Monday, January 01, 2007

My Favorite and Least Favorite Gadget of 2006 I realize I'm a bit late in doing this post - one generally does "The Year's Best" in the week between Christmas and New Year's. But I was busy with activities such as jetting off to Seattle for the day. I'm going to keep my list short: one fabulous device and one device that I basically want to fling out the window on a daily basis. My Favorite Gadget of 2006: The iRiver Clix MP3 player. I know, I know. You're thinking, "An MP3 player? And an MP3 player that's not an iPod?" Well, I'm here to tell you that the iRiver Clix is a sweet little gem - hands down my favorite interface on any device that I use. I think the interface is actually superior to the iPod. And I realize "them's fightin' words". Especially for my buddy Isaac. However, the clix click feedback is soooo satisfying. The display is wonderful and the navigation interface is very very intuitive - again, other than "shuffle", I think the navigation is easier on the Clix than the iPod. However, I do admit that the Clix shuffle feature is hard to find and also seems to be buggy - or at the very least, their random algorithm has issues. Music is loaded onto the Clix via Window's Media Player. When I first discovered Media Player 11 was required, I was aghast. The last thing I wanted was to use an official Microsoft product to move tunes to my MP3 player. I had concerns regarding DRM and usability. The DRM issues were not an issue because I rip songs from CDs and I use a high end shareware program, Audiograbber to do my ripping. I only use the Media Player software to load the ripped tunes to the Clix. In regards to interface, I was pleasantly surprised, Windows Media Player 11 interface is not hideous. It's actually pretty easy to use. But enough about Windows. It's the iRiver Clix that's the star. The video display is screaming wonderful. Sharp and vibrant with tons of depth. It is such a treat. My only complaint is that the Clix is a flash player with just 2 Gb of storage. I want to put all of my music on my MP3 player - for that I need at least 30 Gigs. And with that sweet sweet screen, you definitely want to watch videos. So, I want a 60 Gig Clix. My Least Favorite Device of 2006: The HTC kjam smartphone. Here's the sad thing - the kjam is probably one of the best smartphones on the market. Its keyboard is definitely the best full QWERTY keyboard available on a phone. But the phone cannot overcome its fatal flaw - Windows Mobile Operating System. Omigod, it sucks beyond belief. It is soooo important for a phone to have an intuitive interface and not be buggy. Windows Mobile is not intuitive and it's very very buggy. At the very least, the actual phone interface and software should be rock solid. For goodness sakes, mobile phones have been around for over ten years and we've been using phones for almost 100 years. This is not new stuff. But, Windows Mobile is a classic example of Microsoft interface design at their worst. At least 1/3 of time, when my phone rings and I answer it by selecting the "answer" button, it doesn't answer correctly. Instead the person calling me hears me muttering, "fucking phone" when I can't hear them and then the software hangs up the phone. One of my other little favorite design features is that after you dial your call, the keypad screen disappears. Have the Microsoft designers never heard of voice mail or audio response systems where one makes menu selections from the keypad? Evidently not. When using Windows Mobile, one has to hit another button to get the keypad to come back up. By the time, you've figured all of that out, you've lost your opportunity to perform the menu selection. The obvious question is, why do I still use this phone? Well, I've become very attached to getting my email on my phone. I also love the keyboard. However, I've learned some key lessons. My next smartphone will not have a "soft screen". It will have an actual physical keypad for dialing. I will also not use Windows Mobile again. Unless, they dramatically change for the better. 8:30:26 PM    comment []

	Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Hollywood Digital Conference The first two days of the Digital Hollywood conference have been very very interesting. This is a high energy conference with a lot of smart aggressive folks. That being said, more than once, I feel like it's the dotcom boom déjà vu all over again. It's that same manic mindset with lots of postulating, visionarying, and venture capital looking for a home. However, this time around, at least some of what is discussed has actually been delivered and money is being made. Required reading is The Long Tail. The Long Tail is the It Term and the frame of reference for this conference. The Long Tail has been on my book pile for the past few months. With not a lot of forethought, I decided to read it just before this conference - I thought it might be referenced once or twice and I wanted to be hip to what was going on. Lucky decision on my part. Perhaps my favorite session so far was the Mobile Music session. Very bright articulate folks. My notes from that session consisted entirely of quotes: "There are two long tails. One consisting of consumers. The other consisting of a multitude of businesses. Some of those businesses have VC funding. Some have no funding at all - they're true startups." "There are companies that think they are businesses but they're really features that need to be bought by businesses." "Walk into a Starbucks next year, hear a song you like, punch a button, and the song is downloaded on to your next gen iPod." "Apple is the big gorilla. They go to Starbucks and say, 'This is what we want to do.' and Starbucks says 'Where do you want the transmitter?' "A device hears a song you might like, the phone buzzes you and says 'Hey you might like this song, do you want me to find out more?'" "The film industry has leapfrogged the music industry in terms of rights management. "The environments/markets/niches that do the most infringing are the ones that should be embraced the most." "Anyone who can make money complaining, is going to complain." 8:15:00 AM    comment []

