On Technology and Vendor Presentations

I hate sitting through vendor technology briefs. At the end, everyone's always asking "so, what'd you think". And, frankly, by the time some vendors' sales team is doing a technology brief, they're doing it about technology that's been around, in one form or another, for years - sometimes decades.

Technology generally tends to be iterative (even the "groundbreaking" stuff isn't all that earth-shaking if you were into the things that lead to it). As such, if you've worked with a given set of technology long enough, you can tend to predict where it's likely to (or at least "might") go. Thus, when it finally gets there - particularly when it finally gets there to the point of (sorta) being "easy" - there's just nothing all that surprising about it. So, it's hard to be impressed.

I kinda feel sorry for the people that are presenting the shiny/nifty/"new" stuff. They're spouting off stuff that is "new" to 90% of the people they present it to. Instead, when they run into me, they're hit with a barrage of "this sounds like a combination of technologies X and y: how does it differ from them and what do they have in common", or "this sounds like it's based on a product you bought X years ago: is it that same product and, if so, what have you changed/improved in that product since you bought it" or "this sounds like a product one of your competitors was peddling 'X' month/years ago: how is your version different (or why is does it appear to be missing a competing feature of the older product)".

Oh well.

Overall, I don't care about shiny/new/etc. At the end of the day, all I really care about is "does it solve a problem I haven't already solved" and/or "does it make it easier to do things I'm already doing". The rest is just window-dressing.

Sales Don'ts

Wasted two+ hours of my life meeting with a vendor for a lunchtime presentation.

The lunch was at a restaurant that, of the dozen or so times I've had to go, I've had an edible meal maybe twice. None of those two occasions coincided with a meeting. I'm pretty sure that Rosa Mexicano is unable to make meals for groups and have the results turn out well. Today, I just skipped th food altogether - which was easy, given that they opted for family-style service and I seemed to be sitting in a passing dead-zone (oh well). So, needless to say, as we were entering the second hour of the meeting, I was beginning to itch for the door so I might go some place and get food.

The seating, overall, was weird. Normally, when we've had meetings at Rosa Mexicano, there's five or six six- to eight-top tables set up and we spread ourselves out amongst them. The vendor's sales team didn't want people staying too far from the action, so they opted to array four tables into a horseshoe arrangement. Now, I get what they were trying to accomplish, but forcing my to sit cheek-by-jowl with others - especially when food's going to be served and even more especially when it results in tons of wasted space in the room - isn't a way to get on my good side. I like having plenty of personal space. I find being crowded to be unsettling and detracts from my ability to attend to things other than the fact that I'm being crowded.

Given who the presentation was for - a group of engineers who worked for an organization that uses closed networks - one wonders why the vendor's sales folks were so keen to crow about the ability to manage their storage with an iPad app. Given our environment, ability to manage devices from a moble phone or tablet just isn't a priority. Given my feeling about Apple, in particular, it quickly became grating how much time was wasted on the topic.

Lastly, I've been dealing with technology for a long time, now. I've used it in a lot of "edge case" and "forward-thinking" scenarios. That means that I've seen a lot of interesting technologies used in a lot of interesting ways. Giving me a presentation that slags on buying component technologies and going the DIY route, and then pushing how great your solution is when all I'm seeing is shit that I've done years' or decades' previous just doesn't sit well. The reason all your crap is, essentially, old hat to me is because the stuff I did was "DIY". Doing things "DIY" means that I don't have to wait five-plus years for some vendor to discover "hey, if we package this into a turn-key bundle, we could sell the hell out of this stuff". So, don't slag on DIY, especially if your solutions are all things I've already seen, played with or done.

I dunno ...the whole thing just rubbed me the wrong way. Yeah, some nifty, potentially useful stuff, but it was all presented so wrong. It was like a flashback to my SGI days: great technology that was poorly-sold.

Scarcity Improves Art

Improvements in technology are a double-edged sword. The shear, raw "horespower" of new technologies make all sorts of things that were difficult, if not impossible, to do in the past trivial. Unfortunately, it also seems that, as effort is removed, it lowers the bar to entry so much that the art is lost. You see it computer programming and you see it in movie-making. Much as "old school" coders were better because of limited resources, I think the same can be said of film-makers.

