05.25.10
Posted in crystal-ball, ramblings at 11:41 am by Nate Smith
I’ve been looking at e-book readers a lot lately and I like what I see. We are still a ways away from a tipping point where people switch heavily to e-book readers. It is probably safe to say we are in the second generation of readers, and it will probably be in the third generation that it really starts to take hold. Once more readers are in the used market, color becomes available, and the price comes down. The third generation of e-book readers might fracture a little too, with really inexpensive readers, and high priced-color readers that are super-thin, or have other features like multiple folding screens or can play music while you read.
For my part, I think I will know the tipping point has been reached when magazines and newspapers with high circulations - perhaps the AARP Magazine, Reader’s Digest or Wall Street Journal, begin to offer a free e-book reader with a subscription because the economics of electronic distribution will make it reasonable to do so. Inexpensive e-book readers combined with ever-present wi-fi and rising shipping or postage costs.
I’ll probably get an e-book reader soon. When will be the right time for you, how much would you pay for an e-book reader?
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01.26.10
Posted in Apple, Geek Culture, Google, ramblings at 1:14 pm by Nate Smith
Unless you have been living under a rock, or perhaps in the electrical power-less tundra of the Midwest, you probably knew Apple was making an announcement on 1/27/2010. I have been predicting and prognosticating about what Apple might be up to on other entries here tomorrow we may find some things out. Here are the questions I would like to see answered:
- If Apple introduces a new device, is it a tablet, and how many displays will it have?
- Will apple somehow redefine a product category or create a completely new one?
- What kind of secret deals has Apple been up to in order to secure whatever new content might be available on a new device (books, newspapers, magazines)
- How does the new Apple device fit into the Google picture?
- How does the announcement further extend the iTunes media monopoly?
- Will there be a new iPhone or iPod touch in addition to a possible new device?
- Will there be a new firmware or OS for iPod or iTunes?
- Will a new wireless network provider be involved?
And Finally, one more thing….
- Will Steve Jobs be stepping down at Apple?
That’s a lot of questions, but there have been a lot of secrets, rumors and questions about how Apple could change another media category like books and magazines, and how they could subsidize an expensive new device to make it more affordable to the masses.
Once the announcements are made and the dust settles we can start guessing at how long it will be until the next revision of a potential new product and when it will cost $100 less than it did at the announcement. Apple fanboys, warm up your wallets.
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10.17.09
Posted in Apple, Google, ramblings at 9:55 am by Nate Smith
It may be we are starting to see the real reason that Google and Apple are parting ways in the board room.
The following is speculation.
Apple is rumored to have a tablet-type device coming to market. The parts have been purchased, the agreements are in effect, but there has not been an official product announcement yet. And it is starting to get late for holiday timing. One of the issues with producing an Apple tablet like an iPhone or an iPod is the cost. In order to make the price lucrative to consumers Apple needs to find a hook that can create repeat sales. For the iPod this is music, for the iPhone it is phone service and music (and other media). A pad or tablet is not necessarily the device of choice for listening to music. It should be good for watching movies, but would be better are books or magazines in brilliant Apple-display color.
Google has been feverishly scanning books for a while. They are getting in the news and getting themselves into some controversy for it.
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google was recently removed from the board at Apple. Now Google has announced that it will begin selling electronic books . It would appear that Apple is trying to find a source for electronic books, or a way to sell electronic books and magazines and Google was simultaneously getting ready to do the same thing leading to a conflict which resulted in the change. (we are still speculating here) Perhaps they could not agree on how to achieve this.
So who is Apple talking to about selling electronic books and magazines? Are they going directly to the publishers or are they working with Amazon.com? It would seem an Apple product would probably trump the Kindle so that seems unlikely. Maybe they will still partner with Google?
Could an Apple tablet or pad be released simply as a Macintosh computer? I think that seems unlikely giving the profit opportunity for repeat sales from something like books or magazines.
It will be interesting to see what happens and what future income streams Apple will try to dominate.
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03.28.09
Posted in ramblings at 10:02 pm by Nate Smith
My car, a Hyundai Elantra was recently in an accident. We were rear-ended by another driver and pushed into another car. The Elantra was declared a total loss. The Elantra was a good car, basic transportation with excellent fuel economy. It also had a manual transmission. I went looking for a new car with a fairly open mind, but my first requirement was that the new car would have a manual transmission.
