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February 7, 2010

Nokia BH-905 review

Bluetooth headsets.

You know, those things that somehow always manage to have a blinking blue led somewhere. Those things that when worn in public, make you look exactly as you would had you actually had a blue tooth.

Not necessarily.

It turns out that not all bluetooth headsets are created equal. Some may not even be that strange in-your-ear-but-not-quite, over-your-cheek-but-not-close-enough-to-your-mouth type of contraptions.

No, no, some may look from afar as a high-end, overhead, professional, normal, wired, headset.

And cost as much as a Nokia E55. And more than the E52, 5800 and almost as much as the E75 (prices based on nokia.co.uk).

Gulp.

Yes, ladies and gents, the BH-905.

No pix, no vids, no gimmicks.

That's how I roll.

So, do I like it?

Yes.

Why?

It's unbelievably comfortable. Seriously. Everything is cushioned. After a minute, you start to not feel it anymore. That in great contrast to a lot of over-the-head headsets, which you *start* to notice and feel after a minute and have to take off after 30. This? 4 hours? OMG, has it really been so much? I must get back to work! :)

The fact that in the beginning you always have to read the L and R designations does take a little getting used to. You have to do this, since the way it's designed means you'll instinctively want to wear it the other way around, if you've ever worn another over-the-head pair before. This design does seem strange at first, but adds a lot to the overall comfort of wearing it.

The sound quality is phenomenal for a bluetooth headset. What I mean, is that when connected via bluetooth (it also comes with all the cables and adapters you'll ever need if you want to use it as a wired headset, including an airplane adapter -neat), it does take you a while to realize that you're listening to music via a wireless connection.

The bass is just a little bit thinner than I like it, but for 99% of the people, this won't be noticeable (it also depends highly on what music genres you're into, mind). Other than that, the audio quality is the same, no matter which connection method you choose.

I haven't done any scientific tests on battery life, but it was more than enough for me. Best estimate? A few hours. Seriously, I didn't pay attention to that at all. Sorry, it's a bit hard to, when you're listening to music in such high quality. Also nice is that it charges via standard Nokia 2mm jack, which means, for example, that I charged it with my N95's charger.

The volume levels on this thing seem illegal for the EU, but trust me, that's an amazing thing, not a bad one. Your eardrums will surrender long before you've maxed this thing out.

The buttons are all big and nicely placed, it will take you less than a day to get used to their positions. You can skip and repeat tracks from the headset. Tested this even with 3rd-party music players on Symbian, and it works.

It also features a noise cancellation switch, you can use this mode if you so wish or if you're in a very loud environment. It works, but does create an odd feeling of pressure in your ears. Not unbearable by any means, and, again, it is a switch. You also notice its effect a lot less when in loud environments.

I've had long phone conversations from this, and have only let the other parties know I was on a headset at the end of each conversation. No one had noticed it. And I say this in all seriousness and honesty. If you read a lot of headset reviews, you'll notice that almost all of them contain this phrase, and trust me, most of the times, it just isn't true. The BH-905 is helped in achieving this feat by its external mics, which also help with the noise cancellation noted above, but they also 'record' ambient noise when you're talking and filter it out. All very well.

So do I recommend you run out and buy one?

As much as I'd like to, no.

See, there are a few things I really can't agree with here.

First off, the case. It comes with a case. Ok, you say. Well, yes. I don't know if it actually is leather, but it sure feels like it. And it's the only thing in the box. Yes, it's that big. Very useful for travelling, indeed. You can store your headset, charger and all the cables and adapters it comes with in there. Because, they all actually come in there.

You can also say goodbye to a lot of carry-on baggage space.

This does seem like a little bit of overkill to me. And as good as it looks, it does feel like it adds a lot to the price.

Which brings me to the BH-905's biggest shortcoming: the price. I mean seriously... It's a headset. A good one, yes. A perfect one? Not without being able to pair to multiple devices at the same time. Not in my book. But anyway, a very good one.

Still, I'd rather buy an E55. Or save a hundred more pounds and get the N86.

You do whatever you want. I mean, if you have the money to spare, by all means, go get it.