If modern coders were as efficient with their coding as the guys of the 50s, 60s and 70s were, we would already have truly immersive virtual reality and computers that put HAL 9000 to shame. Probably the only reason that the SciFi writers got things wrong on the timescale was because they were basing projects of technological growth and assuming the same level of skill and artistry would follow it. Unfortunately, not so much.

When I was a kid and first saw movies like Tron, Last Starfighter ...even up through Jurassic Park, it almost seemed like there'd be no need for physical actors within my lifetime. Unfortunately, what I've seen is that the effects have gone from enhancing the story to being the story. And it's sad.

Unexpected Audiences

Ugh...

So, I posted up an article on doing Active Directory based authentication on Linux systems. Specifically, I discussed how to get around issues encountered with using the LikeWise product in a complex (messy) Active Directory environment. I figured that maybe some Linux geek that had to use this product in a complex environment might run into issues such as I had. When I had run into those issues, since it was a "free" version of a commercial product, there was no support to fall back on beyond the product's forums and Google. Neither resource was useful to me. So, in the spirit of "giving back", I wrote my article.

Today, I got an unsolicited email from someone (possibly just a bot) at Centrify. Apparently, they've got web-scrubbers out there either searching for articles on competing products or just the Linux/AD topic, in general. At any rate, they apparently found my article and sent me an email. Basically, it was some sales person trying to elicit interest in their product (Centrify). Since the authentication product chosen wasn't my choice (I just had to get it working outside of the lab), I'm not exactly the best person to spam. I'm just a tech who has to figure out how to make the various steaming piles of technology work.

Now, I get that these guys are trying to move product, and all, but, still... It's a touch creepy when these kinds of things happen. I mean, it's nice to think that someone's reading my tech blog, but it would be much nicer if people were finding it useful and not just as an avenue for trying to sell me stuff.

Oh well: life on the modern web, I suppose.

What the Change?

Vending machines fascinate, vex and confound me. For such a ubiquitous and long-lived technology, vending machines never seem to quite work. Soda machines keep the sodas too warm (or, rarely, dispense a can or bottle of solid ice). Sometimes, you press a button and nothing comes out. Other times, you press a button and something other than what the button is labeled with comes out. The "sold out" light for your preferred item shows up with far too great a frequency.

Perhaps the most confounding and annoying is the coin return. Many times no change is returned. Often, incorrect change is returned. And, even when the amount returned is correct, it's never returned in an ideal mixture.

Case in point, today at work. Our soda machine charges $1.35 for a 20oz bottle of soda. Fortunately, it generally accepts dollar bills. Today was one such lucky day. I put my two dollar bills in and hit the button. I heard the familiar churn and thunking-tumble of the soda's fall (it always sounds like it's falling from the TOP of the machine). I waited a few more seconds to hear if it was going to try to give me my change. Eventually, the coin return mechanism began to churn. It sputterd forth my 65-cents change. However, when I looked in the return slot, I found nothing but nickels. Awesome.

Other times, I have the joy of having to get my money back after it tells me that my soda choice is not available (what happened to the individual "out of selection" lights for each button just staying lit?). Given the price of the sodas, it's generally a case of shoving two dollar bills into the machine. However, when you have to get your money back, instead of simply returning the two dollar bills, it spits back an array of coins. Dammit: I don't need money for the laundromat and I don't need money for parking (many locations around here have switched to centralized parking kiosks that take credit cards - at $2/hr for street parking they kind of have to). So, why does my selection-bereft soda machine insist on giving me coins back for my dollars??

Argh...

Maybe GV transcription would improve if they let us submit vmails with corrected transcriptions?

So, I use Google Voice as a call-direction and answering service. When calls go to voicemail, they get transcribed. Once transcribed, I get an email with the transcription and a link to the  recording of the call. Today, I got an email with the following transcription.

Hey Tom, It's Lauren. Mike. Share want to be there, call me. Sometimes Florida. I completely forgot. So I wasn't sure what that was about anyway, gimme a call back when you get a chance. X X XX X:XX XX. Thanks. Bye. 

Now, if the above doesn't make a lot of sense, it's because it's only slightly close to the audio content of the message. Basically, it's close enough that I can sorta understand how it might be transcribed that way (I can only assume GV's transcription software doesn't have good lexical/contextual engines).

