01.21.09
Posted in General Rant at 11:04 am by Administrator
Yesterday was supposed to be a day when live video streaming thumbed it’s nose at traditional TV broadcasting – ushering a new age of nirvana (and advertising dollars).DOH!
Beyond just my personal experience with it (see yesterday’s column) – a lot of 0thers had the same experience – every URL hit within 20 minutes of the actual speech was met with a virtual waiting room. CNN’s said – “Congratulations – You Made It! (…but so did everyone else)” and then it would put you in the queue for when some poorschmo dropped out.
After having a look at the numbers – I can understand why: CNN.com alone served 21.3 million streams – with a peak of 1.3 million simultaneous streams. Geez… no wonder the video was jerky and continually dropped out.
Likewise, Akami, a company that mirrors content and provides “local” servers to spread out volume reported a peak of 5.4 million visitors per minute – and more than 7 million simultaneous streams!
Now that’s some serious traffic. And, because I live in LA – I know what happens when lots of folks have the same idea and all want to go to the same place at the same time – traffic. A no-holds-barred, bumper-to-bumper, packet-to-packet jam that will only get better as people leave the highway.
Video over the Internet isn’t ready for prime time – at ALL. By way of contrast the “traditional” broadcast media has the bandwidth and hard-wired infrastructure to push video out to a virtually unlimited number of people simultaneously.
It will get better, of course, as time goes on. As companies come up with new video codecs, compression and more companies like Akami add server capacity to the edges of the Internet. Oh, and hopefully when President Obama starts to re-wire the entire nation with a really good network -that’ll sure help as well (fingers crossed).
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01.20.09
Posted in General Rant at 9:37 am by Administrator
All I can say is “WOW.” I literally just finished listening t0 president elect Obama… sorry – I mean President Obama give his inaugural speech. Man, is he a terrific orator!
I really am hopeful that he is able to execute on the promises and hopes that he has fired up. I hope and pray that he will be able to really cross the aisles of not just the US Congress, Senate and House – but to also cross the divide that has been created with the rest of the world.
It was really amazing to watch the coming together of people just flooding the Mall in the Capitol. All ages. All faiths. All colors. All Americans.
Even here in the office – we tried to get one of the video feeds going (to no avail) – but we were able to get a live audio feed from an ABC affiliate news station here (KNX News Radio 1070 am). I was able to get the audio feed on my laptop and pumped it out through my desktop speakers so we wouldn’t overwhelm our own LAN 0r saturate our ISP with everyone having their own desktop feed.
It was almost like those pictures you see of people gathered around the radio back in the days before television. We were all listening – no one spoke. No one was checking email. No phones were ringing. It was really an almost surreal experience.
President Obama talked about a wide range of topics – including building out infrastructure, helping the poor, warning the crazies, and elevating science and technology back to prominence. However, one of the lines that really struck me was when he said:
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. (emphasis, is mine)
President Obama laid out what he sees as the most critical path to America’s problems. He is an incoming leader that has a road map:
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.
Personally, I believe that it IS possible. We CAN pull together, weather the storm, re-invent ourselves and come out stronger and are all issues that need to be addressed by our country at some point in time.
Yes, I believe America can be re-made. It’s America 2.0, if you will. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Maybe not next year. Maybe not during his first 4 year term. But we WILL do it. There is really no other option.
He seems to “get” the fact that technology and social media are an important part of the process – because his process is about PEOPLE, and PEOPLE communicate with each other using technology. I’m not just talking about YouTube and streaming audio. It’s more than Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. It’s the “old” technology of television and over-the-air radio. It’s the technology of providing speech text in advance to all the news outlets. It’s the fact that he has people that even give a crap about communicating using ALL mediums all at the same time.
There’s a spirit of a level playing field in terms of communication. There’s a spirit of a level playing field in terms of common goals, dreams and ideals. It’s up to all of us to transform the vision, goals and dreams into reality. Godspeed!
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01.16.09
Posted in General Rant at 9:15 am by Administrator
I am sick to death of bloatware.
I was trying to explain to a novice user how to use Microsoft Word for creating tables of contents and indexes. To create a table of contents – it’s fairly simple – just assign styles to your headings (using the styles “Heading 1″, “Heading 2″, etc) and then click to generate a table of contents. Easy, right?
Wrong.
If you use styles, there are approximately 15,000 settings you can use to control every single aspect of the paragraph, hot keys, leading, kerning, borders, shading flow control, bullets and numbering, alignment, space before, space after, line spacing, hanging indents, font, size, character spacing, text effects, indents, outline level, line breaks, page breaks, widow control, hyphenation, languages, spell checking, dictionaries to use, and about 80 other settings – PER STYLE.
To a novice user – this is… oh I don’t know… overwhelming at best. To someone that is a professional writer, author or has to format loads of documents in a consistent way – it’s really a godsend. To everyone else (98%?) – it’s just plain overkill. The “average” user (myself included) will probably use about 5% – 10% of that functionality (on a really complex document). The rest is a waste of programming, documentation and adds hundreds of layers of complexity to an already-complex piece of software.
