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2012 Technology Predicitons

As usual, here are my predictions for what will happen in 2012. Last year I played it pretty safe and was right on almost all of my predictions. Check it out here and see how I did for yourself.

Computers and Mobile

1. The market will finally start to have tablet fatigue and the clear winners will be Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle, and Microsoft tablets. Android will still do well but no single company (besides Amazon) will be able to market and push a tablet like the tech giants. And cheap tablets will, in the end, have more market share than expensive ones. Which is also why Apple will probably come out with a cheaper tablet ($350-$400) to compete.
2. Ultrabooks are going to be everywhere this year. They will try to compete with tablets and the MacBook Air but will only gain traction when they drop to $500 or less. A lot of users won’t even care though because they can do most of their work on a $250 tablet.
3. Google will merge Android and Chrome OS in an attempt to compete with what Microsoft comes out with in Windows 8. It will work similarly to how Motorola’s splashtop works now, but accessories will be more universal and the lapdock OS will work better.
4. Apple’s iPhone 5 will set new records for sales, Android will remain in the lead (because of the volume of devices), Windows Phone 7 will eat away at iPhone market because of Windows users who are fed up with Apple’s ecosystem, and RIM/webOS/etc. will all be forgotten by the main stream.
5. Google will also come out with a dumb phone version of Android for developing countries, and non-smartphones. These phones will typically not have touch screens but will be able to run some Android apps.

Software and Web

1. Windows 8 will have versatile tablets and will serve multiple purposes as tablets/notebooks/desktops. Businesses will buy them by the boatload in an attempt to allow users to stay mobile and save some money. The tablets won’t be as functional as notebooks but will be the cool thing for at least another year. In order to use all of Windows 8′s cloud featuers you will have to start using Microsoft’s server backend which will sway even more users towards Apple computers. Consumers won’t really care about this functionality and there will be a small market for accessories and docks because the interfaces will not be universal like they will be for Android/Chrome OS.
2. Desktop applications will take a hit in sales as more users realize they can do what they need with web apps. Google Docs and Office Live will start to gain steam with the general public, but I think another app entirely will become the winner. Probably something that integrates with Facebook. This will also help propel Google even further with Chrome OS.
3. Streaming music will hit main stream and people will finally stop buying CDs. Spotify will probably be the winner because of it’s Facebook integration. We will also see other companies start their own music streaming services (Verizon, Comcast, etc.) and they will all be terrible.
4. Streaming video will still struggle throughout the year because content providers will not lower the prices for digital downloads and streaming. Netflix will have some major competition this year and will continue to lose market as other competition gets more content, and has cheaper prices.
5. Social network exhaustion will set in for many as options will continue to expand. By the end of 2012 Facebook will still be the clear winner in social but many users will just be worn out on trying to keep up with all of their online friends.
6. Voice control is going to have a huge push because of devices that don’t have keyboards. Siri will lead the way thanks to hacks, but Microsoft and Google will both have answers in 2012. Neither will be as consistant on devices because they cannot control the entire ecosystem. Google and Microsoft will try to be more open with their voice control and will start to persuade users off of Siri, but Apple will allow 3rd party plugins and accessories which will keep a lot of the voice control usefulness on their side.

Video Games

1. Mobile gaming will die. The Vita and DS are doomed due to the fact that the consoles and games cost so much. People will keep using their phones, music players, and tablets as casual gaming consoles and won’t even bother to buy the more expensive consoles. Micro payments will be huge in 2012.
2. Nintendo will struggle to find a new market. Their Wii U will be mostly unsuccessful in the US because of its expensive accessories and the fact that there will be so much other competition in the casual gaming space with cheaper and more versatile devices.
3. Sony won’t have a clue what to do with the PS3 and how to integrate their services together in a fashion that is useful for people. This will cause more people to either move to the Xbox 360 or other casual gaming devices.
4. Microsoft will announce (Q2) and come out with a new console (Q4) which will finally have diskless games. Everything will be purchased and streamed from Xbox Live “the cloud” with an optional Blu-ray attachment to keep prices down.

Other

1. 3D TVs will still be pushed in retail but won’t have any compelling content. More TV manufacturers will begin to look for alternative content uses for 3D such as video gaming dual view and some things never seen before
2. Google TV and Apple TV will become casual video game consoles. Since Google and Apple don’t have any unique content, they will try to branch out into video games and apps. Apple will integrate their Apple TV with their iDevices, but Google will be too fragmented to do the same. Instead they will rely on accessories and controllers you buy in addition to the new Google TVs. Google will continue to allow manufacturers to embed Google TV software into their TVs and Apple will continue to keep things in house and come out with a better user experience. Apple will begin to build Apple TV functionality into their iMacs and displays and will make larger (32″-42″) displays that will function as TVs for some.