When you get the transcription, there's usually two little buttons at the end asking you to rate whether it was useful or not. If you select the "not" option, they ask if you're willing to submit it to help them improve their service. Oddly, there's not the option for you to submit your own transcription. So, if you do submit it, it's completely a matter of faith that it will be constructively used - that, if someone else actually does listen to it, they'll hear it the same way you did.

Ugh: not a perfect process.

Kinect: One Man's (First) Experience

A long-time friend of mine gave me a Kinect controller for my Xbox as a late Christmas/early birthday present. I didn't get a chance to start playing with it the first day. I guess I have to turn my geek-card in, since I didn't drop my "life" to start messing with it. Then again, having a "life" probably made me forfeit my geek-card long ago.

At any rate, it didn't languish too long - only about thirty-six hours. I couldn't get to it yesterday, when I got home from work, because I was beat and we were going out for the evening, later. I only got chance enough to take it out of its shipping box and place the whole Kinect package/box in my television case before I staggered upstairs for a several-hour nap. After the nap, we got ready to go out, then were gone until around 03:00. I had a Flyers game in Philly that I needed to head out of town for, first thing in the morning, so, I went up to our iceox bedroom and sacked out. After my alarm went off, I staggered downstairs and looked at the still sealed carton. It glared at me as I readied myself for the day's travel and mocked me as I headed out the door. It was still looming in its box when I returned.

Finally, around 22:00, after playing with the pups upon returning home, I set about getting the device set up. I gotta admit, it's a bit nifty. Being able to control my system with my voice and waves of my hands gives kind of a Jedi feeling.That said, it's still very much a new product. It shows signs of being rather cool, but still lacks a lot.

It comes with a video chat functionality. Unfortunately, since it doesn't (yet?) link to services like Skype, you can only video chat with other Kinect owners. There aren't a lot of them right now - at least, not in my circle of friends. So, this isn't likely to be a useful feature any time soon.

While the device is pretty good at figuring out that there's more than one person in the room, it seems to be confused by pets. In fairness, pets are confused by interactions with the Kinect. My cats seem convinced that my waving about is an invitation to them to come be petted. Cats suddenly appearing in what the Kinect sees as control points (my hands) causes the Kinect to sort of lose track of things.

The Kinect also offers voice-control of Xbox functions. Unfortunately, that control isn't well-integrated into the Xbox modules I like to use. Probably doesn't help that the initial Kinect code release doesn't seem to support much more than the most rudimentary of commands. Right now, it's kind of like the dumbest pet you've ever owned or encountered, only dumber. If it were a pet, you'd have to put a hockey helmet on it.Hopefully, as the product matures and code updates come out, it will receive a larger repertoire of spoken commands. For now, the appeal of the voice commands wears off quickly.

At any rate, I ran it through its setup paces and even played some of the games that the device came with. The games are reminiscent of the Wii Fit stuff, without the worry that you'll destroy a controller-board. The Kinect wants a fair amount of motion-space. My living room is barely big enough. I had to move our ottoman out of the way to complete the setup (otherwise, it would eclipse the Kinect's view of my lower legs, causing the Kinect to render my body-position as kneeling in mid-air). While our living room isn't huge, it isn't as small or furniture-restricted as that of many of my friends. So, bear your gaming area's geometry in mind when considering the purchase.

After playing with it a bit, it started to creep me out, a bit. The Kinect has glowing red and green LEDs on the front. When it's active, it puts a little thumbnail of what it "sees" in a little window on your screen. Combine the cold, dead look of the LEDs and the realization that you're being watched, heard and recognized, and you get kind of a 1984/2001 feeling. I gotta think that, as/if these things proliferate, advertisers and hackers alike will want to make use of the Kinects' capabilities. Yeah, you get a nifty gaming interface, but, you realize that you're starting to sell yet another part of your life to "the machine". While the Wii only has a motion sensor bar, the Kinect has eyes and ears and, for the sake of entertainment, you're potentially making yourself observable, each and every time you turn it on.

Oh well...

At any rate, if they ever fully realize the gaming potential and mature the gesture and voice interfaces, it should be pretty cool (imagine in-game fights if you're playing NHL 2K games over Xbox Live!). If Microsoft gets smart and partners with Skype (and/or others), it will be a nifty communication device to keep in touch with far-flung friends and family. For now, it's going to be a "yay, I have one" affair, but will probably only be used, briefly, each time there's a new code update (i.e., to see "what can it do, now?"). Guess I'll also have to test it with each new game I get to see what it's useful for. I'm guessing for most legacy games, it will simply remove the need to have my headset when I want to trash-talk during online gaming (and, I'll have to figure out how to mute that in unobvious ways).

