Nontrivial Exercises

Sun: Every Software Asset We Produce Is Free and Open Source

OK, I’m addicted. Robert Scoble is creating fantastic interviews and discussions on the Scobleshow since starting mid-last year. I’ve watched every single episode all the way through and can say that I learn something, am inspired by something or provoked to think about something every time.

Jonathan Schwartz was Robert’s very first interview last year, and I wrote about how he’s talking about Sun being relevant. Robert catches up with Jonathan again last week just after CES, and we see more fascinating insights into Sun.

A couple of things hit me as I watched this discussion. First, Sun really is remaking itself into an innovative services company. I’ve seen that a bit, but it just hit me when Jonathan Schwartz said

Every software asset we produce is free and open source - and if it’s not today, then it will be soon.

Wow - that makes it very clear - Sun isn’t going to make money on their OS, they’re going to make money on servers, support and customized applications.

Also, it’s apparent how Jonathan helps define a culture at Sun of openness, honesty and genuineness. He talks about how a near-death experience changed his outlook on life, and how he is actually more open to risks now than he was before he “almost died”. He’s also a geek and lives and breathes what his company does every day.

It’s a great insight into a man and a company. (We also get visual confirmation that he does indeed have a pony tail, a fact that was a bit nebulous in the first interview).

Twitter Me This

I am now a twitter, or at least I’m on Twitter. If you haven’t seen it yet, Twitter is like a public status message / IM client for the world. You can follow what people are doing and publish your own info and messages.

It’s another toy, but I’ve found it pretty neat and somewhat useful. You can stay connected to people easier and you can easily integrate it into your IM client with an AIM or GTalk account, and/or to your cellphone via SMS. There is also a Dashboard widget for Mac OS X, and a little desktop app if IM and SMS isn’t enough.

IM works just fine for me. Stop by and say hello if you want, or see all the boring things I do.

Just What Exactly Did Apple Reinvent?

Yes, it’s fun to write about the iPhone - how can you not? If you have a lawyer, it’s also fun to sue Apple over the iPhone, but I’ll stick to writing for now.

The initial excitement of the iPhone announcement is beginning to wane and now that we have some time to think and digest what we all went through last week, we can consider some of the true implications of this device.

Steve Jobs claims that Apple had reinvented the cellphone with the iPhone. Upon hearing this, I was actually convinced it was true, despite it being such a broad and self-serving assertion. I mean, how can you look at that device and not say “wow” - it offers an experience unlike any other cellphone / smartphone / handheld device available today.

But did Apple really reinvent the cellphone, or did they reinvent something else? Seth Godin has a fantastic perspective of why Apple didn’t fundamentally change anything about the cellphone or fundamental cellphone experience. It still rings when someone calls you, it can still interrupt you, you still put someone on hold when another call is coming in, etc.

Seth then offers some compelling ideas for how you really could reinvent the cellphone experience. Here are a couple:

Let me initiate conference calls with groups of people with just one directory entry.

Let me call friends based on where they are at a given moment.

Let me queue up people who want to talk with me and work my way through the list in a way that works for both of us.

Now that would be reinventing the cellphone!

The problem is, that Apple can’t affect some of those things by themselves. It requires an interaction with the network switching infrastructure that can’t be controlled by just a device. Perhaps the coming IMS technology will be able to provide a way to do some of these things.

No, what Apple reinvented was not the cellphone, but the cellphone user interface. The 3.5 inch screen, the single front button, the multi-touch animated figure-out-what-you’re-typing UI is what makes us all say “wow”. And rightly so - no other handheld device works with you - as opposed to against you - as much as the iPhone does, in my opinion.

Let’s give the ample credit where it’s due, but let’s remember that while the iPhone can reinvent the way you interact with your cellphone / PDA / mobile internet, there are some fundamentals of the cellphone experience that won’t change.

There Will Be an iBattle over the iTrademark for the iPhone

Robert Scoble points to a blog post written yesterday by Mark Chandler, Cisco’s SVP and General Counsel, explaining why Cisco has now filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Apple, Inc., for the use of iPhone. It’s really a very amazing post and shows how leaders of companies are really using blogging to communicate with stake-holders.

I tend to believe Cisco that they had been negotiating with Apple in good faith over the trademark, but I wonder if they became a little impatient with all the hype Apple, Inc. has been getting in the past 48 hours. I don’t know if Apple officially responded to them Tuesday as Cisco said they expected, or if they officially didn’t respond, indicating they wanted to fight rather than play together.

