After staying out late last night talking about code and meeting tons of people I had no desire to talk to anyone. Matt and I pretty much kept to ourselves today. We saw a panel on Natural User Interfaces and apparently Minority Report is coming. After that we saw a pretty cool Silverlight demo. I have to say after seeing that, playing around with a Surface, and seeing what WPF can do I think Microsoft is up to some really cool things. About time.
We also took in some Stubbs BBQ which was freaking delicious. Then we walked roughly 50 miles on an abortive quest for some Dublin Dr. Pepper. It was quite unsuccessful. I think I’ve gained about 17 lbs after all the beer and food this week but I’ve worked off about 12 lbs walking around Austin.
It’s cool here and I’d love to come back.
March 17th, 2009
Well we survived another day. On Monday I saw panels on The Browser Wars, Entrepreneurship, Freelancing, and Idea Generation. We also swung by the Microsoft Bizspark Accelerator where startups demo their product and a panel lead by Guy Kawasaki pokes holes in their ideas. It could be a little brutal at times. I didn’t get to see all of them but Gigotron (a music discovery engine) and Ringlight (a file sharing service) both looked cool. We also got copious amounts of swag. I think I’m setup on Microsoft t-shirts for life.
Later we walked around the University of Texas campus and had a pint at the awesome Dog & Duck Pub. We went down to The Speakeasy to see Them Terribles. They were good. After trying to figure out why an army of scantily clad hot chicks showed up in a sea of nerds with ironic t-shirts on we found out that the band was shooting a video and had hired models. That explained a lot. But the band played a good show and I got to act like I was really into it as they lip synched their single 5 times. After that we went to The Geek Party at the Iron Works and did some networking. Matt managed to harass Dan Rubin for 30 minutes.
Our cab got poached on the way home so we ended up walking the 2 miles back to the hotel. All in all a good night.
March 17th, 2009
Well we’ve been in Austin for 2 days now and SXSW has been as exhausting as I expected it would. We got in Saturday and managed to check in and walk through the trade show (mega lame) before hitting the parties. We swung by the Mobile Social BBQ (they ran out of plates right before we got in line), Dorkbot (I can’t even describe how awesomely weird some of things I saw there were – this will get it’s own post), Live/Create (we sipped on the free vodka and waited for the band to play. After a seemingly endless setup time they never did. We booked outta there), The Bigg Digg Shindigg (way overcrowded and a little too cold to stand outside), Happy Cog’ake (very crowded and kinda lame), and then we went off the schedule and hit some (or all) of the bars on 6th street. Getting up today was not pleasant.
Today was more about the content. I managed to see panels on Gestural UI, CSS3, iPhone Development, and How to Fund a Startup. They were all pretty interesting although I didn’t necessarily “learn” anything in all of them. We also stopped by Screenburn which was totally awesome. We played some old school NES and drank some free Mountain Dew. We’re avoiding the parties tonight so tomorrow should be even better.
March 15th, 2009
On Saturday Matt and I are (finally) heading down to Austin, TX for the SXSW Interactive Festival . I’m trying to plan the week but so far I’ve found it all to be pretty overwhelming. With all the talks , trade show , Screenburn , and bookstore getting a plan together is becoming difficult. There’s just too much I want to do. Oh and did I mention the parties? Oh god the parties!
This will be my first trip to Austin so I somehow want to incorporate a couple sidetrips into the week, like checking out UT and having a little Man vs. Food adventure to Juan in a Million and Big Top Candy Shop for some chocolate covered bacon. Not to mention Bar Camp Austin is going on this weekend as well and I might want to swing by there for a bit. It’d be like 2 conferences in one!
Obviously we can’t do everything but I’m following SXSW is Easy and SXSW Baby to make sure we hit the hot spots.
Matt insists on going low tech and bringing his Moleskin Notebook but I’ll be lugging along the Macbook, iPhone, and Canon PowerShot SD-1100 so I plan to be a blogging, tweeting fool all weekend. You can follow me on twitter or subscribe to my blog feed .