 

Bad Habit or Just Laziness

For a little over five years, I worked as a computer consultant. This job required me to travel away from the house on a regular basis (spending anywhere from 100-200 nights a year in hotels). Being married, I got used to staying in regular touch with my wife via instant messenger. Then, when on an extended trip to Europe, I added video chat to the "keeping in touch" toolset.

I'm no longer a road warrior. In fact, I frequently telecommute. Still, a lot of the daily communications happen via IM and sometimes even video-chat. While our house is by no means large (only 1400SqFt.), my work space and my wife's work spaces are in different areas of the house. Using computer-based communication tools is often the most efficacious method for communicating. I can't decide whether video-chatting is better or worse than IMing someone in the same house. Still, either is preferable to screaming.

Hooray for (Voice) Technology

Today, I received my first phonecall to my laptop. Someone called my GV number which I'd configured to ring through to my laptop's Skype application. I only just today activated the Skype inbound call functionality as I'd just received my Jabra 620 Duo in the post, today.

I've had a Google Voice number for quite some time, now. It seemed the best way to give people phone contact info but control how and when they could actually reach me. And, given the fact that, at any given time, I may be best reachable by either my cell, my home line, or any of four phone lines at work (depending where I am, that day), it was also the most efficient way to have people contact me. I hate having to give people a list of contact info and try to tell them what fallback order to try them in.

Unfortunately, GV's call routing isn't as fine-grained as I'd like. Really, I'd like to be able to set GV to have phones in the call rotation on a day-by-day and hour-by-hour basis. Unfortunately, GV's really designed around the traditional worker rather than the telecommuter. So, you can set your call groups to ring all or some subset of your phone numbers. Then, you can set each of those numbers to have calling windows. My work extensions, I typically set up to "never ring on weekends" and to not ring between 18:00 and 07:00.

Were I scheduled to be at my office desk/extension four the typical five-day workweek, that would be fine. For better or worse, I telecommute 2-3 days a week. Given the level of control GV offers me, my desk extension is frequently ringing when I have no possibility of answering it. This, by itself, wouldn't be bad except that, on the days I'm not in the office, people make use of the empty space. Often times, they also tell people "call me at (my desk phone's number), today". So, when the phone rings, they assume it's for them and pick it up.

What GV really needs is the ability to designate an extension as a "log in" extension.Then, restrict the hours when the phone can be logged in. That way, on the days I'm at my desk, I could call my GV number, log in that extension and then have the "login" auto-expire at the end of the work day.

Oh well. For now, I'll just have GV no longer ring my desk but, instead, ring me on Skype. I'll pretty much always have my laptop when I'm on the clock.

ümi: I Just Don't Get It

So, I'm watching The Mentalist on CBS (don't you judge me!) and a commercial for Cisco's new ümi product came on. Curious, I went to Cisco's site to see what it was about. I clicked on the "what you need page". On the page was the following graphic:

I mean, we've already got a number of free video chat options out there. If I want to use my laptop - be it Windows, Macintosh or Linux - I can use Skype or Google video chat options. Apple joined the game with their FaceTime option on the newest generation of iPhones (and presumably all future hardware offerings). All I need is an iDevice and a cellular subscription. MicroSoft has a video chat offering via their new Kinnect device - all I need is the Kinnect and, presumably, XBox Live gold.
What I don't get is how ümi fits in? I mean, that they're advertising it on TV during regular programming. So, presumably it's aimed at "regular people". And, judging by the price shown in the above graphic, it's meant to be within financial reach of "regular people". But, there's the matter of all those other video offerings. All of those other offerings are an easy sell. I mean, how can you beat the "free" of Skype or Google (and presumably other stuff for your PC)? And, even if you want something that doesn't require your PC, you have offerings from Apple and Microsoft that leverage other multi-use products that have a decent (and rapidly growing) installed base.
So, what's the compelling case for ümi? I mean, it's not free - in fact, it costs me more than my Vonage subscription. Presumably, since the commercial (and the web site) don't mention that they work with any of the previously named incumbent competitors, what's the value proposition. I've got to buy a dedicated-purpose device. I've got to spend $25/mo. on top of my other monthly bills (in my case XBox Live Gold and Vonage) for products I already own and that already allow me to run competing video-chat products. You don't seem to be offering interoperability in an already splintered market - you're just trying to splinter it further. So, "what's up Cisco? Why would I possibly want the ümi?"