Cisco’s Chandler notes that the remaining issue in the negotiations has been working out an agreement to allow the two companies to collaborate on the iPhone device or iPhone apps or iPhone networking.

I’m not sure exactly what Apple and Cisco had discussed in the area of collaboration, but it doesn’t sound like there are too many areas that having Cisco participate with Apple could really benefit Apple.

Perhaps Apple is really playing hardball and is going to try to wrest the iPhone trademark away from Cisco, or perhaps Cisco is a bit envious of all the glory Apple is getting and wants a piece of the action as well. Maybe a little of both.

It looks like we’re in for some wrangling, though, over the next 5 months before the Apple Inc. iPhone is set to be available.

David Pogue Gets an Hour with the iPhone

David Pogue of the New York Times had the enviable opportunity yesterday to spend about an hour talking with Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller, and to actually play with the real iPhone and write about his experience. He has a chance to investigate some of the more practical matters of how the device works - how it feels, how the touch/hover screen works, does it get greasy / smudged easily, etc.

One practical matter I had questions about was with regard to the qwerty keyboard and how efficient it could be as touch / hover keys on the screen. An excerpt from David’s article says that it’s not quite up to the Blackberry thumb-key speed:

Typing is difficult. The letter keys are just pictures on the glass screen, so of course there’s no tactile feedback.

Software helps a lot. You can afford to make a lot of typos as you muddle through a word, because the software analyzes which keys you *might* have meant and figures out the word you wanted. Its best guess appears just under what you’ve typed; if it’s correct, you tap the Space bar to accept it and continue. I typed a couple of e-mail messages with lots of typos but eventually 100 percent accuracy, thanks to this auto-correct feature. (My testing didn’t involve proper names, however.)

Bottom line: Heavy BlackBerry addicts may not want to jump ship just yet.

David stresses that the device is still not complete and will likely see some enhancements before its true availability in June. All in all the experience sounds very positive and I’m glad Apple let at least a couple of influential journalists play with it.

Also, note that Gizmodo got to spend 15 minutes with it as well.

More Thoughts on the SteveNote

Macworld Expo 2007 Keynote by wahaha_wu

A few more thoughts from the Apple Keynote today as I’ve thought through it more.

First, I agree with Om Malik that Apple’s name change from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. is indeed significant. I disagree, though that it signifies the end of the PC era. I wouldn’t go that far, but I am confident that it formalizes the true beginning of the intelligent device era - beyond smart phones (as Steve noted) but intelligent devices that not only can do a lot of things, but do them well and interact with you well. I’m sure we’ll see more imitations of intelligent design consumer devices soon, but I believe the iPhone is the game-changing device in this market. Score one more for Apple.

Next, Robert Scoble is right that only 720p resolution on the Apple TV definitely is a disappointment, at least at first glance. This thought occurred to me as I watched (the macrumors transcript of) the presentation, and I wondered the same thing after Apple Showtime event last fall when they announced high(er) resolution movie downloads.

As I think through it, though, the overwhelming majority of movies available today are only in 720p, with HD-DVD/Blueray offering a limited supply of 1080p content. And, I don’t believe there are any broadcast or cable tv shows in 1080p today.

But MacBreak is in 1080p and is quite nice. Surely there will be only an increasing amount of 1080p content available over the next several months. No, 1080p support wouldn’t really be anything anyone would use right now, but it would have been fun to be able to say that Apple TV supported it.

Then, ZDNet’s Larry Dignan has an interesting analysis of the winners and losers in the wake of all things Apple today. I completely disagree, though, that Sprint will be one of the big losers. In stead, it’s Verizon, who has been creeping up to within a few million subscribers of Cingular’s approximately 56 million customers, to battle for the “#1 operator” tag in the U.S.

Verizon has surprisingly taken a walled garden approach to it’s mobile media content, e.g. the Chocolate phone tied to Verizon’s own music store. Cingular will get the enviable and very exclusive prize of being co-branded with Apple. They’ll get more mindshare than Verizon over the next 5 months and I can’t see how people will rush out to buy any more Chocolate phones.

Finally, I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t see any of the other possible software products that are nearing release. I thought a surprise availability of Leopard would be a nice way to charge everyone up - obviously this would only have been a distraction from the iPhone. But it is somewhat strange that the only new thing you can go out and buy today that you couldn’t yesterday is the Apple TV. I was expecting to see more things that everyone could actually purchase today.

