Jack of All Blogs » Technology

I’m a Kindle Schizophrenic

Andrew G.R. — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:38:31 +0000

Last night, while I was cleaning out the attic in my house, I uncovered a few old magazines and pamphlets, most from the late 20′s. Awesome! In amazing shape, it was awesome to flip through the pages and image that someone 80 years ago could have been sitting up there doing the exact same thing. If paper media went extinct, what would my grandkids find in 80 years? A cracked up Kindle? Definitely not as cool.

Perhaps this is why I’m a Kindle schizophrenic. One minute I want a Kindle and the next I think it’s an absolute waste of money.

On one hand, the thought of being able to carry a virtual library in my pocket (or bag) is appealing. I envision the technology – and hefty price tag – forcing me to do the reading I’ve been avoiding.

On the other hand, I think about all of the books that are already in circulation. The ones that I can borrow from the local library for free or pick up at a garage sale for a couple of cents. Sure the convenience is not there, but since I’m not a world traveler, I can certainly afford the calorie burn associated with lugging a book or two.

One thing I am certain of: I have no interest in a larger Kindle that is designed to read newspapers and magazines. There’s a press conference scheduled for tomorrow that will likely unveil just that. Can Amazon help revive old media? Probably not.

First and foremost, there is a content issue – not a content delivery issue. So unless Kindle will allow users to interact with their favorite “print” publishers in a new and exciting way, I can’t see too many people getting jazzed up about this.

Also, everyone I talk to, whether they are 20 or 70, claim they will never let go of the physical product. EVER. I have no reason to believe they are all lying. The number of “physical” readers might dwindle as the years and decades roll by, but it will not disappear.

And it never should. I’m more convinced of this than ever before.

But I was also the guy who always thought he’d want his CD artwork. Maybe I’m not just a Kindle schizophrenic – but a man with multiple personalities.

Early Adopters Are Entitled to Nothing

Andrew G.R. — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:46:43 +0000

The iPhone doubles in memory to 16GB and the iPod touch climbs to 32GB. Forget the celebrations in the street. If you’re really quiet, you can actually hear tears of sorrow.

Prices change. Things improve. Life goes on.

For some reason, that’s a difficult concept for consumers to comprehend. The first thing they do is hit up the blogs and forums to see if the company will “make good” since they were early adopters.

With technology evolving at lightning speeds, do early adopters deserve price adjustments? Rebates? Leniency on returns?

Jack of All Blogs says ‘NO.’

It stinks, but life is a lot about luck. One minute you’re crossing the street. The next, you’re dead. Tough break.

Just because something is shinier and more powerful with a longer battery life and water resistant shell, doesn’t mean you get a refund on the model you bought last month. Sorry.

If a restaurant changed its prices or beefed up its portions the day after you ate there, would you demand compensation? No.

If your predecessor at your place of employment made $10k more than you, would you be able to squeeze it out of your boss? Likely not.

What if you voted in an election and then the elected changes their entire platform. Guess what. You’re NOT getting your vote back.

In life there’s no going backwards. No mulligans.

These folks are just mad that they no longer have the latest and greatest, which is the driving force behind the early purchase to begin with.

Sorry gang. The reality is, you’re still ahead of the curve. Lighten up.

Larger Gadgets Will Rise Again

Andrew G.R. — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:28:41 +0000

Is it just me or is anyone else glad that the Consumer Electronics Show is over and that MacWorld is winding down?

Like the next guy, I’m a sucker for lighter, smaller, and shinier – but there comes a point when enough’s enough. I’ve heard more Apple rumors than I’ve heard presidential primary results.

And now, thin continues to be in. It’s not just Lindsay Lohan’s waistline that’s shrinking, but the MacBook too. At just 0.16” at its thinnest point, the thing is impressively emaciated. And so are the specs with a slow processor and limited upgrade potential.

We’re suckers for skinny, but if you look beneath the surface – at the MacBook or Lindsay – you’ll see that beauty is only skin deep. Or in this case, as deep as the bones perturbing through the skin.

All trends have a cycle. Will we see a day where BIG makes a comeback? Big women, big gadgets, big cars?