Let me know if you think I’m right, wrong, or crazy in the comments.

Why I Bought an iPhone Over Everything Else

I’m a long time smartphone user (since 2005) and have been a vocal webOS advocate since it was announced back in 2009. I’ve used Windows Mobile 2003, 5, and 6, webOS 1-3, Android 1.6-2.2 and now iOS 5. I have tested many other mobile operating systems (i.e. BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Phone) but I have always made my decisions based on my needs at the time. I don’t want to get into a mobile OS holy war in this article, but I thought I’d share my take on the iPhone 4s and why I picked it over the other worthy options.

What I needed

A lot of phones can do all the basic functions. Good browser, email, apps, etc. but when I really considered what was most important to me right now it boiled down to these 5 things.

1. Not being on Verizon
2. A really good camera (video and stills)
3. Longevity of support
4. Cutting edge apps
5. Good battery life

Here’s why I picked the iPhone 4s over the other options for the above essentials that I had.

Not Verizon

This really comes down to the fact that I have been with Verizon since 2005 and the new house I bought gets horrible Verizon signal. My last apartment wasn’t ideal Verizon real estate either. I have had multiple friends come over with AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile and all have better signal than any Verizon phone. And let me tell you, dropping calls on the nations most reliable network is just as annoying as dropping calls on the nations most hated network.
Plus Verizon was making moves that I didn’t want to be a part of (selling customer information), and they didn’t have any compelling plans that made me want to stay. My new 2 line family plan on AT&T is cheaper than my single phone line on Verizon was. If I had gone with Sprint or T-Mobile it would have been even less.

A Really Good Camera

I have a 4 year old Cannon point and shoot camera that I have used as my sole still and video recorder. It did great for what I needed it for but my need for an even better camera (especially video) is about to become exponentially greater on or around mid-December. Sure most smartphone camera’s are just fine when taking pictures, but I don’t want something that’s “just fine” I want something that will make carrying a second camera obsolete and save me money. I had briefly debated getting a micro 3/4 camera and a phone with a crappy camera but the age old saying “the best camera is the one you have with you” kept playing in my mind like a broken record.
The best smartphone cameras in the past year have been the Samsung Galaxy line, Nokia, and Apple. When looking at reason three for my smartphone requirements, both Samsung and Nokia are out of the running.

Longevity of Support

Why should I care if I get a phone that is supported for 2+ years? Because being on an outdated phone sucks. Windows Mobile was the worst for longevity of support. Once a phone came out to market the only chance you would ever get updated to a new version of the OS was if there were a critical flaw or gaping security vulnerability in your phone. Instead you had to turn to the ROM community to build you something that would be updated and keep your phone functional until your 2 year contract was up, or your had to learn how to cook up one of your own ROMs in the kitchen and try a new recipe every week until you found something that didn’t taste like frozen poop.
Could you survive on the OS that came on the phone when it was new? Probably not. The original mobile operating system was so full of bugs and bloatware that after a few months of use you had to restart every other day just to send or receive phone calls. Today is a far cry from what Windows Mobile used to be (well, except for Android) but webOS has no future (*tear*) and Nokia with Meego is dead. Windows Phone 7 is just getting started but it’s still a little unclear where it will be in two years. That left me with Android and iOS.
From my experience iOS has been crap in versions 1-3. Version 4 just started to show some promise and 5 was the first version I was willing to try full time. Once I get a stable jailbrake I think I could actually live with this operating system. Some of the fundamentals of the OS (jumping back and forth between the home screen, and needing to load specific apps for certain actions) are so dated it’s scary. And the textures! BLAH! Could it be any worse looking? I don’t like where iOS is going but I like where they are right now for at least the next year (maybe two).
Android on the other hand I hate where they are right now. They can’t make up their mind how they want to manage their platform and up until Ice Cream Sandwich they didn’t seem to have a clear goal of where they wanted to go. I think they know that and will probably be somewhere really cool in about a year and a half.
If the Galaxy Nexus weren’t exclusive to Verizon it probably would have been my next phone and I would have just lived with not-as-good pictures and charging my phone all the time.
My biggest problem with iOS is the fact that I don’t have any other Apple computers and don’t care about their ecosystem. On the other hand, I use Google’s ecosystem daily and can’t wait until they merge Chrome OS with Android (A la splashtop). My dream phone (webOS excluded) would be a 4″ Google Nexus device with Chrome OS splashtop and a good 11″ laptop dock. I think it will happen, but not for another 6-8 months, and it’ll need 12 months to mature.