Then there's also the minor annoyance of having the 2mm charging jack and the 2.5mm jack used for connecting the audio cable (if you so wish) in the exact same place on the two different earpieces. Since there's only a .5mm diameter difference between them, it will take some getting used to which is which.

Bluetooth transmission of music has come a long way. And bluetooth headsets have come a long way too. They're not quite at the 'prosumer' level of wired headsets, audio-quality-wise, but for many use cases, close enough. Yet paying this much of a premium (for it being wireless? for the case? your guess is as good as mine!) doesn't make much sense to me.

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February 7, 2010

Mobile World Congress 2010: predictions

Next week there's this little annual gathering in Barcelona. I hear it has something to do with mobile phones.

As usual, I won't be there. I know, you're weeping tears of sorrow at this point. 
Also as usual, I'll be here (well, mostly on Twitter these days) reporting on stuff that matters. On the bits that are actually interesting because of the content, not the number of retweets they already have. You know, lame stuff.
I'll try to not get Twitter upset by posting more than a certain number of tweets per hour. Seriously, the number is secret. I got a forced 15-minute chill-out period from Twitter last year during Nokia World. And no, I don't know that his has happened to anyone who actually attended that event. I guess you do focus better from home.

Predictions?

Microsoft will announce something something 7. Or at least show you a nice PowerPoint of it. Cross-marketing and all that. Will they blow that too? Hard to tell. Rumors are coming in that they will, but I don't usually care about rumors. If I did, the iPad would have been one of the major disappointments of this generation of this decade.

I think Steve (not God, the other, more shouty Steve) will wave bye-bye at the end of this fiscal year (hint: that's next year) if they blow this too. Or at least he should. I'm still hoping that instead of blowing it, they'll blow our minds, but... I don't know. Just pure hope at this point. Anyway, it might not even matter to us outside the US, if they decide to pull a Zune HD with it.

The worse it is, the longer my post about it will be, so stay tuned and watch out. Hopefully for nothing.

Nokia won't be announcing any new phones at MWC this year, some very well-documented (and way better monetized than mine) blog said.

And it's oh so very true. Well, I guess they would have announced new phones at MWC if Samsung, LG or anyone else would have lent Nokia the space to do so.

The reason Nokia will, indeed, not be announcing any new stuff whatsoever at MWC is... because they won't be there. At all. They're across the road. You can wave if you want.

Strange, this? Well, yeah, a little bit. But awesome in a very cool way. I have no idea what their real reason is, since just costs sounds too thin for me, but hey...watch out when you do cross that street!

C-series. My guess? C stands for Competitively priced. Which is PR speak for cheap. The first sub-100 euro smartphone? One can dream. 
There also seems to be a successor to the E63 prepped. Some say it will also be a C. Good call in my opinion. Teenagers shouldn't be scared off by the Enterprise designation (not that they're not into Blackberries, at least in the UK, apparently...).

A superphone? A megaphone? :D

Well, we may see the N87. In press renderings, at least (no, those can't possibly qualify to be named pictures, sorry).

Am I excited?

I will next be excited about a Symbian-powered Nokia smartphone when they realize that 256MB of RAM is not that much more expensive for them to buy than 128MB. And Symbian^1^2^3 (had to do that) needs at least 256. Sorry. True.

Maemo?

It's busy killing stuff. Will be right back. In Q3. Or Q4. With Qt. Nothing we don't already know. I am hoping that Nokia got the "it's not cool to announce something 6-9 months before its general availability" clue. If not, N920 it is. Or whatever else they decide on calling it. Excited? If the press documents state the following, black on white : portrait mode fully integrated.

Samsung will do their Bada thing, which sounds like it will feature full Bing integration (I know, easy puns...). A match made in...well, I don't know where. Another smartphone OS? If Apple gets away with being control-freaks, that doesn't really mean everyone should copy that. 

Other than that, I'm sure Samsung will hit us with dozens of new devices, not one of them that you'll remember 5 minutes after you first heard about it. That does remind me of another company's MO of years past... And, as in the case of Nokia (it was them I was referring to), Samsung will sell loads of these devices, of that I'm sure. It's just not the thing you get excited about. And they won't catch Nokia in number of devices sold anytime soon anyway, so next.