It’s going to be a fun but exhausting week!
March 12th, 2009
I’m writing this post from the Internet Channel on Wii. This is super cumbersome so I probably won`t be doing it again. Move along nothing to see here.
March 8th, 2009
I was going through my Google Analytics report recently and I noticed some strange keyword searches on Google. Here are a few choice ones:
- “tasteless and offensive” net nanny
- dugong for sex
- model reading boobs
- manswers sailors had sex with sea animal
- sailors have sex with sea cows
- video of karen allen’s tushy
You guys are some sick puppies. I don’t know if I should make fun of you or feel bad that these searches brought you to my site. Actually I think my next goal is to have the strangest keyword bring back my site at the top of a Google search. Call it an experiment in SEO. We can find out once and for all if SEO really works.
Get ready to see this phrase peppered throughout my next few posts: Dr. Orangutan C Buttlove is seeking a playdate on the Sunset Strip. I can’t wait to see my referrer report getting even stranger!
*** Update ***
Well that worked.
September 5th, 2008
After moving into my new apartment last week I realized that the building was not wired for Cable. Apparently the building’s owner has such an anti-Charter bias he refuses to allow them to operate in his building. Convenient for the tenants for sure. I was left to choose between Dish Network and DirecTV for my television viewing.
The satellite guy recommend Dish Network because it was “easier” to setup for him. I really had no opinion either way so I signed off. After having virtually no problems with Charter other than the contractors they employ to install their equipment I was left to learn a new system. Here’s my opinion after one week of satellite service.
HD
I have a large and expensive TV. I have a certain level of expectation when it comes to my picture quality. Charter’s HD was incredible – the picture was crisp and the colors were vibrant. Their biggest problem was the dispute with Belo Corp that prevented CBS to be broadcast in HD. This required me to miss many SEC Football Games in HD. Not good times. I was looking forward to Dish Network’s HD. I knew they had CBS available and they also had many more HD channels than Charter. This of course was before I realized Dish Network recently lost an HD satellite. I’m not sure how that’s affected their HD capacity but the picture is not nearly as crisp as Charter. So far this has been disappointing. By the end of the year they’re supposed to launch the all-HD TurboHD explosion superpack which will bump the HD channels up to 150. Not much benefit if they can’t get the issues with the picture figured out.
Winner: Charter
DVR
With Charter I did not have DVR service because they had onDemand which I loved. Most of the shows I wanted to watch were available the next day on onDemand. Californication, Weeds, and Entourage were there, Music Videos were there, a whole slew of movies were there also. The only things that weren’t there were broadcast stations and sporting events and most of those things were available on Hulu. Now that I have Dish Network onDemand is not an option. Into the murky waters of DVR I now wade. It is a pain in the ass. For one thing you have to remember to record the shows you want to watch. With onDemand they were just there. Plus you constanstly run the risk of not capturing an entire episode of a show if it runs over or is delayed. Again with onDemand this was not an issue.
Winner: Charter
Pricing
With Charter I had all the movie channels, the HD package, and Internet access for about $108. Now with Dish Network I have America’s Top 200, 2 movie channels, and the HD package, and no Internet access for around $90. The lack of Internet access hurts and I have no doubt my bill will be pushed well beyond the $108 it was with Charter if Internet was factored in.
Winner: Charter
Outages
For me Charter’s outages were infrequent. I was once living in an old building and the Internet would go out semi-frequently but that was more of a hardware issue rather than Charter’s fault I believe. With satellite you are constantly at the mercy of the weather. In the first week that I’ve had service we had a severe rainstorm which knocked out service for the evening. When the winter snow season comes I expect further outages.