Unexpected Tech-Lust

So, my mom's decided that she's wanting to get a bit more techy. At our Thanksgiving visit, she was trying to sort out which of any number of ways to go: actually getting a cell phone (and a smartphone, at that), getting a device to do streaming videos to her TV, getting an E-reader (she really likes the Kindle), updating her laptop, getting a new WiFi router, getting an MP3-player and learning how to rip music from her CD selection.

While we were up for the Thanksgiving trip, I took my mom to here local BestBuy. I had no intentions of her buying anything there, I just wanted to give her some hands-on time and "interview" her to find out what it was she really wanted. We'd discussed converged devices versus purpose-specific devices. Gave her some hands-on time with various examples of purpose-specific and converged devices.

Ultimately, she decided that she was probably going to join the cellphone age with Sprint's HTC EVO and eventually get the Kindle.

She's still trying to decide whether she wants to try video streaming. She apparently got screwed by BestBuy who'd told her that the install service she got was good for a year's worth of free reconfiguration assistance. However, when she went to buy a network-enabled BluRay player that included NetFlix capabilities, GeekSquad (or whatever) told here "that will be (some ungodly fee)" to install it. It turns out, the prior GeekSquad sales guy had told her that she had a year's worth of reconfig, but she'd never got it in writing  (so, she learned the "get it in writing" lesson). Said sales guy no longer worked at the store (gee, I wonder why). So, rather than pay a new install fee, she told them to jam it and got her money back. So, that's a low-order-priority purchase, now. When she gets around to updating her laptop, I'll make sure she gets one with an HDMI jack so she can try NetFlix that way.

At any rate, prior to my Christmas visit, she'd stopped by the Sprint store and got herself a new HTC EVO phone. To Sprint's credit, they tried to convince her that it was too much phone for what she needed (she's not yet into the things the phone's really geared for, but I suspect that she will become so). But, she said, "thanks for not trying to oversell me, but this is what I want" and they sold it to her. Unfortunately, mom didn't know any of the info that they could set the phone up with, so the sales-trainee went ahead and set up her phone to do Google-syncing, but didn't write down any of the info related to the Google account she'd created for my mom (either the password or the password-recovery info). I was able to transfer the synced calendar info to her real Google (Apps) account, but, the contact info was lost.

Unfortunately, going through the setup of the EVO made it glaringly clear just how much I hate my BlackBerry Storm. I now has the serious wanty for a new phone, but, I want to wait till VZW's LTE phones come out before I decide whether to continue with Verizon or to switch to Sprint. Basically, I want a new Android phone, but, need to know I'm not gonna hit data caps.

GV Audio Transcripts

Let me start by saying, "I love Google Voice." If they ever turn it into a commercial product, I'd have no problem paying for it (especially if they added some other features). I mean, the ability to set up screenable call-groups and availability windows and forwarding options is just freaking awesome. The voice-to-text transcription service for voicemails is a nifty idea, too (I say "idea" because, in its current form, it's just "not quite there").

I love GV transcriptions of voicemails - for entertainment more than functional utility. Even the best of translations usually need work. And, when you get a message from someone with an accent, speech impediment or just "mush-mouth", the transcriptions should just say "you're on your own with this one!"

Don't get me wrong, the service makes a game attempt at translations. And, well...

Yesterday, I got a call from someone who I had a hard time understanding. Unfortunately, she was trying to give me directions to a destination, but I didn't have anything to write with, so, she offered to call back and leave a voicemail. It was just as funny a transcript as I was expecting. About the only way it could have been funnier is if GV woulda just done the same thing as in the Minnie the Moocher subtitles in the original Blues Brothers movie.

Life in IT

For better or worse, I've had a moderately successful career in IT. After nearly 15 years of working in the field, I've accrued a certain level seniority relative to my peers. Unfortunately, this means I'm generally in the position of being "the expert" on any number of technologies, tasks, etc. By itself, that isn't the unfortunate part. No, what's unfortunate is that I am generally charged with making advanced technologies more accessible to less experienced people. Even that isn't inherently problematic.