Wait, that's all I've got. I'm sure we'll have some interesting stuff from other manufacturers, but we'll have to wait and see. I would however like to see a more aggressive approach from Huawei and ZTE. Now that MediaTek cleared its Qualcomm issues (is that a trend lately? Or are Qualcomm's lawyers just getting soft?), there's no reason not to.

Oh. And I'd also like a Tegra2 demo, Nvidia. And anyone (else) who manages to show a working device fitted with a Cortex A9 gets a free blog post.

The countdown can begin then. One week.

PS: Did you notice I forgot to mention anything about SonyEricsson or Android? There's a reason for that.

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September 5, 2009

getting access to Google Wave

This post is outdated.


Google Wave is the best thing since sliced bread.
Well, it may become the best thing since email. That remains to be seen, however its potential is enormous. If you don't yet know about Google Wave, watch this (lengthy) video of its introduction at Google I/O:


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Being such a complex proposition, it really is best described in the above video. Anyway a lot better than I ever could.

Now, intro over, on to what I wanted to write about.

You may know this already.
But just going to wave.google.com and clicking on Let me know when it's ready will not get you access to Wave before September 30th. And even then, they will only give out 100,000 invites to people who sign up there.

Want to get Wave sooner?
Do this.

Go here and complete ALL the fields in the form. If you're not a developer or don't plan on developing for Wave, please keep in mind that entering information that is at least plausible into the form may help you a lot.

Then wait patiently. My invite came in 8 days. It may be less, it may be more in your case. Or you may not even get one at all. But your chances of getting access this way are a lot bigger than the 'usual' way. Trust me on that one, ok?

And when you do have access, let's try it together. I'm bvlad over there (you might need to append "@wavesandbox.com" to my username to be able to add me as your contact).

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September 1, 2009

Brilliant? Advertisers Pay To Drive Traffic From One Place On Facebook To Another Place On Facebook

And all I can think is, how did these guys manage to set up a system where people pay to drive traffic from one place on Facebook to another place on Facebook? Even Google hasn’t managed to figure that one out yet. I’ve known they (and MySpace) have done this since launching their ad platforms, but it never really hit home until today how brilliant this all is.
via techcrunch.com

All I can think is, people used to (I hope it isn't still happening) pay for "land" on the Moon (or was it Mars?). People will pay for anything, if said anything is properly marketed.

"Brilliant" as this may be for Facebook, I can't help but wonder how brilliant it is for those actually forking the cash for this.

I love the internet too (that's how the linked post ends).
And BananaBucks.

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August 31, 2009

is Facebook pulling a MySpace?

Somewhere, somehow, Facebook started evolving into something that wasn’t very desirable. You knew MySpace was going downhill when you logged on one day and saw that you had a friend request from a bottle of Pepsi, or a can of Axe deodorant. With Facebook, it was logging on one day and seeing your mom, and your mom’s friends, trying to become your friend that may have signaled something weird was happening. For others it was the Facebook applications that sprang out of nowhere and quickly turned people’s profiles back into the hideous malformed websites that we all used to remember as MySpace profiles. For me, it was the realization that I was interacting with all my friends in a highly efficient manner that made it just as easy to see what my best friend was doing, as someone who I don’t even talk to, yet accepted their friend request anyway as a gesture of good will.
via intomobile.com

I never quite 'got' Facebook. I still don't.
I think the UI is overly complicated, thus the UX is horrible. I spend most of my time there (which amounts to 10 minutes every two weeks) trying to figure out what goes where, why is that there, where are the settings for that, are there even any settings for that...

To me, it's confusing.

Yet to 'normal people', you know, the people who haven't ever heard of Jaiku, it seems to work. I have seen numerous friends of mine who normally "visit" the web maybe 10 minutes a month spend hours a day on Facebook.

And watching what they do, I believe the strength of Facebook for the average person is in photos. The ease of use (in that respect only!), the tagging of people... And people (apparently) very much enjoy peeking into other people's lives via photographs.

It's like that real-life fascination with being presented photo albums. I never, ever understood this, but I saw almost everyone around me quite enjoy the experience.

It could still have been a place for me to hang out. In time, I would have got past all the UI quirks, and maybe I would have enjoyed some good conversations over there, especially since it's a lot better at handling those than the media darling Twitter. But good conversations can't take place there.