Cutting Edge Apps

I write about technology part time. No I don’t make my living off of it but between writing about how to do things in mobile and people asking me about what phone they should get it makes having a non-mainstream OS a little bit hard. Heck, having never used an iPhone full time before was probably one of the main reasons I didn’t recommend it to many people. But the fact that I had an Android phone full time for a while also made me not recommend Android. It was too complicated and buggy for my dad to use. Although that didn’t stop him from getting one and making me root it and load a custom ROM anyway.
When it comes down to my ability to write about and recommend new technology, I have to be able to use it too. Even if I got the latest Android phone, there was no guarantee that the app I wanted would run on it because the app store isn’t unified like it is on Windows Phone, webOS, or iOS. While Android does have a lot of cool apps and it is more open than iOS, if I had picked the wrong phone, I might as well have stayed on webOS.

Battery Life

If the best camera is the one you have with you, then the best camera you have with you is the one that can hold a charge. I have been in too many situation with a dead camera battery (my past phones included). The iPhone has been notorious for having good battery life and I can easily go a full day (6am – 10pm) with wifi, 3g, and bluetooth on. I don’t even bring a charger to work anymore because it is that reliable for me. This kind of battery life is one of the main reasons I don’t care about LTE right now. Call me in a year when they unify the chips and don’t have laptop sized batteries just so you can run > 6 hours. By that time LTE will be so saturated that it still may not be worth it.

Conclusion

All this to say, while Android figures out what it wants to do long term, and while webOS continues to die a slow meaningless death. I’ll sit back and watch where they go, including WP7+, and wait on a stable OS that knows where it’s at. Even if I don’t care for how some things work or the ecosystem I’m a part of, at least I have what I need right now. Your needs are probably different than mine, and you should pick for yourself what is most important to you before you listen to someone else’s holy mobile doctrine.

Google Killed Android, It’s About Time

This past week Google announced Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) and a new flagship phone (Galaxy Nexus) to show off their new software. Inadvertently, they also killed Android, and I couldn’t be more happy.

Depending on who you ask, Android is winning the smartphone market. The problem is Android is such a fragmented piece of crap that no phone has anywhere near the same market share as the iPhone. Counting Android by including every phone in existence is like counting Honda’s market share by counting cars, quads, generators, and blenders in the same category. The reason Android is “winning” is because they provide a free platform that any manufacture can take, modify, and put on any hardware they deem fit. This provides a ton of freedom for manufactures and carriers to make money by differentiating their software/hardware and attempt to make some sort of brand loyalty. Because of this freedom, 60% of all smartphones available on the four major U.S. carriers are Android devices. With ICS, Google just lopt off the head of their own business model.

Software

With Android 4.0, Google is attempting to unify the software platforms to allow customers to get the latest and greatest version no matter what device they have. Devices not receiving updates has been a sore spot for Android for years and Google is trying to remedy that. Google plan is to allow users to uninstall anything that ships with their devices. The problem is, manufacturers rely on widgets and skins that give them brand (dis-)loyalty. This is one of the key ways that a manufacturer can set their version of Android apart from someone else’s. If users have the ability to uninstall that skinning, manufacturers have no real purpose to develop any special software unless they go all out and remove that functionality like the Kindle Fire.

Carriers also rely on putting bloatware in phones for 3 reasons:

1. It allows customers to easily buy services from the carrier
2. It differentiates services between carriers (e.g. NFL mobile)
3. It gives carriers kick-backs by including games/apps when users buy the full version

If users can uninstall the bloatware, manufacturers won’t have a reason to spend money to develop and pre-install these apps.

The lack of software differentiation is very similar to Windows Phone 7 where carriers are not able to skin the operating system, and users can uninstall any 3rd party software, even bloatware.

Hardware

Hardware differentiation has been Android’s real bread and butter. You can have devices as simplistic as the Nexus S and crazy as the Echo. Hardware fragmentation has been yet another layer of difficulty for customers to get upgrades. Right now (< Android 3.0) software upgrades have to be written on a phone by phone basis by the manufacturer and approved by the carrier (except Nexus devices). If the carrier doesn't want your phone to be upgraded, because they'd rather you buy a different, more-better phone, you're SOL. It is then up to the hacking community to port newer versions of Android to your device, and you had better hope that the manufacturer didn’t lock your bootloader and you bought a popular phone otherwise you are, once again, SOL.

With ICS, it “theoretically” will work on a lot of the newer Android devices, but you still have to play the wait-and-see game if you will ever get that update. Waiting for Android updates is like watching paint dry for the 21st century. Except sometimes, the paint never dries.

Google is once again trying to remedy the situation by creating standards for new ICS devices. With on screen buttons, super high resolution screens, fast processors, and GPUs my 2005 desktop would be jealous of. Only problem is, with hardware standards, Google limits manufacturers ability to differentiate (i.e. fragment) which means all the new Android devices will be similar, if not identical like Windows Phone 7.