What's problematic is, much as seems to be going on with society at large, IT is being dumbed-down. New IT technologies are still frequently quite complex. Thus, the clueful amongst us get tasked with figuring it out for the less clueful. Unfortunately, what one used to be able to assume as knowledge-baseline, ten years ago, for more junior staff doesn't hold true, today. Truly, it seems like we're expected to be turning over ever more complex technologies to people that are less and less prepared to manage them. Thus, the documents we're tasked with writing requires more and more dumbing down. In many cases, it seems like I'm expected to write things so that a poorly-trained chimp can do them.

Don't get me wrong. For the most part, I like what I do. I get to work with some cool stuff. It just feels like, more and more, those that I am tasked with helping aren't ready (or, worse, particularly interested) in those things I'm tasked with helping them with.

As the years pass, I find that I am forced to more  frequently despair of the lack of expertise present or expected in people who's job it is (or should be) to know what the fuck it is they're doing

Logical EV Buyers

I read C|Net News on a fairly frequent basis. The articles are, generally, fairly concise and "accurate" by current web standards for publishing. They also seem to cover a wide variety of topics of technical interest - green-tech, online privacy, social media, etc.

Yesterday, a news article about GE's intentions to go heavily towards green-tech in their vehicle fleets was featured. The article's headline indicates that it's a move towards electric vehicles, but seems to focus more on hybrids like the Chevy Volt. That said, if EV and other "chicken-or-egg" green-tech propositions are to become reality, efforts like GE's will be necessary.

What's surprised me, at this point, is that a company like ZipCar isn't trying to work with power companies, EV vehicle manufacturers and municipalities to push EV into their own fleets. I mean, ZipCar's primary users are city-dwellers. ZipCars are, when awaiting subscriber-use, parked in specific, reserved spots throughout the service city. Seems almost a perfect context to deploy EVs and EV infrastructure.

Oh well: what do I know (I'm only a casual observer).

New UPS?

Got a call from the wife, today. Apparently, everything plugged into the decade-old UPS was dark. Further, attempts at resetting the UPS failed to result in a return of power to the attached devices. So, I went online and looked around for a new UPS. I found what looked to be a decent one for $193. Unfortunately, when you added in shipping, it would have been $325.

Now, there was once a point in time when I could justify that kind of money for a UPS. Indeed, the UPS that had, apparently, died had once set me back nearly $800. However, it was providing power backup and conditioning for several computers that I was using to perform web, mail and file service out of my basement.

I'm not doing that, any more. Mostly, I just need something to keep my fileserver and my VOIP-stuff online. Thus, spending for a like-kind replacement just doesn't make sense.

So, I left work and dropped by MicroCenter on the way home. Picked up a consumer-grade 1350VA UPS for half that total outlay. Got home, swapped in the new UPS and everything's back online. Sadly, I couldn't leave well enough alone. So, be for tossing it out, I decided to see if I plug it in and see if I could get it working again. Plugged it in, clicked on the startup toggles and it sprang to life. Best I can figure is that, when lugging the 75lbs. beast upstairs, I had hit the circuit-breaker button. At any rate, it's still working, but, I don't feel like lugging it back downstairs and remounting it. So, out in the closet it went. Still just chapped that I wasted time and $160 at MicroCenter when I might not really have needed to.

Lusers

The problem with turning systems over to users is that, invariably and inevitably, they fuck them up. Worse is turning systems (any technology, to be honest) over to privileged users. Unlike regular users, privileged-users have immense powers to fuck things up in ways that normal users don't. And, in the end, because you can't think down to their level, it leaves you scratching your head wondering just what the fuck they did and why it occurred to them to even try to do it that way.

Video Chat Balkanization

So... Apple has FaceTime for their devices. Skype has long had video chat built in. Google's chat's had video capability for a while, now, as have several of the other "legacy" instant messaging platforms. There's other video chat apps out there, too. As far as I know, none of them interoperates with any others.

Previously, when we had this situation with text-based instant messaging, you had to use a tool like Trillian, Gaim, Adium, etc., if you wanted to talk to all your friends and only have to have one piece of software running on your computer. None of these multi-protocol tools was perfect, but it was better than chewing up all your system resources just running chat applications (or, simply not talking to certain people because they weren't in your network).