What I came to discover is that most manufacturers make a manual transmission available on their lowest trim line model and if you are lucky it is an option on the mid-trim model. A manual transmission is seldom available on the highest trim or luxury car models. Typically you will not see a manual transmission on a six cylinder motor either. Now if you compare vehicles across trim levels from your chosen brand you will find the mpg ratings for the manual transmission models are always the best. Finally if you watch TV commercials or see a print advertisement and check the mpg ratings you will see the advertised mpg ratings are typically taken from the manual models! You might think I’m after a little bit of truth in advertising, but what I would really like is the manual transmission available on the higher trim levels.
There are some noteable exceptions to this - some expensive cars manufactured in countries that take driving very seriously have a manual transmission available for very nearly all models.
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08.12.08
Posted in Windows/Microsoft, ramblings at 2:03 pm by Nate Smith
I believe Mr. Gates will, one day, return to work at Microsoft. Furthermore, I believe his return will come during a very low point in the history (and stock valuation) of Microsoft and it will return Microsoft from “the brink” and make it stable again. Microsoft will never be what it was in the late 1990s and 2000s though. Microsoft has not fallen yet, but they must tread carefully.
The rise of Microsoft came as a couple of things were occurring; computer hardware was becoming mainstream and the price of hardware much reduced. Companies like Microsoft showed the business world how software could be a commodity.
The market is now flooded, Microsoft is in turmoil, whether they admit it or not, and whether they realize it or not. The pragmatic Mr. Gates knows when to leave.
Microsoft is in turmoil internally because of many decisions. The decision to remain backwards-compatible, the decision to gouge customers to continue incredible profitability, and decisions that have left former corporate MS-champions wondering what the hell just bit them.
The leviathan that was has slowed to a crawl and missed some important environmental changes that are occurring. You can fill in the gaps here but a couple of solid examples are things like cloud computing. It appeared that the transition to subscription-based computing was on the horizon, when companies started popping up with SaaS (Software as a Service) delivered via “the cloud” and completely sidestepping the need to install software locally on the computer. Obvious examples are things like web mail and salesforce.com. Microsoft is now playing catch-up to companies like Google in this space. I wonder aloud if this is a space Microsoft should even want to compete in, but the driving cell phone industry will have the computing power in the palm of our hands soon and cloud computing is the best way (at this time) to deliver it.
Other decisions like the Vista operating system are still shaking out. I won’t labor over this, but I will say Vista seems to do what MS intended but missed the mark on what people wanted. (I will add; if Vista had been another 2 years “late” it probably would have arrived at the right time for the hardware needed to run it adequately and met with more success)
When Mr. Gates returns to Microsoft he will have clear vision. He will have a more objective view of what businesses Microsoft needs to be involved in, and what technologies are on the critical path. He will realize the burden of backwards compatibility and He will have to pare down the sprawling masses of business units and pragmatically refocus Microsoft.
Welcome back Mr. Gates.
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07.27.08
Posted in ramblings at 9:15 pm by Nate Smith
I just had my 20 year high school class reunion. It was great to see so many people I had not seen at all in all that time. Like salmon returning to the headwaters; I had an intense curiosity about what others in my class had been doing. So it was great to see everyone and reflect and catch up. Turns out everyone is really doing many of the same things. There should be something more….
Extreme Reunions: You get together with those people you know from so long ago and get thrust in to a dangerous and/or uncomfortable circumstance in order to make some new memories together. Strand the whole reunion class on an island or lock them in a game preserve with hungry lions. Drop them off in a swamp and have them make their way out together. Serve together on a fishing boat or build a house for habitat for humanity. Take it up a notch and make things interesting.
If anybody from my class reads this, what say we get together in five years and test our mettle? Maybe somebody will buy the rights for a reality show? Outward bound reunion anyone?
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07.01.08
Posted in ramblings at 6:23 pm by Nate Smith
The problem with money trees is that you have to have two in order for them to bear fruit and chances are, you aren’t going to find another one when you are looking.
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04.18.08
Posted in ColdFusion, ramblings at 6:32 am by Nate Smith
Arguably, anyone who uses the Internet touches Adobe technology at some point. Most likely in the form of Flash and Shockwave or Acrobat. Some of the most annoying problems creep in when your browser and operating system don’t cooperate with these technologies. Adobe could fix this. If Adobe had an Adobe-browser they could seamlessly combine the browser with all their extra technologies to work together. Historically Adobe has had good support for multiple operating systems including Linux so we know there is expertise within the company to support a broad range of platforms, perhaps even including mobile phones.