If carriers cannot differentiate on software or hardware, why would they pick Android at all? There’s no brand loyalty, less 3rd party app money, and no unique hardware features. All there will be is jobless developers (those that develop HTC Sense for example), up to date phones, and happy customers. That sounds great, until you realize that Microsoft did this exact same thing a year ago with Windows Phone 7 and all it has got them is 5 identical phones, no brand loyalty, terrible sales, and slightly happier customers. I am glad Google killed Android, but I think they have a long way to go before they figure out the best method to resurrect Android into a world conquering force. After all, there can only be one Jesus Phone; everything else is just a zombie.

9 HTPC Plugins that Should Exist

Much of my site is dedicated to home theater computers because it is one of those hobbies that never seems to get old. Even though HTPCs are very niche, I can’t help but love having one and love the freedom it brings to my TV.
Despite the great things they can do, I always find features that are missing no matter what the software. Thanks to plugin support, most HTPC software can easily be extended beyond what features “come out of the box”. Here are a few plugin ideas I have for anyone willing to code them.

• Movie Watcher – I don’t aimlessly watch TV very often, but when I do I usually end up on either A) a movie I have never seen before and don’t care to pay attention to, or B) a movie I own and have seen a million times. The thing is, I have all of my movies ripped onto my HTPC. So why can’t my HTPC software know that I am watching The Rock and offer to switch me to the copy I have in higher quality without commercials? It would be even better if it offered to either start me at the beginning of the movie or try to sync the time so I start watching from my rip in roughly the same place.
• Automatic Login – I know not many people have webcams plugged into their HTPCs. I believe that is only because there is no compelling reason to. But what if when you sat down in front of the TV your experience was customized to you favorite channels and shows? Facial recognition is fairly common on personal laptops so why can’t my HTPC know who I am and customize the TV just for what I like? Only a few HTPC software applications even allow individual logins (XBMC and Boxee come to mind), but I think it is time we start using it to it’s fullest.
• Pandora TV – If the software knows who we are, cause we logged in by sitting down, we should be able to just push a “comedy station” or “drama station” and the software already knows what shows we like and can recommend shows we might like based on our tastes. Of course there would be a way to “thumb-up” or “thumb-down” a show and the software can fine tune its results for us. Sometimes it would just be nice to have my TV pick something for me.
• Universal Video Chat – Yet another reason to have a webcam plugged into our HTPC. I don’t want to buy a Google TV, Cisco Umi, or PS3 just so I can video chat with people that have the same box. Why is there no good video chat client for HTPC software that incorporates Skype, Google chat, and Facetime all in one interface? If software like pidgin can incorporate every chat protocol known to man, I wouldn’t think 3 video chat clients would be so hard.
• Multi-room Simulcast Viewing – Some software can sorta do this with a funky hack. But really, why can’t I just tell the TV to broadcast what I am watching to all TVs (in case of a big game) or why can’t I tell the TV I am going to the garage so continue my show out there in 30 seconds? If all of the systems are communicating, the only limitation would be if your network is fast enough.
• PIPIPIPIP – I don’t really want 5 nested picture in pictures, but I think I should at least have the option of displaying a picture for each tuner I have (or up to 4 recordings at once). Why would you want to do this, sports. Windows Media Center has a pretty neat sports center and things like the NFL Red Zone drive customers to spend money every month. I know you would have to have a pretty beefy computer to display 4 HD videos at once. But I don’t think that has ever stopped people in the past from trying. Sure beats dragging out 4 TVs, especially if you can easily select one to view in full screen mode. Think expose or multiple workspaces but with multiple channels.
• Live Buffers – I have 2 channels and I keep switching between the two. I also have 2 tuners that aren’t doing anything and 2 terabytes of storage. Why is it so hard to keep 2 buffers so that I don’t miss anything while I am watching the other channel? I could understand 3-4 buffers needing some serious disk throughput, but 2 buffers seems absolutely reasonable.
• Search and Browser – These are two ideas taken straight from Google TV but they were the best two ideas Google TV had. All HTPC software should have an easy way to search for shows/music/movies/actors/whatever. I don’t care if it is a button on the remote or just type like webOS, in any case, the remote should be the first thing we go for when trying to look up information while watching TV, not our laptops, tablets, or phones. Oh and the browser can’t suck.
• More appliances – I know this isn’t a plugin per se but I think a lot of HTPC software can’t truly shine because the average person doesn’t know how or want to know how to set it up. Boxee has a great idea with building a box based on their software and focusing on that box for compatibility and features. Sure it isn’t the best seller out there, but it is a good start for them. XBMC, MythTV, MediaPortal, etc. all need to have some sort of all in one TiVo-killer box that is an appliance and not a computer. Just look at the AppleTV and Roku, and their software sucks in comparison to XBMC and MythTV.
htpc, plugins, Thoughts

HTPC

Samsung Chromebook Review

I spent a weekend with the latest Google Chromebook and wanted to update real quick with my impressions. I tried to do as much as possible from the machine so I could really get a feel for what it would be like if it were my only computer. I like some of Chrome OSs ideals, but have never spent “hard time” with one of the Chromebooks to be able to see how it would work for me. I also really wanted to figure out if it would be something I could recommend to my family and friends looking for a cheap notebook.