Video's previously been kind of a fringe thing. But, it's getting pushed, hard, now. Cell phone makers are starting to tout having two cameras (and advertising it in the context of video chat). Companies like FaceBook are teaming up with companies like Skype to gain video capabilities. Video's a lot heavier a resource consumer than text chats are - even just at idle - and that's even if they're coded well. I remember, when I traveled to Germany, last year, that Skype had a huge memory leak. It would end up crippling my Mac if I left it running for any length of time. Even with my current laptop's 8GB of RAM, I can't imagine running more than one system-eating video application, just so I can talk to everyone who might want to video chat. I can't imagine that a Trillian-like tool will be able to run efficiently, if the underlying technologies it's trying to bridge suck. And, unlike with instant messaging where your "reduced experience" might mean your emoticons don't quite show up correctly on your friend's computer. Big deal. With video, I gotta think that "reduced experience" may equate to "unusable," or, at the very least, "painful".

It seems that Internet-related technology penetration is reaching a threshold where we need to start thinking vendor-neutral at the core of new communication tools. Otherwise, it's going to reach a state where (using an older tech for comparison), you can't talk to someone because you don't have the right kind of phone; won't be able to watch broadcast TV because you don't have the right kind of TV. If we're going to debate things like "network neutrality", we gotta start thinking about making it so that all new communications technologies are "open" (even if doing so requires the gun-point of legislation to ensure).

And, for the record, I don't really want generalized video chat. To me, it has its uses, but not really as an every-day kind of tool. It was great to have when work separated me from my wife for days at a time, but I wouldn't have used it "just to chat" with someone I can see every day. I don't even like video conference calls. I don't want to have to worry about how I or my surroundings look every time the damned "vid" rings. But, if I'm going to be forced down this path, I don't want to have closed communication technologies forcing me to choose who I can talk to.

 

Self Documentation

I think people underestimate the potential longevity of "social media". The fail to see the forest for the trees. They see that specific sites have popularity lifecycles (e.g. LiveJournal and MySpace) but fail to see the overall trends or place them within the larger historical context. Simply put, people have a compulsion to document their lives. People have a compulsion to be social. All that FaceBook, BlogSpot, Twitter and the like are is an extension of these compulsions.

Our primitive ancestors drew pictograms and glyphs on cavewalls.

Clans, tribes and communities sat around communal fires telling stories of their daily exploits and of their ancestors epics and sagas.

People who have had the capability of recording their thoughts in writing have kept journals, exchanged letters or otherwise recorded their lives and their thoughts for themselves and, in some cases, posterity. How many history shows or articles have you seen that have centered around uncovering the lost journals, letters, etc. of the famous, infamous and the "Average Joe"?

Granted, the mid/late 20th century saw a wane in personal writing. It saw the beginning of the decline of the personal letter and the diary. But, it also saw a proliferation of camera ownership. "Regular people" had anything from big, fancy, professional rigs down through Polaroids and disposable cameras. These days, though film seems to be dying, it's replaced by digital cameras with ever more MegaPixels - and cameras are ubiquitous on converged devices like cell phones.

Cell phones, themselves, are just another extension of this desire to record and share. How many people walking down the street, absorbed in their phones, are doing anything more than sharing their lives with the people on the other end of the line. Yes, they were originally marketed towards business people needing to make work-related calls, but that's such a small portion of what they're used for any more.

So, while Vox may die and while MySpace, LiveJournal, etc. may all lose popularity, the underlying need will continue. So long as there is someone or something to fulfill that need in a way that's relevant to the consumers of that time period, there will be successful providers of those outlets.

So, yeah, FaceBook may be a passing fad, but the larger trend is unlikely to fade while humans have the time, capability and inclination to share. Until such point as the fundamental nature of humans change (i.e., we evolve to be non-social beings or simply die off), there will be a place for some equivalent to "social media".

Double-Tap

There are contexts or places where double-tap is fine, nice or, at the very least, just a "damned fine idea". Such a context is in the dispatching of zombies. However, when it comes to my laptop's touchpad? Not so much. I hate accidentally changing apps, clicking a link, etc. just because the OS decided that my finger stuttered enough on a slide to interpret it as "Oh! He wanted to click that!". Fmeh. What next: reduction/elimination of touch-pad buttons?

