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By gherlein, on February 6th, 2010 -
Wordpress is pretty heavy on resources for my needs. Even if I tune Apache and MySQL it’s hard to get it to perform well on a 256MB machine. Why 256? That’s the lowest offered from Slicehost. By the way, I like them a lot. You get a great server in minutes. 256MB with 100MB in/100MB out for $20per month. Nice. RackSpace has a seemingly better deal – 512MB for $22. But you have to pay for bandwidth separately. The same deal (100MB in/100MB out) is $52. Not such a good deal. Slicehost is better.
But 256 is not really enough for Wordpress. I went with Wordpress since having the ability for folks to leave comments seemed like a good thing. But I really don’t get many comments. I turned off the Amazon stuff – it was generating no clicks at all and I didn’t like that I could not pick the products shown. Most of the plug ins for Wordpress don’t solve any of my problems, really. It’s easy to post new stories, but really, I do HTML and CSS so I could just as easily make my own static pages… and then not need any silly database at all anyway.
So here’s a chance to prove me wrong – leave a comment. What should I do? Ditch the heavy Wordpress stuff? Suck it up and pay for more memory? You tell me.
By gherlein, on February 6th, 2010 -
It’s almost comical now. Apple is really getting silly. According to PC Week Apple has banned the word ‘Android’ in apps submitted to the App Store. The article has a great summary of the evil doings of Apple around the iPhone so I won’t reproduce it here. But it’s clear that Apple is feeling a lot of pressure from Android. I think we are seeing the opening shots of a much bigger business war. And actually, that can be a good thing for us consumers since ultimately better products will come to market.
By gherlein, on February 4th, 2010 -
I read tonight that Apple has announced in it’s developer forum that any application submitted that uses location services ‘primarily’ for the purpose of serving ads to the user will be rejected from the App store. If this is true, they have simply gone too far.
Now Apple is making rules about what kinds of software can be installed on the users device. That the user paid for. That the user owns. It’s their device. If a user finds value in an application that serves them ads, great. If they hate it they can delete it. After all, it’s their own device. Right?
But no, Apple seems to think that they know better. How can it be OK for the computer provider (because today’s phones really are just hand held computers) to make this kind of arbitrary rule? Oh, wait… Apple recently bought Quattro Wireless, a company specializing in mobile ads… so the prediction of evil is coming true. Any really lucrative market for iPhone apps risks them suddenly changing the rules to make sure that Apple is the only vendor that can serve that market. All those crappy little markets – sure, let the suckers independent iPhone developers scratch a living there. If it’s got a lot of zeros in it, well, then Apple wants that market. And they can take it, lock stock and barrel by just rejecting any competing application out of hand. Apple becomes ready to take over mobile advertising and bang – one policy change and they suddenly own the market. Neat trick, eh?
Just ask yourself: if Microsoft did this kind of thing, what would your emotional reaction be? I bet you’d be outraged. Why is it that that Apple gets a free pass on this? Because they make ‘cool’ products? Is that enough? Not for me.
Am I the only one that smells monopolistic abuse of power? Am I the only one that thinks that this borders (or crosses into) behavior that is evil, if not illegal? Simply put, I think Apple has gone too far.
What do you think?
By gherlein, on January 30th, 2010 -
I’m really confused about why so many people are fawning over the Apple iPad. I really don’t get it. It’s an oversized and stunted iPod Touch. I read silly things like “I’d buy one just to watch movies when I travel.“ Excuse me: what???? The darn thing has a 4:3 aspect ratio! We’ve come so far in getting to 16:9 and suddenly we go backwards? And there’s no HDMI out on it either! So you cannot plug it into a bigger screen at home and then pop it into your backpack to finish your show as you leave the house. Did Apple do *any* use cases for this device? Before you comment that it *can* do video out, yeah, I know that. You can buy an expensive dock and then get 480p. Woo hoo. Come on, really? Not even HD out? Really? What century is Apple in?