This is why people use Notepad and WordPad. A lot.
I think you can say the same thing about most of the software and hardware you buy today. I bought a cheap digital watch for my son the other day, and there was a 12 PAGE instruction booklet on how to set the date, time and use the chronograph functions. Talk about convoluted! There are only 4 buttons on the damn thing and to get anything done I had to do a virtual ballet of pressing, holding, tapping and pushing to work through all the various settings. I mean it’s a damn WATCH for goodness sake!
All those extra features are nice, mind you – but I’m just trying to see what time it is. I’m not programming an Altair!
All this from someone that uses technology for a living. I mean, I’m fairly comfortable with software, hardware, gadgets, etc. and STILL most things are such a hassle, I don’t bother with them. God forbid if I ever lose the instructions on how to setup that watch!
Thankfully, there are some pieces of software and hardware in my life that are so easy to use AND useful, that I can’t imagine my life without them. They solve a real problem without being cumbersome. They have a function and do one thing really well. They are easy to setup and use, and that makes me want to use them more.
A couple of examples are the iPhone, my DVR (Digital Video Recorder), and my text editor.
They “get it” (most of the time). They have pretty, simple, easy-to-use products and the marketing budget to make them “cool.” The iPhone is not the most full-featured phone on the market, and Mac in general are less than about 10% of the total systems in use today (although Apple claims 20% market share on new notebooks). The important part is they get the fact that most people are not rocket scientists – and that they just want to do their work and GO HOME.
The text editor I use Textpad is like Notepad, but with a spell checker. It has basic text entry, word count, good search/replace features and it’s inexpensive. I use it a lot. In fact, most of the time. It’s simple, works well, color codes html and JavaScript, has a low memory footprint.
But if I had to pick a single product that is the one that I use the most – I would have to say it’s my Digital Video Recorder (DVR). Gone are the days of clunky programming with a remote, flashing “12:00″ timestamps, forgetting to put in a VHS tape or taping over the twin’s birthday party with an episode of Lost.
Point, click, record. Choose to record a series with two clicks. Set and forget. Done.
Watch two shows while recording another – check. Block content so if the kids get up early they aren’t “accidentally” watching the latest Chris Rock special on HBO? Check. Record movies from HBO that are on in the middle of the night? Check. Browse by show category or title – so I can record a special show while on the road? Check.
Most of the time – I think more features isn’t better, it’s worse. People are just trying to get their damn work done so they can call it quits and go home. Period. Less is more – especially when it comes to “everyday” hardware and software.
If less is MORE, why don’t more companies do it? Two reasons: Easy is hard; and adding 1,000 features has always been the way (in the marketer’s mind) to get people to upgrade/switch/buy.
Easy is good because people are less confused. People who are less confused have a better experience with the product and are able to more quickly get something accomplished – which is what they were hoping for when they bought the product in the first place. Engineering “easy” is hard. Executing “easy” on a consistent basis and remaining “flexible” is hard. Making “easy” look good is hard. Convincing engineers not to add complexity while increasing functionality is hard.
Hard but possible.
Hard but necessary.
Customers vote with dollars. When it comes to usability and getting something done – easy (and less complex) IS better.
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01.14.09
Posted in General Rant at 12:28 pm by Administrator
No, really. A four year old Massachusetts company called Terrafugia that was founded by some MIT graduates is almost ready to take their flying car (or driving plane, if you prefer) out for it’s first, real life test flight late this month or early February.
If all goes well – the $148,000 little two seater called “Transition” will make some history. Not quite Wright Brothers stuff, but hey, how many times have you seen that 1950’s stock footage of that one guy that did the same thing (along with the footage of the dishwasher that pops out of the middle of the kitchen) – and wonder – hey, that’s pretty cool.
It may soon be your chance… but you’ll have to get in line. Apparently, the company has received more than 40 pre-orders for the thing. Huh. Who would have guessed?
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01.13.09
Posted in General Rant at 2:44 pm by Administrator
One of the “new”, “new” things that seems to be bubbling up in 2009 is the idea of “desktop virtualization.” This basically means that rather than installing an operating system and all your applications on your own physical hard drive (a huge pain-in-the-ass for Enterprise folks) – that your desktop would be running (depending on who you talk to) either: in the cloud, on the LAN/WAN, or on a virtual OS that could move from machine to machine.
I like this idea – in theory. The theory goes like this: you could be on the LAN or maybe at a client’s office and need to get a document that’s on your local machine. You could justlogin to some server, and BAM – your actual operating system would appear with all your documents – just as if you were sitting right in front of it.
I think it would be cool to be able to set up your operating environment and applications – and then just access them from where ever you are and from whatever device (hardware) you happen to have at hand. It could be a desktop (does anyone even have one anymore?), your laptop, yournetbook or even your mobile phone.