What I Want in My Next Cell Phone

Ok, I'm not quite a conspiracy nut, but, I do like my privacy. I want to know that, if I choose to store sensitive things on my cell phone - either in its memory or on an inserted memory card - I can know that the data is safe. I want it safe from pranksters. I want it safe from device thieves. I want it safe from curious law enforcement types that don't have a properly executed warrant. Given the litany of headlines, I think that I'm probably in greatest danger from "legal" abuse of my privacy than I am from people that don't have a badge.

A number of phones have the ability to remote-wipe data. Some phones also have the ability to set it up such that, if someone fails to guess the password some configurable number of times, the phone will auto-nuke. However, I haven't really seen any phone makers addressing the issue of someone simply ganking the memory card from your phone and reading it in another device. For that, you need to protect the data on the memory card, itself. Two possible options for that seem workable: encryption of the entire SD card (or a "partition" on it) using a cross-platform filesystem (e.g., ECryptFS); individual encryption of each file stored on the card (preferably including the ability to set this as the default storage option).

I'd also like to see a phone that I can use as a pure data device. At this stage of the game, it seems kind of pointless for smart phones to require a voice plan. Given a sufficiently sized data plan, a cell device with a good, native SIP application would obviate the need for a voice plan. It's all just data, any way. Why not go the next logical step. Hell, some carriers already give you the ability to use Skype, but it's typically crippled to prevent its use for "local calls". Other than to protect the voice-plan model, what the fuck is the point of that?

As a bonus of going "data-only", if the person I'm talking to and I are both using SIP devices, we can encrypt the channel if we want to. I'm sure there's plenty of businesses out there that would appreciate the corporate espionage deterrent such a capability would offer. Would also be nice to know that some info-thief out there can't just crack the local cell tower and sniff "interesting conversations." In the end, it's not that I have anything to hide, but it is the principle of things. It was always my understanding that privacy - the right to be secure in ones own possessions, property and communications - was one of the founding principals of my country. Reading headlines, lately, seems to indicate that, unless one goes to extra lengths to assert a desire for privacy, we no longer have "a reasonable expectation of privacy" when we participate in technology.

There's also some things that I don't really want in my next phone. When people know you have certain capabilities - whether you want to use them or not - there easily becomes the expectation that you'll use them. My phone is for my benefit. If it benefits others, that's nice, but it ain't why I'm buying myself a piece of technology.

For starters, I don't need to have two cameras or a video-phone application on my phone. The idea - and even the ability - to have video phones has been around for a long time. It's never taken off. I'd wager that a significant reason for this not happening, previously, is, in large part, due to the fact that, often times, it's nice to NOT have to worry what you look like when you're taking a phone call. You can be damned sure that if you wake my happy ass up at oh-dark-thirty, I ain't going to want to have a video chat. Fuck that. If I really want to face-time with you, I'll go to my computer and fire up Skype (or similar). Even better, I'll figure out where we can meet and talk face-to-face. Just assume that if I ain't standing in front of you, it's because I don't want a face-to-face (I'm not really a fan of the formal video teleconferencing stuff at work, either, so...). And, if I do, but geography's the issue, figure that I'll find some way that doesn't involve my handset. Besides, given the screen size on a practical handset, it's not like I'm going to be doing presentations. So, why have it and the expectation of its use?

I also don't really need the ability to stream or watch video. I have a widescreen HD TV in my living room for a reason: I like to actually be able to see things. Watching movies on a screen smaller than the display on my car's GPS just seems stupid.

Streaming music is one of those "iffy" things. As a stand-alone device, cell phones eat batteries quickly enough. Add in trying to treat it as a music outlet, and that battery's gonna die quick. I don't particularly want to not have my phone usable because I killed the batteries on music. It's part of why, when I was traveling and wanted music, I carried a cellphone and a music device, even though my phone had room for several GB of music. That said, it could be useful in my car: I could have the phone in a charger-dock, obviating the need for things like Sirius/XM and I wouldn't have to subject myself to the audio-crime that is broadcast radio.

Meh... In some ways, it seems like cell phones are becoming like office productivity software. There's really only so much useful stuff you can add to something before it becomes pointless featurism (this was always why I was a vi guy and not an EMACS guy). I can see the value of a lot of the convergence stuff, but I just don't get the utter lack of the personal security/privacy components.