Winner: Charter
Channels
Due to financial constraints I dropped TMC, Cinemax, and Starz when I went to Dish Network. Those won’t really be missed. I got to keep Showtime and HBO as those are my primary viewing stations. Despite losing those movie channels I did gain several quality stations including ESPNews, ESPN Classic, NFL Network, and Fuse. Picture be damned there are many more HD channels available as well.
Winner: Dish Network
Contracts
With Charter there are no contracts. Cancel anytime. Change service when you want and there will be no fees. This has benefits and disadvantages. Good: If I dislike the service I can threaten to leave (and actually do it) at any point in time. Bad: Charter can jack up the rates whenever they choose (and believe they do it and try to be real sneaky about it). With Dish Network I have a 2 year contract. If I cancel service I will be hit with a hefty fine in the range of $120 or so. Contracts are a pain in the ass but at least you know there won’t be any surprise $50 upcharges on your bill.
Winner: Dish Network
Overall I think Dish Network has a lot of potential and I’m still figuring it all out but Charter did provide me with great service for over 4 years and at this point I still miss them.
Overall Winner: Charter Cable
August 4th, 2008
I’ve already written about my disdain for the STLToday.com redesign. Well I still haven’t gotten over it. The geniuses over at the Post have decided to use a combination of Flash, JavaScript, and a kick in the nuts to shove advertisements in your face wherever you look. They are unavoidable. Here’s a brief tour in pictures.
The page loads. In the top left corner of the page seems to be peeled down revealing an ad that screams “Free Gas!” on a neon green background with white dollar signs flying around. The corner appears to be heaving/wheezing/pulsating and distracts you from reading the news.
What happens when you mouseover such an ad? Well of course it peels down to cover the entire freaking screen you’re looking at!
To get rid of this monstrosity you have to wait for the entire thing to peel down then wait for the close button to appear then click it then instead of just going away it has to peel all the way back up. Terrible implementation.
The second ad on the page is even worse. Worse because it’s almost unavoidable. If you scroll the page using the scrollbar you’re safe but if you’re like me and use a scrollwheel mouse or two finger scroll on a Mac you will hit this ad. This ad for Shubert Funiture Two covers the entire width of the page.
What happens when you mouseover it? Of course it covers the entire screen.
Again you must wait for the entire animation to complete loading then find the close button (not an easy task) and click it. I realize this is the “going out of business sale” but get out of my face. This has to be the most obtrusive news site ever created.
How has this effected my reading habits? Well I used to scan every section of the site now I just skim the homepage for as long as I can stand sometimes not even 5 minutes. I would be interested to see how their pageviews have gone down since the redesign. I’m now spending much more time reading The Guardian UK for my news. Shockingly the reporting on US news is better than what we have here in America. I’m also thinking about giving Newsweek a chance and for local news possibly switching to KSDK.com.
June 26th, 2008
Sometime around 1994 when the Internet arrived in the Dozier home in the form of America Online we had a blazing 2400 baud modem and were limited to 10 free hours a month. Imagine that. 10 hours a month! I’m online that much everyday now it seems.
Now Time Warner has introduced the idea of Internet Metering which would charge users based on much bandwidth they consume in a month.
From the article:
In that trial, new customers can buy plans with a 5-gigabyte cap, a 20-gigabyte cap or a 40-gigabyte cap. Prices for those plans range from $30 to $50. Above the cap, customers pay $1 a gigabyte. Plans with higher caps come with faster service.
This tiered pricing model won’t effect users who just check email and stock quotes but for the growing majority of Internet users this is a huge blow. With the convergence of Internet/TV/Video/Music there is no way a bandwidth cap will provide an adequate service level. My new Roku Netflix Player can consume up to 5GB per movie. That would put me into the second tier in under two hours!
Imagine all the things the Internet can be used for that would classify someone as a “bandwidth hog”. Hulu, iTunes, XBox, BitTorrent, Sirius Online, Skype, Vonage, Videoconferencing, and more. Plus applications are moving from the desktop to the online space so more and more people are spending more time connected. Eventually (nearly) all business will be conducted online.