You can say there are already too many browsers and several very good ones now, but I think the Adobe browser is missing.
What would be the attributes of an Adobe-browser? I think it would have several useful things. First, it would be small and tight, carefully written for fast execution. It would need to be rigorously standards-compliant, perhaps based on an existing rendering engine, but not necessarily. Finally it should be a component. The browser itself should be able to plug into IE or FireFox, or run by itself. It should also be highly manageable and secure. It should also break some paradigms about what a browser should look like. That’s a tall order.
An Adobe browser should be highly manageable and secure because in a lot of places people would want to use it as the sole interface on a Kiosk. Imagine all the Flash and Acrobat technologies right there, for a pleasant user-interface and form-filling capabilities. In companies it would be nice to be able to lock down different aspects, like proxy settings, history settings.
Maybe Adobe doesn’t want to touch the browser market for several reasons - there is no profit in it, nobody “buys” a browser anymore, several good browsers already exist, or they don’t want to dominate the Internet and have to contend with antitrust issues. Certainly there might not be much profit in it, except perhaps in an IDE, developer materials and deployment and developer education for those wishing to extend or better support the browser, the “ecosystem” around it. Several good browsers do exist. OK, extend one. Use the rendering engine from an existing browser (maybe not IE) or partner with Apple, Mozilla, Opera or KDE. Do not worry about dominance and antitrust. It would be hard to get market share away from the big two, worry about that once you are successful.
I’m not asking Adobe to merge all their technologies into the browser. They should be modular, as they are with other browsers. That way you could trim the browser down for a cell phone, or have different levels of Acrobat support according to what the browser needs to do. The Adobe developers of all those other good technologies can continue to concentrate on making them work and improving them, they would have just have an additional browser to worry about integration with.
Finally, an Adobe browser could be a great development tool for all the people who work in development with Adobe technologies today. The first and best place to make sure your AIR, Flash, ColdFusion, or even Acrobat applications are working. Hopefully within an IDE like Eclipse.
C’mon Adobe, how about it?
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04.15.08
Posted in ramblings at 4:42 pm by Nate Smith
When I was a kid eraser crumbs were much smaller.
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01.05.08
Posted in Uncategorized, miscellany, ramblings at 10:10 pm by Nate Smith
Some interesting things have gone on with regard to the organization of information during the evolution of the World Wide Web. Initially, the ability to link relevant items was key to the Web. While this is still important and the basis of the Web, search engines have almost replaced linking as a means to locate information. The search engines themselves require the links so links will always remain the key organizational feature of the Web.
The development of the Wiki realized the promise of sir Tim Berners-lee’s original vision of the web — at least until the wiki-spammers arrived to crush it. A wiki has micro links on an organized site. Relevant information tightly linked and easily updated. One might argue Wikipedia is almost the antithesis of what a wiki should be. This is because the scope of Wikipedia is really too broad for a classic wiki. Wikipedia requires special disambiguation entries in order to distinguish between terms that overlap subjects.
Then came the blog. Blogs are mostly comprised of chronologically organized, granular, topic-focused entries. Of course blog entries usually have their fair share of links to other pages. Initially few blogs had original material and were in fact a chronological pointer to interesting things happening on other web sites.
The social network is another interesting facet of information organization. Sites like facebook and linked-in organized on the basis of social connections.
Now we have immediate information organized by the likes of twitter. It will be interesting to see if anything useful comes of that.
My own idea is to combine the highly linked and organized nature of a wiki with the chronology of blogs and twitter. Wikis have a problem where old information goes stagnant and does not get removed or updated, but there is no way to easily tell what is new information and what is old unless authors go to lengths to make it apparent. I would like to see a wiki - I call it a horizon wiki - where each entry has a date or timestamp associated with it. Old entries would be visually different from new entries and corrections. For instance new entries could be dark while older entries are progressively lighter, or vice versa. It would be visually apparent what information was recent and what was old so the reader would have a cue to make sure it is still relevant.
There are a lot of neat experiments with information organization going on right now too. One of my favorites is the news application on the Nintendo Wii. You can place it in a mode where it shows a globe. Places that have news stories show as a small thumbnail picture. The globe is simulated 3D so you can rotate it and see that some locations have stacks of stories with a number to indicate how many while some only have one or two items in the stack stories. This is a neat combination of geographical, and chronological organization - older stories are on the bottom of the stack. Innovative.
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