Supersize had it’s time. And it will rise again.

As a consumer-driven society we need people to know what we own. Hell, if the iPhone got to the point of a microscopic chip that could be implanted in your brain, how would you show it off at the mall?

Small has its limits.

Boomboxes had their rise.

Our cell phones won’t return to brick-size, but there will be a balance. Jack of All Blogs guarantees it.

The Jesus Phone is Not All That Fast

capslock — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 04:47:29 +0000

It was supposed to be the end-all, be-all of phones. Scoble was all excited over it (which made him look really stupid, in my opinion), and the 400,000 or so bloggers have set the blogosphere abuzz with postings about the iPhone, and the 700,000 people or so who have bought the iPhone in its opening weekend.

But the iPhone isn’t all that great. Forget the jazzy new touch-screen glass interface. Forget that it seems to have missed out on some basic phone features. What I’m talking about here is how the iPhone is being bragged as an all-in-one device, especially an Internet-connected device. Sure it has WiFi, but WiFi access points are very limited after all. And when you’re out there in the real world, you have nothing else to rely on but your cellular service.

So a good mobile Internet device should be able to give you broadband access from anywhere. What does the iPhone have? EDGE.

EDGE? WTF? If you don’t know what EDGE is, it’s simply GPRS multiplied several times over. And GPRS maxes out at 30 Kbps or so. So that means EDGE will max out at either about 200 Kbps or 400 Kbps, depending on the network (I know my math sucks, but this is what the marketing materials say).

But trust me, even mobile networks in backwards, underdeveloped countries can support speeds faster than 400 Kbps! They have true 3G (whereas EDGE is technically 3G, but very slow compared to other technologies). They have HSDPA and all sorts of acronyms that stand for “very fast mobile internet.” But the iPhone, which is supposed to be the epitome of advancement and evolution in mobile technology can just support EDGE!

How ironic.

I’m not sure if this is just a limitation of AT&T, the sole carrier that offers the iPhone, or that if they limited themselves to EDGE so users will have broadband across AT&T’s coverage. But they could have done better. EDGE sucks, really. I expected better of Apple.

Flash – Love It, Hate It

capslock — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:17:29 +0000

I’m not so fond of those animated thingamajigs blogs and websites often have these days. They range from video apps like YouTube and MetaCafe, and photo slideshows like slide.com and even Flickr. Some sites even have the tenacity to display animated banner ads in Flash!

Why do I hate them? For one, they tend to eat up memory and processing power, especially when I have a lot of tabs open on my browser (whether it’s Safari or Firefox). That’s even when they’re in the background. Secondly, they eat up bandwidth, especially those that decide to automatically turn on and play by themselves, without even asking me to click a thing.

Some of my friends have flash embedded on their social networking profiles (particularly on MySpace and Friendster, which let you do horrendous customizations). Worse, they automatically play some songs or videos that I just find tacky. I tend to avoid visiting these people’s pages altogether.

I’ve lost a draft blog post, or two, or three, because of these Flash animations that just pop up and freeze up my browser when I’m browsing other sites (for reference, quoting or links). Good thing the latest version of WordPress has auto-save, but that doesn’t always do the trick.

It’s also darn slow. Friends send me links for photos on auto-slideshow services like slide.com, but I would rather not wait for the entire animation to load (I have no patience to wait for the status bar to reach that 100% mark). I would rather go to a photo sharing/community site like Flickr.

But wait, Flickr uses flash, too. However, that’s only for those views where you need to drag and drop items for organizing, or when you want to create a flash badge or button, or when an image has annotations. Otherwise, flickr photo pages are just plain ol’ HTML. It’s not as obtrusve as other applications, and Flickr doesn’t make you wait just to see a photo.

Flash is good because it’s more or less the standard already for animated web content. You don’t have to ask users to download different proprietary plugins, and you can be sure that most are able to view your content. But sometimes it’s just too much, especially if the animations load up automatically, and if they take a long time to load. If it’s the bulk of the content (say it’s a video that a user wants to watch), then fine. But if it just impedes in the user experience, then it’s best to do away with animations of all kind.

That’s why I prefer reading blogs using my RSS reader.