I’m not some hippie but I do believe the Internet should be free for everyone. I believe that someday this will be reality. Every device will have an IP address. From our homes to our cars to our coffee makers. Capping Internet usage is doomed to failure and the executives that dreamed up this scheme are clueless.
The NYTimes article cites AT&T, Comcast, and Time Warner as planning on implementing these metering policies. I have Charter Cable which is already the worst company on the planet. I think my head might explode if they decided to go this route. I’m upset enough about the concept of throttling my connection speed and now this. Going back to the AOL pricing models of the early nineties is not an innovative new idea. It’s a giant step backward.
June 18th, 2008
This is part one in a continuing series of call-outs when I think my friends have written something stupid.
My friend/co-worker/punching bag Matt has written a post weighing the benefits and costs of purchasing the latest version of the iPhone that will be released on July 11. He reached the conclusion that the iPhone 2.0 is not worth the cost. That’s fine it’s his blog so he can have whatever opinion he wants but he reached this decision by using uninformed and illogical arguments. He also used a lot of douchebaggy language that he learned while attending at B-School at the Harvard of Natural Bridge Rd.
Here are some excerpts:
When the first iPhone came out, the decision to buy was pretty easy. The EDGE network was too slow, and, whenever I am around WIFI, I have access to a computer – home, work, school, etc. So, the most significant feature of the iPhone – access to the Internet – was completely useless.
First of all free WIFI is readily available in many areas including coffee shops, airports, sports arenas, bars, restaurants, bookstores, etc. So calling the Internet access feature “completely useless’ is overreaching. Yes the EDGE network is balls. It’s really, really slow. I even wrote about that. But there are plenty of places where the iPhone is usable and quite valuable.
It would fill in any gaps that I currently have in Internet access with a tool that provides adequate access to the Internet (although, the iPhone still does not fully support Flash, Silverlight, or any streaming audio format).
Flash sucks and you know it. God how obtrusive. Seriously most of the apps I use have no need for Flash. iPhone apps use AJAX pretty extensively and the functionality works well. There are apps for Flash video including YouTube but I can’t think of any other times I would need it except maybe Slacker/Pandora/Last.fm and you can jailbreak the phone (if you want to risk it) for those apps. I don’t see Silverlight hitting the mainstream (at least I hope not) because everything Microsoft is doing right now seems so stale.
But, I have lingering doubts that with 4G (LTE and WiMax) right around the corner, 3G will be slow in comparison to whats around next year.
What kind of attitude is that? Of course something better is always right around the corner that’s what makes technology so much fun. I was wondering why you were still using a Commodore 64.
The second generation iPhone requires a 2 year contract through AT&T. This contract will lock you into guaranteed rates of $30-45/month (depending on plan) for data on top of the existing voice plan.
Everytime you get a new phone with any carrier you are required to lock into a 2 year contract. But you can always get another phone and just change/extend the contract. I never saw this as a big deal. Are you really changing carriers every week? The data plan has gone up $10/month over the previous iPhone and that does suck.
The iPhone would increase my current contract by a minimum of $25/month. Over 24 months (and factoring in a nearly risk-free return of 3% from ING), the contract alone would cost me $618 more.
I know you have a Razr but you’re forgetting just how cool this phone is. It’s worth the extra money. I highly doubt you would be saving the $25/month anyway you’ll probably just use that money to buy terrible 80′s music that your girlfriend tells you is good.
For me the GPS and apps are quite trivial and will not factor into my decision.
That’s the old way of thinking. On normal cellphones the apps are trivial and almost impossible to use. The iPhone is quite different. The apps make the device. They are incredible and extremely easy to use.
But, of course, that could change when I see all my friends with one. Sometimes, you just have to be a little irrational.
Like writing that post? Yeah that was a little irrational.
Now go buy an iPhone! Ha, Love ya Matt!
June 11th, 2008
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