Because the thing that started Facebook's transformation into something that wasn't very desirable is, in my opinion, apps.

They're silly, useless time wasters. And I don't think anyone actually enjoys them. Or at least I hope so. These start lowering the value of the overall experience, they might even soft-spam (I invented that right now!) your notifications area... it's all downhill from there.

It's a pity. I think Facebook would have been an interesting place to connect to less geeky friends. IF it had no apps.

But this is just my take. Read Stefan's, linked above, because it focuses on an entirely different perspective. Which is very interesting and worthy of a read.

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August 30, 2009

calling me is about you. commenting on my blog is about me

These are two things I've wanted to write about for a long while.

Calling

Making a phone call is all about the person making the call, usually. Think about it.
Unless I've explicitly asked you to call me at a given time, what you're doing by calling (and, of course, expecting an answer) is imposing yourself on my time. No matter what I'm doing, it's good social etiquette to pick up the phone and then have a conversation, based on your leads, your needs and your initial desire to have said conversation.

It's all about you in this case. You want to talk to me now. And I'm inclined to oblige. Because you wanted it.

The culprit here? Synchronicity. I have to be "at the other end of the line" for a phone conversation to be possible. We are constrained by synchronicity, and thankfully we're beginning to very slowly realize this (in, for example, watching TV vs. TiVo-ing). We have been constrained by this for ages, usually because of the technology we've been using in itself. TV was live because there was no other technical possibility.

Back to phone conversations, the rise of SMS can, in perhaps a small part, be (also) attributed to its asynchronous nature. I don't have to read your SMS the instant it arrives, and I can reply when I want to.

Asynchronous media is the future. There's no doubt about it in my mind. I just hope it would also be more of the present.

Comments

On the other hand, the fact that you comment on my blog, in spite of what all the SEO, Social Media, and other types of "experts" tell you, is useless to you. Unless you're a troll with no life whatsoever, what could the value of a comment possibly be for you?

I'll tell you what it is for me. The more comments people see, the more they are inclined to comment. Which is good, especially now that we're all about bringing comments back to blogs. But why?

Why should all the comments ever made on one of my posts reside beneath that post on my blog?

So I can brag.

And what, you think commenting will help you? How? Do you actually think that a lot of people will click on your blog's link embedded in your commenting username? They won't. No one bothers to. You think I will notice you?

Well, I might. But I'll notice the fact that you're useful to me. That's all. Good job, keep commenting and driving traffic to my blog. Oh, you have a blog too? Sorry, I'm so busy being an influential blogger, I just don't have the time to check it out. But I'm sure it's great.

Wake up.

I'm not against commenting. I would just like to set the record straight on this. If you comment here, you're doing me a favor. And probably getting absolutely nothing in return.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:
These are general ideas. I have only used the first person because I thought it would help to better communicate my points.

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August 30, 2009

the "oh no" post

I want to write.

I need to write.

I need to write something to get some stuff off my chest, if that's even the correct phrase. Because it has been building up to a certain level. That of the throat, I guess.

So, there's been some news in the tech world and the mobile tech world.

I will destroy it all here, in this post.

But first. There really needs to be a mobile/tech podcast with people who actually know what they're talking about on it. There are a few of those around, but they're usually very niched (no idea if that's a word, but I hope you get the point) - to, say, just a certain OS -or company. Or something like that. Which is fine, they provide quality content, but a lot of time less context than I would like.

I have this dream, of getting together with a few people I've noticed (mainly on Twitter and Friendfeed), people whose writings I enjoy reading and opinions I may agree or disagree with, but all people who cherish fact, not marketing stunt-fiction. Getting together for a podcast. That should cover mobile and general tech. No reason to exclude anything. Just another general thing no one will listen to.
But a thing that I can point people to for my opinions on stuff. And sometimes, even for facts on stuff.

Because this is getting out of control.

Of course, that was just a dream I was telling you about, it will probably never happen.

Back to news.

Nokia announced the much-leaked (by them, make no mistake about this) N900 and the not-leaked-at-all Booklet 3G netbook.

So let's see. N900. I wrote a couple of lines about it here.
Since then, it's become official. So what? Nothing new. Except we now have semi-final pricing, at 600 euros including taxes contract-free.