Then there’s the “Apple’s iPad Tablet Could Slay eBooks and Netbooks.” Steve Jobs slammed netbooks as “slow” and sporting “low-quality displays”. The problem with them, he said, is that ” netbooks aren’t better than anything”. So let’s look at this for a moment. The iPad has a 1024×768 display that’s not wide screen. Sure, it uses a nice newer oleophobic, LED-backlit, 9.7-inch screen that uses IPS (in-plane switching) technology. Newer netbooks will use something similar but will be wide screen. The nVidia Tegra/Intel Atom chip is incredible at media encoding/decoding. I don’t know if Apple’s A4 CPU will be much different, but it won’t be radically better. But the real killer is that the iPad runs the iPhone OS. It’s single tasking for goodness sakes. Apple will sell iWork applications for $10 each – but can you image the use case for that? You cannot switch from your word processor to your spreadsheet and back? We’ve been able to work like that for what, 25 years or so? One of the smartest moves Apple ever did was base OS X on the unix-like BSD operating system. They got great networking and multi-tasking out of the gate. But on the iPad? No way. Did I already ask what century Apple is in? Oh, and did I mention that there’s no USB ports on the iPad either? So you cannot just pull out your thumb drive to move some data between machines. Golly. I use that all the time. I carry a thumb drive on my key chain I use it so often.
The biggest thing about this is how simple it would have been for Apple to just hit a grand slam. Widescreen. A real multi-tasking OS. The A4 can decode HD video the way the new Atom/Nvidia chips can – imagine if they’d put an HDMI port in! And Bluetooth for a wireless keyboard/mouse when at a desk. Then you’d have a netbook killer *and* a Kindle/Nook killer. Then the only real issue would be their Evil policies around application acceptance. I’ve blogged on that before so I won’t again… but it’s even worse that a new platform – a real tablet – will live in such a controlled ecosystem. If someone really comes up with an amazing new application that is the killer application for tablets (maybe one we have not imagined yet) Apple can just kill the competition out of the App Store. You cannot buy software from anyone else. This device that is now clearly more than a phone but less than a general purpose PC, but the fact that you can buy iWork for it indicates it’s more general purpose than not… and now Apple controls the software distribution channel? Smart business move, but very bad for the consumer. Restricting the open market is never good for the consumer.
Of course some people (some of whom I really respect) seem to express an attitude that since the software on the device is so easy to use, so polished, that they don’t mind all the other problems. Kudos to Apple for working so hard on the interfaces and doing such a good job in general on their software. Other software vendors should aspire to that. Of course, they cannot use the ‘private APIs’ that Apple can use. They will never have the access to the in-depth knowledge base of how the inside of the machine/OS runs so that you can optimize your code. But hell, folks had those disadvantages against Microsoft too and they… oh, wait. A lot of categories Microsoft now controls dominant market share in. Gee, how’d they do that? Apple’s playing the same game. Smart for them, but bad for the consumer in the long run.
There’s a lot of foo about Flash support. Frankly, I admire Apple for taking a stand. I don’t like Flash. It’s a completely proprietary, close ecosystem controlled by Adobe. A lot of what I don’t like about APple I don’t like about Adobe (though there are things I do like about Adobe). I think that Flex is silly and needlessly complex. I think that Flash video has been a very big detriment overall to what video COULD BE on the net. Having spent the last 7 years working with IPTV technology, I actually know what is possible. And Flash video ain’t it! But since so many of today’s web sites are flash based (including PRN, where I work – where we just launched our new website that is SO much better than our old one) then it’s pretty shocking that you cannot do flash on the iPad. Just think about it – major companies web sites you cannot see with an iPad. But then again, if you consider that Apple really wants you to consume media through their channel… maybe it’s not to strange. But is it good for the consumer?
