TalkShoe is an app that helps you produce a sort of "live radio" show podcast.  So what do I mean by a live podcast?  It supports an audience that can call in via phone, VOIP or text chat and interact with the host.  For podcasting this obviously opens the door to take it up a notch not to mention making interviews much easier, but I think there could be other applications as well.  Teaching, meetings, moderated discussion groups etc...  The fact that it can be recorded and then distributed as a podcast makes it even more useful.

TTFN

Something that has been bugging me is how people interact with computers or more specifically how software developers have trained the general population to go out of their way to make software not have to work so hard.  Way back in the day processing power was limited and so I can understand how it all got started.  Someone needed to design a screen to gather employee information.  Realizing that data normalization is usually a good thing and also realizing that the processing power necessary to parse an address would kill most circa 1985 computers, they made the intelligent decision to have the user parse the address before giving it to the computer.

Fast forward to 2006.  Intel is planning the release of an 80 core processor in the near future.  A large portion of the consumer population and 100% of business users have high speed access to the Internet.  CompUSA has Terabyte appliances available for under $1000.  And every time I order something online I have to break up my address.  This is just stupid and here's why:

1. Addresses, at least those used in the US, are always presented in a standard format which can be easily parsed. 
2. Zip codes are always the last part of an address and always in either the ##### or #####-#### format
3. The number of states and state codes are limited and therefore easy to confirm.
4. Given a zip code, City and State are redundant.  If present they can be used to help confirm the Zip code.
5. The USPS is the single-source of record for addresses in the US.  Any US address can be validated.

Why not have a multilane text box and allow users to enter an address the way they were taught in 2nd grade.  Most mapping sites do a good job at parsing addresses and everyone seems to accept the premise of providing as much of an address as you can on a single line and letting the mapping software figure out what you mean.

And there's no reason to stop there.  I can pretty much pull out a phone number, SS#, email address or date from any random stream of characters with a pretty good success rate (> 99% ;-}).  And since the context is well known the effort involved becomes pretty trivial for the computer.

Now for the crazy part.  Is it possible to have the software actually adapt to the user?  This is the point at which I think we should be.  An application should be watching how a user works and learning how to help them work better.  At first thought there appeared to be some easy steps which could be taken.  Then I sprained my ankle and had to go to the ER.  While there one of the nurses took my personal info and entered it into their system.  She flew through the screens.  Most of the fields she left blank.  Some she left as defaults, some she changed from the defaults and a few she actually had to enter some information.  I asked her about how fast she was able to rip through the screens and she stated that she just remembers how many times to hit the tab key or arrow key or enter key or whatever.

Well that pretty much killed most of the "easy steps" I came up with.  Eliminating a field that is never populated, or at the very least, changing it's tab order to kind of move it out of the way would throw off her rhythm.  If you were to change the default fields to be more inline with the defaults that she was most likely to need then you also throw off her rhythm.  She would ignore most visual prompts as she barely even looks at the screen so things like making oft used buttons bigger, focusing attention to particular fields or providing good help and feedback would mostly go unnoticed.  In short, she adapted to meet the needs of the software instead of machine adapting to the way she works.

In the war of Man vs. Machine, the machines are out to an early lead.

We need to start doing a better job of trying to help the users and to stop coddling the computers.  MS can do all the usability tests they can muster but all they are really doing is improving the early out of the box experience.  If you present new interfaces to new users you will discover that users like the pretty this or the glowing that but the fact is six months down the road the user won't even look at the glowing thing, they will have remembered where it was and remembered how many tabs it takes to get past it, and all the handholding will be for naught.

TTFN

I'm a junkie. 

I check out YouTube and Google Video on a daily basis.  I have a Soapbox account which I plan on using daily as soon as they get some decent content.  I have both a FireAnt and blip.tv account and I subscribe to probably a dozen or more video casts. 

Everyone could see the writing on the wall.  The personal video revolution that we're currently going through is an evolutionary step that started with Gutenberg and probably won't end until we are able to record and playback experiences.  The interesting parts of watching the "phenomenon" unfold are how fast it has been adopted, how ubiquitous it has come, the factors that are influencing its maturation and how the cream has risen.

Acceleration

Although there were forerunners, most people would agree that YouTube represents the poster child of online video.  The YouTube.com domain was claimed on February 15, 2005.  The first public preview of the site was in May of that same year with the official launch in November.  Earlier this week, just eleven months after launching, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 Billion.  You'd be hard pressed to find another business that moved from inception through acquisition so quickly and successfully.