Overall, I believe today’s MacWorld keynote will be seen as one of the three or four most significant milestones that usher in a new era of technology. The introduction of the Mac was one, the iPod was another, and I think that although we’re all left empty-handed today, we’ll look back one day and see that the iPhone forever changed the mobile device market.

Apple and Cisco Have Worked Out iPhone Name

I wondered earlier today how Apple could use the name iPhone after we just saw Linksys announce their iPhone and we all discovered that Linksys/Cisco owned the iPhone trademark.

ZDNet’s Larry Dignan writes how Tom Krazit of News.com reports that Cisco and Apple were in discussions about the trademark for the past “several years” but were actually still in the negotiating phase today. Reportedly Cisco sent Apple some updated documents last night and expected an agreement from Apple today.

More evidence to support my wonderment at the secrecy / PR campaign master that Steve Jobs is. He doesn’t finalize any deal with Cisco before the Keynote because that would surely become public.

I’m sure some good money will change hands there, but I’m also sure it will be worth it for Apple, inc.

Apple iPhone - My First Impressions

Apple new iPhone by mac-tomster

Just watched the SteveNote this morning and was wowed, awed, excited, suprised by the iPhone! I didn’t think it would be here, and it isn’t, exactly - has to pass FCC approval and target ship date is June.

Here are my first impressions:

• how can Apple call it an iPhone? I thought Linksys had that name?
• absolutely a true innovation with the UI - touch / hover sensitivity, only 1 button!, no stylus
• running some version of OS X with core animation and presumably some way to open real docs (e.g. email attachments) is brilliant
• true multi-tasking lets you download email while doing other stuff, e.g. surfing (on Safari)
• WiFi was a must-have
• I’m very interested to see how the touch / hover keyboard really works - will it be as fast as the Blackberry thumb keyboard?
• Cingular did the deal with Apple without seeing the product! That is absolutely incredible and shows the respect and trust (and power) that Steve Jobs has
• Steve flexed that trust / power muscle a bit by having Eric Schmidt of Google and Jerry Chan of Yahoo almost close enough to touch each other as they came up on stage in succession to make their appearance and congratulate Steve
• the fact that no rumor site got the iPhone exactly right - or even close - shows how amazing Steve is at running an organization and keeping secrets; if not even the CEO of Cingular had seen the iPhone before, then who else could have? This confirms my view that Steve should run the NSA (or at least work with them to show them how to keep secrets)

I must admit that until about a week ago I wasn’t excited about a new phone at all. I am now, but the wait and the price are both a bit much for me. It will definitely be interesting to see how things develop over the next 5 months.

Join a Skypecast during the SteveNote in 1 Hour

Wondering what you will do in just over one hour when Steve Jobs takes the stage to finally answer all our questions about phones, Lassos, 16×9’s, iTV’s, Leopards and probably others that we haven’t even asked?

Chris at MyAppleStuff is hosting a SkypeCast during the SteveNote. See his post for details, but here are the dial-in numbers:

If you are a Skype user call +990008275344690 which is a FREE number and you will be connected automatically. That is all you need to do.

If you are calling from the US call 1-712-432-4990 (long distance costs apply).

In Europe, call: Germany 01805 00 7620 UK 0870 119 1313

Corporate Blogging Behind the Firewall - Looking for Best Practices

The company I work for (which I make a reasonable effort to not mention on this blog, but which isn’t necessarily a dark secret) has begun to support internal employee blogs. By “support” I mean “provide a means to make happen”, but not “encourage by implementing a simple yet effective architecture familiar to most bloggers.”

My company is a telecommunications and networking infrastructure provider, and we have a lot of intellectual property that we must maintain. We’re struggling to figure out how to create cutting edge technology and freely participate in the technology marketplace of today, which includes openness, direct communication, collaboration, user-generated content etc. etc. - while still protecting our IP (intellectual property).

So we’ve taken a small step by implementing something more like a web forum system tweaked up to look like a blog. It supports real html, comments and attachments. However, it’s an SSL-encrypted webpage behind our firewall, there’s no RSS and the internal URL’s look like a mashup of misspelled Russian words and symbols that are at least 20 characters long.

In short, it’s extremely inconvenient for others to access the content - you have to have a specific URL of the employee blogs page. In stead of RSS, the system offers an email subscription, which is certainly better than nothing.

I understand why our company isn’t allowing externally-visible employee blogs, and can understand the security concerns even behind the firewall - at least to a point. But the restrictions significantly hinder the power of a blog - easily accessible, open posting API (e.g. Wordpress or Moveable Type) and syndication.