Personally, I want a tablet. I have several use cases for one in my life. I like to read in bed, but part of what my daily word consumption is the web. I read RSS feeds, web pages, great articles I pick up from tweets… and then I read a book. I ride the San Francisco Muni to work a lot, and I won’t pull out a notebook there. I would a tablet. In meetings I don’t like to put the screen up and block peoples faces. But I do like having a computer there so that I can either look something up fast, or more likely, respond to an urgent IM with enough of a reply to let them know I grok the problem and will get back to them as soon as possible. I want to be able to use the tablet to watch movies too – only in HD and wide screen. I think there’s a LOT of things you can do with a computer that is with me pervasively like I’d use a tablet. But I want to be able to install software from an open ecosystem where the best offerings compete for my dollars. Yes, I do want to develop software for it myself – or at least be able to if the demands of my job and kids ever give me more time. And I most certainly don’t want to spend $500+ on a device only to then become a captive customer to Apple.
The biggest thing I see is that Apple is using this as a play to control even more of the media puzzle. This is how Apple will control more of the casual use market (folks who just basically email and simple surfing). This is how Apple will challenge Amazon for the eBook market. This is how Apple will try to control the distribution market for eMagazines and eNews. It’s not about being a good tablet, it’s about being a good content delivery device. And maybe it will be that for a large market segment. I’m sure the iPad will sell like hot cakes. And I’m sure that as the price drops many more will buy it.
But not me. No thanks Apple. I’ll wait for the MSI Android Tablet, or something like it. What about you?
By gherlein, on January 22nd, 2010 -
I’ve been musing recently about how the cell phone world is split into fairly distinct ecosystems. I know I’m generalizing (I’m trying to do that to draw some generalizations) but I see the following kinds of breakdowns:
iPhone Users: typically young (or want to be young), hip, and very media savvy. They tend to be heavily into music, often with a creative bent (creation or consumption) and seem to be web-browsing folks who are not email power-users. Heavily plugged into the iTunes universe, seem to often have other Apple products. See no problem with things being controlled tightly by Apple. The Apple slogan of “there’s an App for that!” fits to a tee.
Blackberry Users: typically business people or government types. They tend to be email power-users. Often Windows-centric, often Outlook users. There’s a strong Outlook-Blackberry Enterprise Server affinity and it seems to reflect in how these folks use their mobile devices. Function over form, has to be rock solid reliable. The Apps that mean the most after email are navigation, Open Table, LinkedIn, Facebook – things the modern business person needs.
Nexus One/Droid Users: a new group of course, but also seem to be younger, hip, but very Internet savvy. Very much into the Google mind-set (cloud centric, information wants to be free, GMail, GCalendar, etc). My observed Droid/Nexus One audience is primarily techies – I don’t know many non-techies that have an Android phone yet. The underlying mentality of the development community seems to be “There’s an API for that!” From what I see, having more than one app running is a big deal to this crowd.
Nokia Users: it’s just a phone! Sure, they like to send text messages and take pictures and all, but really, other than the new N900 what real meaningful smart phone is in play? I have huge hopes for the N900 but Nokia cannot seem to attract the development community despite years of effort with the N800/810 crowd. There just does not seem to be an ecosystem yet.
Palm Pre Users: thee are users for this phone? Really? I’ve never seen one in the wild. I don’t get where this phone has a play at all. Do you?
Of course I am stereotyping, so please don’t get your dander up about that. I’m trying to! I want to toss these generalizations against the wall and see what sticks, and what kind of thoughts it generates. I don’t know myself where I’m going with this other than to say “gee, that’s interesting.” What do you think?
By gherlein, on January 18th, 2010 -
The hoopla about the Apple iPhone App Store has been well discussed. I find it hard to imagine investing the time and effort in writing an iPhone application and then *maybe* getting it accepted into the App Store (after some indeterminate wait period) and then hoping that Apple does not change their mind later (stranding my customers). But even more of a problem is the broken nature of the platform itself: come on, single tasking? So there’s no way to have some useful agent running in the background doing interesting things? Oh, wait, it might be possible if Apple does it… then it would be part of the platform. But then it’s Apple controlled, owned, and operated… and they get the revenue and the value of the data the application generates. But clearly there are a lot of people that are OK with the limitations of single tasking so far – they keep buying the darn things after all.