Coverage

By July of 2006 YouTube had 100,000,000 videos viewed each day.  65,000 new videos were uploaded every 24 hours by the more than 20,000,000 visitors hit YouTube every month.  So that's not quite ubiquitous, but it does account for quite a large following.  Maybe your mom doesn't watch videos online yet, but it's a safe bet that you have a non techno-weenie in your family who does.

Maturation

YouTube may not be the first place you think of when looking for examples of "mature" video as evidenced by the drawing power of the numa numa video.  If you can put aside for a minute that of the 65,000 new video uploads per day, 64,999 are amateurish BS by losers with cameras (yours is of course the exception.  I love yours.  Keep up the good work!)  When I'm talking mature, I'm talking about that one that stands out.  YouTube falls down here because re-sampling looses quite a bit of the ambiance that makes a good video great.

Some better examples are shows like Hak.5, RocketBoom and most everything from Revision3.  And I'm not just talking about the editing.  The concepts, the use of the medium, the depth, the characters everything just reeks of the thought and effort all the people have put into them and it's reflected in the output.

Cream

So who are going to be the "Oscar" winners?  I think it's too early to tell.  There are so many early leaders, but most of this current batch will not be remembered as the best of the best.  Their place will likely be more along the lines of trail blazers and pioneers that set the stage for the next wave.  Even so, the next wave is likely to follow very close behind and in fact will take the current "studios" to the next level.  It's easy to spot which ones will succeed and which will dominate...  I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

TTFN

Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.  -- The LORD (Genesis 11:6)

Keiretsu (系列) is a Japanese word which roughly means a group of incestial companies.  For example, in the recent Google-YouTube deal, Michael Moritz is on the board at Google and is a partner at Sequoia who was YouTube's sole VC.  This isn't anything new nor is it illegal.  It's natural for people to trust people they know and common sense to want to work with people who you work well with.

The upside of keiretsu is obvious.  You work with people you trust and whose goals are aligned with your own.  The downside is just as obvious.  If anyone in the "inner circle" isn't aligned with everyone else the results can be devastating. 

Another interesting thing I've noticed is the attraction to "limited inclusion" groups -- the "cool kids table" concept.  It doesn't matter what they do.  What matters is who they do it with.  The latest entry into this field is Wallop. Don't bother looking at it, you can't get in without an invitation.  And don't ask me for one because I'm not one of the cool kids either!

The upside of limiting membership is obvious.  By only allowing people who meet a set of pre-defined conditions (ie. people like you) it's more likely that the goals and expectations of the group will be aligned.  The downside is just as obvious.  Restricting membership will ostracize people who could potentially provide valuable contributions.

Many organizations have used and continue to use these two methods of inclusion (or more accurately, occlusion) to improve the position of their members.  A few that come to mind are the Cosa Nostra, Freemasons and almost all governments and religious organizations.

The software realm tends to work exactly opposite of this.  To the outside world it appears as though it's a "members only" club but nothing could be further from the truth.  The only barrier to entry is the willingness of potential members to learn.  Almost everyone in the "club" is not only willing to help, but anxious for the opportunity to bring another member into the fold.  This has the affect of introducing a large number of people to the field and their by growing the field very rapidly by injecting many new viewpoints and ideas.  Unfortunately most of those new viewpoints and ideas will be bad.  This imprints a poor impression of the entire industry onto the eyes and minds of non members.

Back in the day the resource pool was limited and only the 1337 survived.  In order to survive we are going to have to restore that wizard like status and in order to flourish we are going to have to take it even further.  I have some ideas on how to accomplish that and to create a force that will alter the entire world for generations to come.....  Stay tuned.....

TTFN 

What a shitty week!  Not sure what's going on but is seems as though everything this week just sucks.  I don't usually let things get to me but this week just seems to be hitting me from every angle.

The Amish shootings really pissed me off.  Why do the cowards who commit these heinous acts always take the easy way out and kill themselves?  Catch one of these scum bags and I will dedicate my life to helping them understand the true meaning of pain and suffering.

Then there's the whole Foley thing.  Wrong is wrong but seriously, don't people think anymore?  If you know you're a closet homo who likes young boys, perhaps sponsoring a bill to help better track sex offenders isn't the best career choice.  "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

And now I just found out that Bill Douthett (aka: DigitalBill) has died.  DigitalBill was the man behind The Update Wizard which is one of the first Podcasts I listened to that made me realize that Podcasting had a future beyond random chatter by amateur teenagers.  He had a great personality and an ear for what people wanted.  I've listened to him a couple of times a week for the past year or so and I am going to miss him.

As for tech this week, in keeping with the theme of a crappy week Google released it's new CodeSearch tool which is a poor version of Krugle with less source than Koders.  Of course it's Google, the god of the good side of the Internet, so the general opinion is that it's the best thing since sliced bread. 

TTFN