People are getting excited about this.
Let me say that again: people are getting excited about this.

Why?
Because it doesn't run Symbian.

See, people hate Symbian right now. Because it's not new. And you can barely love something that isn't new. You can, however unconditionally love anything that is new. That's the paradigm here.

When you read "people", please read "bloggers", by the way. Normal people have no clue what the N900 is. And they probably will continue to have no clue into November.

So Symbian is old and ugly, and people love to whine. This, I don't know why. But they do.

So OMG this Maemo thing is great and beautiful and...
You get the point.

But this Maemo thing is not new. It's been on 4 devices already (the 770, the N800, the N810 and the N810 WiMax edition). This is version 5 (FIVE) of this presumably new thing. Five.

This is not Nokia's iPhone killer, because such a thing did not, does not, will not and should never exist. This is their next Internet Tablet. It's just that it has become a phone too.

That really is all. Since the 770, people have been complaining (see a pattern yet?) about the lack of phone radios in the tablet line. So, Nokia gave you phone radios. And a 2007 camera. By that, I mean the fact that the N95's camera, probably the most re-used phone camera module in history, has been brought to the tablet line. Which would have been wonderful, well, in 2007. Now it's just 'meh', as some people would say.

So you get your camera and your phone. And naturally, your 'pretty' UI. And a faster processor, let's not forget. What else? Whatever it is, all of these improvements, are, in Nokia's thinking, worth about 200 euros. Which is the approximate price increase compared to the N810's release price.

Go. Buy 10. Heck, buy 20 for me too. Because I won't be buying any.

It is funny in a way. The tablet line was probably, over the years, one of the most misunderstood and under-hyped efforts in Nokia's history. Until now, when they change a few things here and there, and all of a sudden this is the next best thing since sliced bread.

It's not. It is a capable smartphone, with loads of apps, a Linux-based OS which is very easy to develop for, and all that. But, funny, at this price point, its niche will continue to be that exact same niche of the other tablets: some geeks.

Some geeks bought 770s, N800s, N810s because no one except them could figure out what these devices were meant for.

And some geeks will buy the N900 because, well, it's first and foremost the best tablet yet, and also because they think this is Nokia's great comeback. It isn't. There's nothing to come back from. Sorry. Not yet, at least.

My view of the mobile world? The iPhone should absolutely dominate the mid-tier of the market. It's made for that. Can't compete on price with the Nokia 1209s of the world. But it's usable by grandma. That's its only USP. Oh, and no porn means grandma won't be offended either.

But geeks, power users, digerati, the knowledgeable in the tech world, using iPhones? That is a joke. They're the exact people that should appreciate freedom of choice. Supposedly, these people know enough about technology that they don't need a curated application store where they only get what the Master says they can. Such people should know how to multi-task. And their devices should too. Stuff like that.

LMAO. Really.

How did this happen? I honestly have no idea.

Steve Jobs? I think he's leading a religion more than a company, if I judge by the type of irrational behaviour of his fans.

If Apple had launched a 20mm-thin, 1.25kg, 12 hour battery life, aluminum chassis, glass HD display netbook...

But they didn't. Even though that sort of rumor was all the rage before the rumor-focus shifted to a tablet.

Nokia launched said spec netbook. And nobody cares.
Nokia announced what has great potential to become the best selling netbook, and nobody cares.

Why best selling?
Because their strength is in their distribution. Through operators, no less. So if you'll see the Nokia netbook for free on a 24-month mobile Internet contract in time for Christmas, will you buy it?
And by the way, it's beautiful.

If you haven't bought a netbook already, or even if you have last year and are thinking of a change, you'll buy it. Well, you'll buy the Internet contract. Trust me.

Of course, this is all a hunch. Backed by hard data, but still a hunch. Nokia can still fuck this up. They can still decide to sell it only un-subsidized for $700. And that won't work.

Not for them. But strip that Nokia logo off it, put an Apple on, leave the specs unchanged, price too...
Guess what the next best thing in computing just became?

Kudos to Apple's marketing department for sleeping throughout the past few months. I mean that. They don't have to do anything at all. The fans will do it for them. That's exceptional.

For Apple. See, they're making the money off of you, my dear fanboys. And you're working for Apple, for free.