First of all, the Samsung is not that cheap, $500 is the price of a low end notebook and a high end netbook. It is also right in the sweet spot for tablets and about 1/2 the price of any notebook I’d consider good. So does a $500 web browser live up to it’s expectations? No. Here’s a quick breakdown.

Good:

• Portability – Small and light, but not as small or light as a netbook or tablet.
• User management – There is nothing to manage here, that’s a good thing.
• OS management/updates – Automatic, until there are problems. Trust me, someday, there will be problems.
• Boot/resume time – Good, but only on par with a SSD equipped netbook and less than a tablet.
• Keyboard spacing – Better spacing than a netbook and no need to muck around with onscreen keys. Oh and Dvorak support was a good surprise.

Bad:

• Build quality – Worse than low end netbooks I have used.
• Touchpad – Multitouch scrolling wasn’t as bad as the CR-48, but clicking was a nightmare.
• Missing keys (home, end, f*, delete, super) – With such a terrible touchpad I turned to the keyboard to make up for shortcomings, too bad a lot of the hotkeys I rely on for writing were absent
• missing tools (citrix/rdp, screenshots, storage) – It came down to the fact that I could not do my job with this computer, and that’s a deal breaker.
• Price – As stated above, when the price is around the same as a low end notebook running Windows, something is wrong.
• Display auto brightness – I had multiple occasions when the screen ignored all brightness level I set and did its own thing. Very rough on the eyes.
• Video out/adapter – No extended monitor means, why put video out on the thing at all?

As you can probably see, I wasn’t a fan. I used the Chromebook for 2 solid days before I gave up and went back to my HP 2560p which costs twice as much but does 1,000,000 more things (even run Chrome OS). Battery life on the Chromebook was about the same as my notebook and so was resume/sleep times which are typically two of the selling points of the Chromebook.
Because the Chromebook is not a serious work notebook, if someone asked me what they should get for casual internet browsing and games for ~$500, I’d recommend a TouchPad. If they said they needed a real keyboard, I’d tell them to get the bluetooth keyboard and touchstone. If they still didn’t want that, I’d recommend a netbook.
The Chromebook only makes sense for businesses doing the monthly rental, and if they have a Citrix environment set up so users could get real work done. As my companies Citrix XenDesktop engineer, I look forward to that day, but for my family and friends, never.

HP 8460p Review

HP has been drastically trying to re-brand their computer models for a few cycles now. They have openly stated they want to be Apple and they are starting with trying to make laptops that look like Apple’s Mac computers. Their latest attempt that I was able to use for a while was the 8460p which is a step in the right direction but still a ways off from the hardware and software experience that you can expect with the business forbidden fruit.

The particular model that I was able to use had:

• 14″ 1600×900 screen
• Intel Core i7 2620m 2.7 GHz processor
• 4 GB of RAM
• AMD Radeon HD 6470M video card
• 160 GB Intel SSD

Needless to say the specs on this machine were quite good, but that is to be expected for any new laptop in 2011 now that Intel has released their sandy bridge processor line. To be honest the best part about this laptop was the Intel SSD which was an option on previous models as well.
Some of the less-spec-more-Apple features that HP incorporated into this laptop were the extra large glass trackpad (more on that later), the front indicator lights (redesigned), the bottom access panel, and looks-like-unibody design. Other welcome changes are the return of the hardware volume and wireless buttons, instead of previous infuriating capacitive slider, and new screen latch which is a huge improvement over the 8440p’s joint & knuckle that rarely worked.

Hardware

Because this notebook is a business machine it directly competes with Apple’s MacBook Pro which is why I make so many comparisons. The problem is, the base HP 8460p starts $100 more than the base 13″ MacBook Pro and has the ability to climb up to $3581 with no accessories. This is more than the highest price 13″ MacBook Pro even when you add the $1,200 512 GB SSD. In a world when Google is trying to make their way into business with $30/month laptops, price is a big selling point, and HP is pricing themselves out of the game. For businesses HP can give discounts, better support, and fewer man hours to configure machines, but for end users there is no contest to the Apple store.
While HP is making some progress with making their laptops look and feel just like Apple’s they are still quite a ways off. Not only is this laptop 1/2 thicker than a 13″ MacBook Pro, but the case is still riddled with stickers, which you can’t order without, the bottom casing is still plastic, and the battery life is still lacking despite HP’s claim of 32 hours per charge. Granted I was able to go 3.5-4 hours with the battery, but the MacBook still has better life and the only way I’d even get close to 8-10 hours is with the 9 cell battery which is three times the capacity of the standard.
Disappointingly HP still does not have a backlit keyboard and instead still uses a screen mounted keyboard light which is inadequate for lighting anything especially if your hands are on the keyboard where they are supposed to be. They moved to function keys for their volume controls, but there is no option to change the default F key behavior. Instead you still need to hold the function key to change volume which can be a stretch with one hand and a nuisance with two.