The real reason that the iPhone is doomed is that it’s just simply too closed. Apple changed the game with the iPhone: they moved the walled garden from the exclusive domain of the carriers to the exclusive domain of Apple. They control everything about the platform – look and feel, what APIs are open, what you can and cannot do with the phone. It’s just like it was a few years ago when you *had* to play the carriers silly games to get a mobile app approved, only now it’s Apple not the carriers. The only thing that made this radical change in garden ownership possible was that it was done by a company that defines cool and hip… and (and this is a BIG and) they did it at the exact right time where they could literally enable the mobile web. The mobile web was pathetic before the iPhone. I’ve used a number of mobile phones that had a data package – and was an early adopter of the Nokia N800/810 MID devices tethering through my phone. But the average consumer was left out until Apple made the market right for a huge number of consumers. The iPhone made it possible for literally *anyone* to use the web no matter where they were (within coverage). The web became more open and accessible and Apple reaped billions. Good for them. But the Internet is more than the web, and the world of mobile applications is far more interesting.
Today’s ’smart phones’ are still primarily phones and oh, they are handheld computers too. In the case of the iPhone that’s sort of true. It’s a handheld computer that you can do one thing at a time with. The Nexus One that I am testing has better screen resolution than an iPhone 3GS and has more memory and a more powerful CPU. But as an Android phone it can do more than an iPhone can do since it’s a real multi-tasking system. The future of mobile applications is not about a human doing one thing at a time. It’s about machines doing things for us as we are mobile. Most of these applications have not even been envisioned yet but I have glimmers of some ideas. I see a time soon when your ‘phone’ will detect (and be detected) in a variety of contexts – and software will act on your behalf without you having to do anything. An easy to imagine use case is checking in at a restaurant where you have reservations. Your phone knows where you are, and it can know that you have reservations someplace (especially if you booked them through Open Table or similar. Your phone can easily send a message when you arrive and give you a little buzz that you are acknowledged. In fact, the system can buzz you again when your table is ready. This app is not possible (to my understanding) on an iPhone. You’d have to manually start the app to have it do the work. We could sit and drink a few glasses of wine and come up with a dozen other similar ideas. You can be sure that there’s a bunch of folks out there right now building these apps for Android right now – and the applications will be far more exciting than my silly reservation check in example.
The brain drain of innovative independent developers started last year as folks started abandoning the Apple platform. The rate of increase in Android applications is insane (10,000 in a few months, and rising fast). Now that AT&T will have Android phones (joining Verizon’s Droid) subsidized phones will broaden the user community. Of course, I think that the future will see all phones being unlocked – after all, can you imagine that you cannot buy a computer unless you lock in with an ISP for years? Insane!). But more importantly, the application ecosystem is not closed – anyone can make and sell applications and you don’t risk a company like Apple slamming the door in your face. The same thing that doomed the telco efforts to keep a walled garden will doom the iPhone (in it’s current form). Apple broke the walls with a device that opened the mobile web. Android will break the Apple walls by opening the mobile Internet – literally a whole new way of computing. Real-time mobile applications will be more cool (and more useful) than just the mobile web. The rate of innovation in the Apple closed walled garden will not be able to match the rate of innovation on the open mobile Internet – which is what the Android devices will be operating on. Voice applications will all be Voice over IP – they are all packet data anyway – and there won’t be silly minutes plans anymore – just different data plans. Your ‘phone’ is just a computer that you will take with you everywhere, and the applications that run on it will be amazing. It’s a whole new market and open markets always generate innovation. I’m looking forward to helping to make that reality happen sooner.
What do you think? I’m sure the Apple lovers out there will have something fun to contribute. What have I gotten wrong? How do you think it will play out? Comments welcome.