Fun!

More info on the Booklet 3G (horrible brand, imho) will be available starting September 2nd. I hope they will do what they have to. It won't matter to the Apple-tablet-rumor tech-bloggers, but it will to the, you know, real world.

If you think this is another Apple-bash, turn your Mac off. Now. And get some air. 

Oxygen level back to normal? Good. Let's go on.

I'm a big fan of podcasting, podcasts, vidcasts, netcasts and everything that ends in "casts" really. And is on the internets. And is somehow connected to new technology.
So I listen to a lot of podcasts and I try to watch a lot of -casts. Live is best.

Or should I say, that is how I was. I'm beginning to think I need to rethink this whole thing.

Let's take the leading tech podcasts of this world. I won't name names, because then people will whine for yet another reason. 

On each episode, I can spot at least 2 (two) instances when the leading 'voices' in the tech world state things as fact when they in fact aren't. Or when said voices are just wrong. Or they get confused about things they cover. You know, things they make a living out of.
Or, my favourite, they just don't know. And say this out loud like it's some kind of a prize they just won.

Sick. And tired.

Yes, I am now whining. Congrats to you who first spotted that I hate whiners but really, what is it I'm doing now...
You will be awarded an award. And thus, you shall be award winning from this point on.

And the "just don't listen and stop writing this post now" argument? Well, I care. I want to continue to listen. I want it not to be a waste of time, though. I want people to have opinions based on facts. I want to hear those opinions, because, well, I enjoy that. In real life and in virtual internet life.

But I also want these people to get out of Silicon Valley more. And see the world. Perhaps even understand it. I don't know.

Where are all the European tech geeks? And by European, I mean the continent, not necessarily the EU. And not necessarily Great Britain, although if I think about it, there aren't so many there either. Again, I don't mean niche-type affairs. The generalist blogs, bloggers, people of influence. Where are you?

Do you even speak English? If not, are you insane? If yes, then where's the tech podcast that looks at things from the European perspective? Where's that? 

When's the last time you've heard of a startup that's not based in the US or UK? I can tell you, this year, I think I've heard of only one. Remarkable, I mean.

Out of the hundreds of millions of Europeans, nobody is doing anything in tech except in the UK? WHY?

Perhaps there are answers to all of these questions and I have just been ignorant. Please show me the way then. The light, if you will.

And now, Twitter.

Quick thoughts. Robert Scoble needed pageviews. Not for money, but to boost his status as an online celebrity. Ashton Kutcher may be coming to Rackspace (rumor).

Is Twitter worth a gazillion billion? Twitter isn't worth anything right now, and we all know that. All this babble is about projections of future worth based on wishful thinking and, in some cases, disappointment with FriendFeed.

On to its brevity. Yes, that's a strategic asset of value. But 140 characters is insane, stupid and dumb. First of all it's dumb that anyone running a tech company in this century can claim that the limit of one SMS is 140 characters. It's not. It's 160. Then, it's stupid that people have not yet heard of concatenated SMS. And I don't care about SMS.

But anyway, my perfect Twitter limit? 160 characters, but links aren't counted. Nor are @usernames.
With that, I think we could manage. And what about SMS users? What about them? They'll just have to cram everything up into 160 characters. Including my above exclusions. One small difference between SMS use and anything else but this can boost that insane projected value of Twitter by a lot.

One last thing about Twitter: stop saying it's about conversations. It isn't. Stop dreaming. It has always been about self-promotion. It doesn't matter if you're an average Joe or some corporation, that's its best value.

This isn't a conversation:
user1: I just used this tool it's cool.
user2: @user1 Wow, yeah, I do too, very cool.
user1: @user2 Yeah, it is.
user2: @user1 Definitely.

And my hunch is that my example above is actually longer than your average Twitter "conversation".
You can't have a conversation based on multiple 140-character chunks. Sorry. Call it whatever you want, just not this.

This has been an experiment.
One post to cover a lot of things.
Less pageviews, less Google juice, less AdSense dollars or BananaBucks(TM).
I was aiming for something as close as possible to a stream of consciousness.
It's a written podcast.
With just one guy talking/writing.
Because hearing that is crap. Reading it might not have been (but who really knows, you're not still reading, are you?)
I might just go on with this experiment and then brand it something nice, like Lifestrea... sorry, something else. I hear that's already hype...sorry, taken.
Till then... thanks for reading.