On the plus side, HP added a quick release bottom panel that gets you access to everything with a simple slide of a button. The panel is a great idea for a business minded machine but may lead to security issues if documents are sensitive even if the hard drive is still held in place with three screws. I’m not sure how often the average user needs to swap out their RAM, but for me I would have rather seen this engineering go into a screwed on bottom with larger battery capacity than quick access to something I never need.

Trackpad

The large glass trackpad is a welcome change to HP’s normal minuscule trackpads, and supported two finger scrolling is also a welcome driver update even if it isn’t implemented very well. I can’t blame the hardware for that drawback though because it seems like a Windows 7 limitation that two finger scrolling is so delayed. Even on Mac hardware with Windows 7 installed the two finger scrolling is not as good as it is in OS X or Linux. If you got the touchstyk with your trackpad there is also the option to program all 4 buttons to do their own thing which is completely broken in the driver because the driver requires that each set of keys have a primary click which leaves you with only one button that you have the option to change. The feel of the trackpad is a big step up from the normal plastic coating and the rim on the edge of the pad makes sensing the touchpad better than on a Mac where often I tend to rub the casing next to the touchpad without looking.

Screen

The screen on the HP 8460p was one of the worst screens I have ever looked at on a modern laptop. The color and lines were so washed out it brought me back to the days of my original black and white Gameboy when the batteries were on their last leg but I still refused to change them until I couldn’t see Mario anymore with my 5″ magnifying glass. Things like Gmail’s stars and calendar lines were incomprehensible on the screen no matter what brightness was chosen. Luckily I know from repetition and keyboard shortcuts how to deal with this, but the terrible panel quality showed itself on many occasions. I may be slightly spoiled with the IPS panel used in my Dell monitor, but even my HP 2740p with a not-so-great TN panel, anti-glare, and plastic capacitive top sheet is better than the standard view I got from the 8460p.
I tried updating video drivers, changing resolution, and viewing angles but no matter what the built in display washed out subtle details and color in any application. An external display had no problem compensating but this really should have been addressed before release. This may not be an issue with the default 1366×768 panels but I won’t know that until I get my next model to test.
The ambient light sensor also had a mind of it’s own. HP moved the sensor from the normal bottom of the screen bezel to the top, next to the keyboard light, and even when the sensor was disabled the screen would constantly change brightness depending on what webpage I was viewing. It was very distracting in day to day use but I expect will be fixed with a driver or BIOS update in the future.

Added Software

HP continues to put crapware even on their business laptops and this is not exception. While I would have liked to see a webOS splashtop OS, instead it had the default HP QuickWeb which runs a base OS of Fedora with Skype, HP molested Firefox, and Thunderbird installed. This was the first time I have ever actually thought QuickWeb was marginally useful but that was outweighed by the fact that this machine had an SSD. Boot times to HP QuickWeb was 10 seconds while boot time into Windows was 17 seconds and resume was typically less than 2 seconds. While I do think the splashtop OS has it’s place, particularly the way Sony handles it on the Vaio’s as a low powered media hub, the way HP does it currently is just unnecessary clutter that adds no benefit to the user.
If webOS was the splashtop with a media center app, DVD playback, and access to the internal storage, all while keeping power low and battery life high, this would be a feature worth noting on the box.

Wrap Up

When it comes down to it, the new 8460p is a good laptop that improves on last years 8440p, but there are too many nagging things that make this laptop not consumer friendly and still over priced for what you get. Businesses will still buy this machine without a second thought and it still has better flexibility than its Apple counterparts, but HP is lacking an ecosystem that can rival the bitten fruit and does not add enough software differentiation to stand out among the other PC drones like Dell or Acer.
Here’s to hoping that HP’s next refresh cycle with webOS will add something new to the game.

Why WebOS Will Never Win Mobile

I love webOS. I think the software is absolutely fantastic, the hardware is meh, and the apps are down right embarrassing. Even with a giant pile of cash behind it, webOS will never be the leading mobile platform of choice for consumers unless some things change.