To a certain degree, you can do that today – using GoToMyPC or other “screen sharing” solutions. The problem is that you have to have your machine on – and connected to the Internet, and you’re limited in the number connected peripherals that can be used, etc.
So, a bunch of server virtualization marketing folks came up with the idea: “Hey, if we have the technology to vitualize entire operating systems for server use – how hard can it be to virtualize the actual user’s operating system.”
Turns out – pretty hard.
There are the “traditional” RDC (Remote Desktop Client) folks like Citrix and Microsoft – who want you to buy a room full of rack-mounted servers and use their screen-sharing technology (basically just Terminal Services) to solve the problem. This is generally how it’s done today. Each server can contain 20-50 “virtual” desktops – that users can log into. They can have applications installed (usually only by downloadingthem – or by having IT install them physically on the machine) – and you would use them from within a window on your existing laptop/desktop.
This allows IT to maintain patches, updates, and also establish rules for what can (and can’t) be run on the machines. The downside to this approach is that if you’re using anything that’s even remotely graphics-intensive theperformance just sucks. If all you’re doing is email, Office-like applications and browsing then it’s pretty OK. The “rub” is that you have to have a machine that also needs it’s own Windows operating system (or Parallels on a Mac) in order to even work theRDC software.
That means, that someone, somewhere (usually you) will be tempted to just install your own applications and run it locally for times when you’re not connected to the network, or as a backup in case the WAN goes down, or the server crashes, etc. So, you’re really no better off in the long run. You still have your own OS that needs to be patched, updated, etc. Also, if you’re trying to access it from a mobile device – have a nice day – it’s not supported.
There is one interesting idea, however by VMware. They’re calling it “View 3″. View 3 is trying to make a single desktop “image” available that contains the operating system, all your apps and documents – but will allow you to “take it with you” across multiple devices – including smart phones.
The “Offline Desktop” as VMware calls it – is still labeled “experimental” – so it’s not ready-for-prime-time yet, but at least they’re working on it. Raj Mallempati, a marketing manager for VMware had this to say in a December 2, 2008 article in eWEEK:
“What we are doing with VMware View is looking to meet the end user’s requirements, which calls for a personal desktop that can follow them across different devices and across different networks. At the same time, this type of solution provides IT with a very simple and cost-effective way to manage different devices and desktops.”
Sounds pretty good to me… IF they can get it to work. IF they get the price point right. IF someone else like Google doesn’t beat them to it and offer it for free (with ads, of course). IF they make it easy to update and cross platform.
They used to have a similar kind of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) back in the “old days” as well. They called it a “mainframe.” Larry Ellison and then Sun CEO ScottMcNealy had the same idea back in the 90’s – it was called the “Network Computer” or the “ThinPC” or the “Un -PC”. So I guess they were right after all – and maybe sometime in the NEXT 10 years it will become a reality as more and more people are sick and tired of constantly updating and patching Windows.
It’s time for a change, that much is clear. Will virtualized desktops be the next big thing? I don’t think we’ll see wide-scale adoption until at least 2017. Even though it’s a pain-in-the-ass – people are “used to” the current paradigm and that’s a lot of momentum to overcome.
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01.12.09
Posted in General Rant at 7:54 pm by Administrator
According to Comscore – Facebook because the largest worldwide network back in the middle of 2008 – but it’s still lagging behind MySpace in terms of page views – 76 million unique visitors for MySpace versus 54.5 million for MySpace.
In the US – Facebook’s growth was 3.8% per month (a big number when you’re talking about those kind of pageview numbers) – versus MySpace’s growth rate of just 0.8% (still – a great number given the sheer volume of page views). Assuming that growth rate continues, Facebook should overtake MySpace sometime in 2010.
The question is – who cares? I think the most important social media site is the one that people are using. The one where you can connect with your customers, employees, friends, and colleagues. So it’s important to be on the social network they use as their primary contact point. Most people, if they’re on social media at all – are NOT on 6 different services. They’re on ONE – or maybe TWO…
It sort of comes down to the age-old “cool kid” factor. A few years ago MySpace was the cool kid – and now, I believe, that Facebook is the new cool kid. What do you think?
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01.09.09
Posted in General Rant at 3:35 pm by Administrator
So in the “what the hell?” category – Burger King as announced a new promotion whereby if you install their Facebook application called “Whopper Sacrifice” in your profile – and you “sacrifice” 10 of your friends – you’ll get a free Whopper.
No, I’m NOT kidding. Could even I make this kind of stuff up?
At the time that I write this over 55,000 friends have been sacrificed… geez. Well, I guess Burger King found 5,500 people who don’t have two dollars to come into their restaurants… This world really IS going to hell in a handbasket.
Oh, and if you get “sacrificed” by me – it’s nothing personal – I’m just hungry.
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