I’d like to offer my very humble input to our IS team but would like to seek others input about the best practices for setting up blogs behind the firewall. For example:

• are there some proven ways to implement RSS with both authorization and encryption?
• what blogging platforms are most conducive to a behind-the-firewall application?
• how have other companies developed an internal blogging policy (I’m not even considering external blogging policies at this point) where there is a lot of IP discussion involved, even internally?

If anyone has input on this topic I’d love to hear it! Thanks.

Increasing Your Visual Literacy

The Visual-Literacy project, run as an e-learning course to increase the effectiveness of presenting information in a visual manner, has a neat reference tool for data visualization. They call it the Periodic Table of Data VIsualizations, and it is a very comprehensive collection of different ways to present data.

Arranged in the format of the periodic table of the elements, this periodic table of data visualization maps out ways to show data, information, concepts, strategy visualization, plus visual metaphors (positioning information graphically to organize and structure information) and various combinations of these in various standard formats.

For example, if you’re looking for a way to visually represent a set of data, you can easily see a list of options:

• continuum
• table
• cartesian coordinates
• pie chart
• line chart
• bar chart
• area chart
• histogram
• scatterplot
• tukey box plot
• spectogram

What’s nice about this tool, however, is that by hovering over any of the boxes you get a popup box showing an example of what that particular method looks like. It’s a great addition to your presentation toolbox.

Learning the GIMP

Gimp is an opensource (free) image editing application that contains much of the functionality of Photoshop. For many of us aspiring or hobbyist photographers who can’t afford Photoshop, Gimp is a fantastic alternative.

Gimp can do 75% of what Photoshop can do (I just made up 75% - since I don’t have Photoshop I don’t know exactly, but 75% is what I’m guessing based on what I’ve read about and what others have said) and likely most of what you would need for basic and many advanced editing tasks.

Since image editing can really be complex, and therefore the tools to do it are complex, the Photoshop training industry has become quite a popular and lucrative business. If people (most of whom are professionals) are spending $600 for the application, it’s likely they will spend a few hundred dollars for more training.

Not many people are willing to pay for training to learn a free application, however, so writing about Gimp isn’t as lucrative as writing about Photoshop. But, there are several resources available to learn Gimp.

Chris at MyAppleStuff recently reviewed “Gimp 2 for Photographers: Image Editing with Open Source Software” by (Klaus Goelker). It looks like a great way to learn to use Gimp just like you would use Photoshop. See his review for more details.

Grokking the Gimp, by Carey Bunks, is another book that I have gone through to learn the Gimp. Although this one is a couple of years old, the concepts and principles haven’t changed and most of the tools work just the same way as he describes them. Grokking the Gimp is free to read online, or you can purchase a printed version.

GIMPguru.org also contains a wealth of tutorials and tips for Beginning and Advanced tasks. I love this site and have used it often.

Finally, GIMP.org has a nice tutorials section as well that I refer to from time to time.

You can see more GIMP resources and links by looking at the ma.gnolia.com bookmarks tagged with GIMP.

If you haven’t tried GIMP yet, I suggest you do. It’s available in binaries for UNIX and Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. You can also download the source and compile it yourself.

I’m an Aperture User!

As I commented on Chris’s MyAppleStuff blog in December, I put Apple’s Aperture on my 2007 Apple wish list. I haven’t written about it here, but I really have developed an interest in and a passion for photography, and I recently acquired a Nikon D50 digital SLR (which I love!).

I had been using iPhoto but had really outgrown what it could do for me. I started using the public beta of Adobe Lightroom and was ecstatic about all that it could do. For the first time I was able to shoot in RAW with my D50 and Lightroom provided some mind-blowing (to my unexperienced mind anyway) tools to process RAW photos. I really liked Lightroom and used it for the entire month of November.

I had heard of Aperture but never really looked into it much. After using Lightroom and becoming comfortable with all its features, I decided I would give Aperture a try and take advantage of the 30 day free trial Apple is offering.

Before I started the trial, however, I watched all the tutorial videos on the Aperture site and read several reviews about it. I then downloaded the trial and started using it. It took a few hours (spread out over several days - I have a day job ) to figure out a workflow and how Aperture really works, but then I was completely hooked.

Why do I like Aperture better than Lightroom? Perhaps I’ll write a more detailed review in the future, but in short, Aperture’s workflow model is more intuitive and powerful, there are more powerful tools for automation and the user interface is more advanced and “usable”.

I determined that the cost of Aperture was an investment in my photography and not just a luxury, so I just purchased a full license. More to come…