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July 16, 2009

another clueless chap weighs in on something instead of shutting up

Another day, another ignorant article about high definition. This time it's Peter Bradshaw, film critic for Guardian.co.uk, claiming Humphrey Bogart would have any cameraman approximating a "high definition" effect thrown off the set. Blatantly ignoring the fact that movies of that era were made on 35mm film with more resolution than even 1080p Blu-ray can display, Bradshaw claims that instead of a HDTV, viewers would be better off with a standard definition projector and DVDs.
via engadget.com

It's becoming very fashionable, it seems, to have opinions, in public, about things you don't know, don't understand, haven't ever used and so on.

Someone please stop them all.

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July 13, 2009

being hyper-connected is good, no matter what the cranky old farts tell you

There's no doubt that, when given a laptop in a lecture setting, most people surf the web, check email, or play video games. Their attention is lost and they've checked out. Of course, there's an assumption that technology is to blame. The only thing that I really blame said technology for is limiting doodling practice for the potential future artist (and for those of us who still can't sketch to save our lives). Y'see - I don't think that people were paying that much attention before. Daydreaming and sketching (aka "taking notes") are not particularly new practices. Now the daydreamer might just be blogging instead.

My frustration at the anti-computer attitude goes beyond the generational gap of an academic conference. I've found that this same attitude tends to be present in many workplace environments. Blackberries and laptops are often frowned upon as distraction devices. As a result, few of my colleagues are in the habit of creating backchannels in business meetings. This drives me absolutely bonkers, especially when we're talking about conference calls. I desperately, desperately want my colleagues to be on IM or IRC or some channel of real-time conversation during meetings. While I will fully admit that there are times when the only thing I have to contribute to such dialogue is snark, there are many more times when I really want clarifications, a quick question answered, or the ability to ask someone in the room to put the mic closer to the speaker without interrupting the speaker in the process.

via zephoria.org

A very interesting insight over at Apophenia into the so-called generational conflict between the younger, hyper-connected individual and the (usually) older, less-of-a-computer-power-user type.

And I agree that dismissing it as something generational is missing the point. Sure, older people might be more inclined, let's say, to belong to the latter category, but that is only as a result of their upbringing and what surrounded them through it. And the difference between that and what surrounds your average young person growing up right now (or 5 or 10 years ago, and so on).

But other than that it is a matter of choice, in my opinion. You choose your attitude towards this, the attitude doesn't choose you because you fit its demographic.

My take? Never settle for anything, no matter how good (or complete) it sounds. No, don't settle for the information in the brochure. Google it. Wikipedia it. Ask your Twitter followers. Start a discussion on Friendfeed. Get as much information as you can, from as many sources as you can, in order to then let your brain do what it was meant to do: make sense of it all. I don't believe our brains are there just to remember stuff we've been told at some point. No, the ability to filter is there, built-in, so why not use it? Why settle for someone else's conclusions, when you can have your own?

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July 13, 2009

The echo chamber misreads another Windows 7 survey

For today’s jaded technical press and pundits, anything less than 100% adoption, overnight, is a colossal failure. Which is kind of like saying that this year’s Star Trek was a flop because 268 million Americans didn’t go see it.

Meanwhile, in yesterday’s news (literally), PC World summarized a new report by IDC analyst Al Gillen, which predicts that Windows 7 will account for 75% of units shipped in 2011 and will achieve total world domination within three years:

Windows 7 momentum will translate in 2013 to the new OS accounting for 95% of the operating systems Microsoft sells to businesses. That percentage is up from 90% forecast for 2012.

What, not 100%? Losers.

via blogs.zdnet.com

A-ha! So it doesn't only happen when Nokia is involved. A very entertaining read, thanks to Ed Bott, though honestly I don't know whether I should be amused or outraged.

Come to think of it, the way most (by pageviews, if not accuracy of reporting) of the US-based 'blogosphere' relates to whatever Nokia does is starting to look disturbingly similar to the treatment they seem to always have in store for Microsoft.

I guess hating is the new black.

Silly.

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