Advertising

In the U.S., advertising is what makes users buy products and typically there is only one source for advertising in mobile. That source is the carriers, and carriers only advertise when they have an exclusive (or at minimum a customized device). The only exception to this is the iPhone in which Apple handles all of the advertising directly. But Apple is an advertising giant that has no equal in the tech world.
HP has proven that they don’t know how to advertise webOS and if their current trends continue with devices, they want to stay away from carrier exclusives as much as possible. Which means carriers won’t take over the advertising for them which means people won’t buy devices.
The only way to fix this is to either make the devices carrier exclusive, allow carriers to heavily customize devices, or figure out how to advertise webOS on your own. I would recommend doing all of the advertising in house but HP needs to figure out a better way to advertise than what they have done in the past.

Hardware

The Pre, Pre Plus, Pre 2, Pre 3, and Veer have all been pretty much identical phones with slightly different specs and in different sizes. The problem with this is the portrait slider is the least common from factor that people buy. The flip phone, candy bar, and slate are by far more common form factors and coming in close 4th is the landscape slider. Way under that is the portrait slider, and by limiting themselves to this form factor they limit themselves to a very small segment of the market. I know they will probably eventually make a slate device but that is where the second half of the hardware problem comes into play.
Not only has HP locked themselves into a certain form factor but they have never had innovative hardware specs or options available on their phones. They have always been trailing the market in hardware specs which makes the phone stable but not groundbreaking for features. Inductive charging and the yet-to-be released tap to share are two areas where HP has tried to be innovative. It is unfortunate that they have been behind on gyroscopes, qHD/retina displays, NFC, front facing cameras, 4G, HDMI video, etc. This lack of innovation keeps people from being excited about their products and keeps HP from being a leader in the mobile space.
To fix there hardware problems they need to take more chances in hardware specs and features, and if they are going to stick with the portrait slider they need to perfect it. After having played with every portrait slider they have made, they still have a long way to go before they reach the usability/functionality where they want to be. BlackBerry hardware has always been better and even the Dells Venue Pro does a better job at making a portrait keyboard usable.

User Experience

When webOS was first announced their user interface blew everything else out of the water. It’s still a slick way to manage apps and to move around the device but other manufacturers have discovered this already and are adjusting accordingly. As you can see in the screenshots, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry QNX, and even Apple iOS are all going to have some sort of card layout to switch apps in the near future. Even Android has software that will let you emulate this functionality to a degree.
So if app switching is going to be essentially the same between every mobile OS the only other innovation is how to use the screen when not in applications. There are essentially only two methods to handle the screen when not in an application. Either clutter the screen with quick information via tiles or widgets, or keep the screen relatively static with app launchers a la iOS, webOS, and BlackBerry OS. WebOS is sticking with the static launcher approach but they have one big thing to get over if they are going to stay in that space, apps.
To fix this they need to be more innovative in their software with cloud computing, allowing 3rd party plugins, and an ecosystem that Android and BlackBerry can’t touch. Apple has an ecosystem that doesn’t let users escape and HP needs something similar if they want to make a consistent user experience. But in order to do that they are going to need to branch out into music and video services or seamlessly allow 3rd parties to tie into those services on the device.

Apps

WebOS has always been behind on apps. It is embarrassing that Windows Phone 7 launched almost two years after webOS and they already have more apps than webOS and they even have more big name apps than webOS which is what the general public cares about. Sure webOS got some apps before Android but now they are forgotten about and are typically the last to get an app behind iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and WP7 if they even get an app at all.
Being behind in apps is not only a problem for users but HP isn’t able to create a consistent app development experience for developers. First was the SDK but that didn’t have enough access to the hardware and was limited in customizability. Next was the PDK which was great for porting objective C apps from iOS and it solved some problems of hardware access. The PDK never seemed to be fully functional and developers who wanted to learn objective C might as well just develop for iOS and leave it at that. The return on investment for webOS porting was not worth developers time because there was nothing a webOS phone could do that an iPhone couldn’t (see hardware) and there weren’t enough users to make it profitable. Now HP is pushing Enyo. Enyo is a mashup of the SDK and PDK which has more hardware access but is easier to develop than objective C. This is great but it is another language that now would require developers to learn a language just for one mobile platform.
The way HP can fix this is to stick with a single development platform and to pay a lot of money to get big businesses to invest in webOS apps. They need to go after the big names like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google, twitter, facebook, etc. They also need to get more 3rd parties building plugins for their music player, pictures, contacts, just type, etc.

Wrap Up

I know webOS has some features that no other mobile OS has and there are rumored developments like continuous computing that would be amazing for mobile devices. But until HP actually delivers on these rumors they are still just cloud dreams and by the time they are out someone else will have already implemented or announced a similar feature.
What do you guys think? Will webOS ever catch up in the mobile space? Putting webOS on HP laptops is a completely different story but unless some things change I don’t see webOS ever being a major player in the mobile space.

A New Way to Skip Commercials

If you have never owned an HTPC with the ability to automatically skip commercials then you probably should stop reading this post right now. Otherwise, carry on and I will explain to you how I think commercial skipping should work.