By gherlein, on January 14th, 2010 -
I’ve read some this week about the complaints about the new Google Nexus One Android phone. I got one this past week to test and develop with and have been impressed. More on that in another post. Like the Nokia N900 you can only buy it unlocked. No carrier rebates. I am tending to think that this is the future of phone buying. Sure, you will still be able to buy a subsidized phone for at least a few years… but I think that by 2012 most smart phones will be purchased unlocked at full price. In fact, I think folks will buy their ‘phone’ as a portable computing device. They’ll demand to be able to move to carriers that can offer them the coverage, service, and pricing that makes the best sense for them. Consumers will wake up to the fact that locking in to a two year contract is effectively going to cost them more that the extra money for the phone.
Think about it. You get a few hundred dollars off the cost of the phone but then are LOCKED to that plan for two years. The coming price and feature war between Sprint’s new 4G network, Verizon’s rollout of 3G, the shift of AT&T to a new world that is more than the iPhone playground… we’re going to want to take advantage of those dropping prices. T-Mobile is already offering month-to-month. $60 gets you a month of unlimited SMS and internet and 500 minutes of call time. Use Skype and it’s unlimited talk time. The phone network is going all IP and the era of the voice network is coming to an end. Finally. I hoped to help bring this about a decade ago when I was with Quicknet building the MicroTelco system. It’s nice to see that the market has brought this around finally.
What’s really enabling this is the power of the smart phone hardware *and* the effect of Android. I’ve been down on Android for it’s tendency to fragment the market and I’ve whined philosophically about how nice it would be if Nokia’s Maemo could be a unifying force. But the power of Android is evident all around me. It’s basically a radical sea change in the nature of phone software development. The walled gardens are down – the thorned buses surrounding the pristine revenue gardens of the carriers are burned to the ground and the gates are thrown open to innovation and access. As much as this might open the phones to possible malware, it also open the ecosystem to radical new possibilities. Android is already running on tablets and lots of other mobile devices – and it will be on more and more. Why? Because it’s open. Because there is no walled garden. Because it’s basically a solid linux core with a reasonable set of API functionality on top. It’s not just about the phones, it’s about the mobile device ecosystem, and the fact that the leash that was the carriers is now off forever.
Smartphone, PDA, handheld computer, whatever… call it what you wish. But the power of a gigahertz processor with 3D video coprocessing, decent memory, some storage, and connectivity is going to enable a whole new way normal people use computers. By ‘normal’ I mean non-techie geeks – regular folks. Making a voice call is just one of the things you can do with these devices… and a very minor thing at that.
The future, my friends, is unlocked. In more ways than one. And I could not be more excited about it.
Tell me what you think about our unlocked future! Leave a comment. Should be fun.
By gherlein, on December 22nd, 2009 -
Nate Nead has a new post Five Reasons Why the 3-Panel Digital Signage Content Template is Dying. I agree with some of his points but not with the premise. It’s very interesting to see the creative and unusual formats of screens popping up all over the place. I like this innovation, and I think it’s good for our industry. But Digital Signage is in it’s infancy. Frankly, anyone who tells you that they completely understand what works and what does not work in signage is probably selling you something. There’s a substantial amount of learnings however. The creative staff at PRN for example, have been doing retail signage for what, 15 years? I’m constantly impressed by their awareness and understanding of how to design a proposition so that it’s effective and attractive. But there’s always more to learn, and there’s more to signage than the retail advertising arena. Much of the innovative display work I’ve seen recently has not been in a ‘traditional’ retail digital signage environment. And that’s a big deal.
Some signage is about catching the eye as you drive or walk past. But one way to increase the advertising component is to place your screens where you have natural DWELL TIME. If you can catch the viewer in an environment where they are stuck for a few minutes and you can offer a compelling and interesting thing to watch then you have video real estate you can sell. And for those scenarios a three panel layout works well. The viewers are used to it. In fact, they are probably used to getting useful information from those side panels. Those applications are about monetizing the signage efforts as well as providing a nicer customer experience. Fancy displays (circular, tiled, whatever) may attract more interest initially, but they cost more than the commodity 16:9 displays that are commonly used now. Increasing costs without a sustainable increase in revenue detracts from the ROI. If you’re in it for the long haul then you ignore that at your own peril.