	Tuesday, July 18, 2006

At the Feet of the Master I realize the title of this post is a tad over the top. However, it's actually pretty darn close to the truth. I spent today in a one day course (with a thousand of my closest friends) presented by Edward Tufte - one of the great minds of data analysis and the presentation of data analysis. I realize that to the non-initiated, data analysis and data analysis presentation may seem to be about as interesting as watching paint dry. However, it's an unbelievably compelling field and Tufte does a wonderful job of letting us all in on the secret: data analysis and presentation is fascinating and of critical importance. I've been a Tufte fan (disciple?) since the mid-80's when I purchased his first book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. (How's that for a whiz bang title?). I instantly fell in love when I read that book - the book itself is a publishing masterpiece and the content is revolutionary and eye opening. It was rated in the top 100 of non-fiction books of the 20th century and it's that good. Today's course was really quite good - a full day of Tufte - and he is a very engaging and compelling speaker. He's as we say in the tech biz - high bandwidth. Or as he would say, "high resolution". Lots of data - presented in a way that can be parsed and discussed. In fact discussion is a big part of his credo, data should be presented in a manner that allows for thorough discussion, questioning, and understanding. Particuarly germane to that principal were his analyses of the missteps in analysis and presentation of analysis in both the Challenger and Columbia shuttle accidents. He was part of the post mortem teams for both events and the errors in communication of important data analyses resulted in literally catastrophic events. Anyhoo, I could go on and on. But, what a fabulous day. Here's a reproduction of his favorite piece of data analysis and presentation. I have framed copy on my office wall at work (Mom gave it to me 20 years ago!!!!!). Napolean's March to Moscow: The War of 1812: 9:28:36 PM    comment []

	Tuesday, July 11, 2006

ASCII Zidane Continuing with tonight's apparent ASCII theme, here's ASCII Zinedine Zidane. Pretty nifty! 9:15:43 PM    comment []

	Monday, July 10, 2006

Girl Gadgeteers Good article today in CNET on Girl Gadgeteers. I was worried that the article was going to be all pink and fluff. But, although pink and fluff surfaced once or twice, overall the article was not bad at all. I was particularly interested in the concept of soft and/or smart fabrics. There were also some nifty car related devices. 9:49:34 AM    comment []

	Thursday, March 30, 2006

SIP to the Rescue - Tales from GCI's Australian Outpost Andrew, an ace GCI developer is an aussie who is currently back home in Melbourne. The telecommunications and time zone challenges when trying to sync up between Melbourne and Anchorage are daunting. However, as Andrew stated, "SIP to the rescue!" Here's his tale: Problem: My wife has a hard time being able to call her family back in the US. Seattle is currently 5 hours ahead of Melbourne, so by the time she comes home from work each night it's usually too late to call. With daylight savings starting in the US this weekend and also ending here, that will become 7 hours. She can't call from work during the day or on her cell as the rates are sooo pricey. Solution: I have configured my Sipura 3000 (aka same hardware as PhoneGnome) to pick up incoming calls on the PSTN after 25 seconds. I have the bridging function working, so that if you enter the appropriate PIN, it connects US dial tone. Then it's just a matter of dialing the US number....kinda similar to a calling card service I guess. So now Annie can call our house on her lunch break, and wait for the ATA to pick up. Once it does, she just enters her PIN and gets connected to our US 'unlimited nation wide' SIP service. Clever huh? :-) The ATA bridges the PSTN and (potentially multiple) VoIP services, all in such a tiny physical package. ta da!!!!! 5:16:54 PM    comment []

	Monday, January 23, 2006

The Ultimate Telco Geekery O.K. - on the telco front, this is about the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. I want to set one of these puppies up!!! It would be an absolute blast to get old school (really old school) telco gear from the 30's and 40's working with modern day VoIP. I may have to do this!!!!!!! 7:28:58 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2007 Stephanie A. Kesler. Last update: 1/1/2007; 8:38:18 PM.