How Things Work Now

Currently if you want to flag commercials, you need to record the program and then set up your commercial skipping software to evaluate your recording. The flagging software will look for things like black frames, station logos, volume fluctuation, and other differences that can use to know when there is a commercial and when your show is on. Some software will even allow you to set up profiles on a show by show basis if there is a pattern to when they show commercials. This method works fairly well but there are some major drawbacks that will never be addressed with this model.
The flagging isn’t always 100% accurate
Despite getting better all the time, there are still some tricks that stations do that throw off commercial flagging software. One of the worst in my experience is playing the last joke of the show while the credits are rolling.
Commercial flagging takes a while
Not only does the flagging take a while because every frame of the show needs to be analyzed but the process is also very dependent on how fast your CPU is. If you are flagging commercials while trying to watch TV this can slow down other things drastically. While the process can be sped up a bit with software optimization it will never be instantaneous and this will always be a problem.
It is difficult to flag commercials in real time
If you have a fast enough CPU you can do this with some software but in most cases trying to flag commercials in real time will slow down your system and cause either the CPU to be used 100% or your hard drive won’t be able to keep up and your system will start to freeze or stutter during playback. Just imagine if you were trying to watch live TV, while flagging commercials, while another recording was happening with its own commercial flagging running. Your hard drive would be writing two shows while simultaneously reading 2 shows. If you do want to flag commercials in real time it is going to cost you extra money in hardware.
Commercial info doesn’t sync between all devices
If you have more than one TV your second HTPC should have all the information of the first, but what if you want to take that recording on your laptop, phone, or tablet? Most likely the video player on that device won’t support commercial skipping. The only way to get around this is to transcode the video, but if your flagging isn’t 100% accurate you can’t trust removing parts of the show until after you have watched it. And who wants to watch a show, set the flagging information correctly, transcode the show, and then transfer the show to your mobile device so you can enjoy it?

The Solution

So how can we fix the problem? Crowd sourcing. This would work by having people scan their recordings like they currently do, but it would also give them an option to upload their commercial timestamps to a centralized server.
This server will store the show ID, channel ID, commercial times, and location (time zone). I am not sure if all of that information is needed but it seems like it would cover scenarios of different stations cutting up shows for first time airs as well as repeats and also should cover any differences based on location. The more people that upload their timestamps the more reliable the information will be because the backend can compare uploads to see which ones are consistent and which ones may have missed a part of the show.
With this model all of the above problems could be taken care of because you now can trust your commercial flagging 100% and can even flag commercials in real time on a slow machine. Transcoding would be accurate which would let you transcode with confidence and skip commercials on the go.
Because most HTPC software allows for plugins, there would need to be plugins written for the major HTPC software or current software could be made to adapt to this method. In either case, downloading an XML file to be used for commercial skipping is vastly easier to do than creating the video processors that exist currently. With this method, commercial flagging can be cross platform without the need of video analyzers to detect commercials.

How to Make it Free

This model will be sustained by allowing people to upload their own commercial flags in exchange for being able to download commercial flags. The upload does not need to be done immediately after the show airs and this will allow for commercial flagging to take place during downtime without affecting live TV on the HTPC.
If someone does not have a machine capable of flagging commercials, they can purchase commercial flags for a cheap fee, something to help cover server costs.

I don’t have the time, nor the skill to set up this system so I am throwing it out there for anyone to take advantage of and make the HTPC world a better place. If you do create something that can do this, I only ask that you make a MythTV plugin and let me use the service for free.

Life and How to Survive It

Hacker Monthly is a print version of the best Hacker News articles in a visually appealing format. I have recently subscribed to the magazine because I found it interesting and I got the subscription for free (yes, legally). After reading the first two issues I will probably pay for my next year subscription.
In the latest issue I read, there was a convocation speech given by Adrian Tan which I found inspiring. I decided to repost it so that those who may read my blog might be inspired as well.

I must convey my thanks to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give you your Convocation speech. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so, as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way, except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practicing at home during conversations between us.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living, by being disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered to be a great milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will get married. Some of you will enjoy the experience of marriage so much that you will be married many, many times. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.
You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be their customers.
The good news is that they’re wrong.
The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, or even 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live for so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup.
Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live five years longer than
that, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their Convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.
I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.
After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to be average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be average. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.
What you should prepare for, is a mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, and moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.
Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up; No one knows.
What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.
The most important is this: do not work.
Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.
Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. It’s like a rock being ground into sand and dust.
There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.
People will tell you that work ennobles you, and lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remaining sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach to that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.
I like arguing, and I love language.
So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.
So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself from pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.
Find that pursuit that will energize you, consume you and become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or to write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror. I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong that it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. I know it may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It is far more easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the true worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.