That said, there’s so many other opportunities for signage. And many of those are special to the location or venue. I would agree with Nate that in many of those cases novel formats are needed. A traditional three panel display format in those venues looks silly – like the operator is stuck back in the 90s and isn’t with it yet. The latest innovations in signage are great for our industry and I love to see them. But I think that as our industry grows up we will start to see a growing awareness of market segmentation and categories of signage. And what works perfectly well in one won’t work at all in another. I look forward to the learning process.
By gherlein, on December 20th, 2009 -
The software world is in arms over software patents. I’m not going to wade into the battle here – but do want to say that if there’s a battle going on and missiles are flying and your troops have to cross a field that might have mines in it… it’s not the time to cry foul and argue that mines should be outlawed by all civilized nations. You may be right, but in the tactical moment you better pay close attention to the things that might blow up and hurt you. If you want to ignore them and risk getting hurt, well, that’s on you. I’d rather get as smart as I can about the tactical situation and learn to play it to my advantage if at all possible.
A *great* way to get past the hyperbole on the Internet and learn a lot about Intellectual Property is to read “Intellectual Property, The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business” by Paul Goldstein (Penguin Group ISBN 978-1-59184-177-7). Here’s a useful link where you can buy your own copy if you’d like:
If ad blockers are nixing the graphic the text links is: Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business
This book is easy to read. Patent Law in particular can be tough to grok, but this book makes it very approachable with well-chosen case studies. I found it an excellent way to fill in gaps in my knowledge of IP issues. I’ve filed probably 30 applications and spent countless hours talking to patent attorneys. Yet this book was still very useful for me. I highly recommend it.
Note that this book does not cover the recent flurry around software patents. The Supreme Court Bilski Argument is extremely interesting. And if you really want to understand that case you need to understand patents in general. This book is the best way I can think of to get that in a few hours. Buy it and read it on your next plane flight or lazy snowed in afternoon. You won’t regret it.
By gherlein, on December 16th, 2009 -
They say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks… but I’m getting to learn some new tricks at my old dog park. My day job at Premier Retail Networks (PRN) is changing a bit. For the last 5 years I’ve been managing teams there to build and operate digital signage networks. My claim to fame and major accomplishment with PRN is designing and building the ‘Smart Network’ for Wal-Mart. This retail video advertising system is based on IPTV technology, supports targeting media to individual screens, supports up to 1080p HDTV media and interactivity, and is self-healing of most faults (meaning it detects a lot of faults) and more. And the monitoring, control, provisioning and media programming systems are vastly scalable – tens of thousands of screens is the starting point for this system. I’m very proud if it, and of the incredible team that built it with me – including the great partners we have whose Engineering teams contributed equally to the solution. It’s now operating in over a thousand stores around the world pitching holiday advertising with many more hundreds of stores on the installation schedule once we’re past the holidays. In software terms, it SHIPPED.
But businesses mature and adapt and PRN is no different. The only constant is change, rolling stones gather no moss, and those who stand still die… and all that. So my role changes. My incredibly capable team managers are now going to step up and take on the long-term challenge of taking the core PRN video platform to the next level. And I get to move on to what I love to do, what I think I’m really good at: sniffing out the next thing, the next set of technologies, the next advances, the next partners with solid technology that we can leverage to build value for our customers and stock holders. It’s time to build something new – using parts of the old if it makes sense, or inventing it from whole cloth if not. It’s my comfort zone. I’m incredibly energized by the prospects.
I’ll be writing about some of the ideas and technologies here. Stay tuned. You never know what I’ll get interested in. Some of the things on my horizon: 3D technology, wireless, mobile devices, noSQL. It should be fun!
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