progress through unreasonable behavior

developing post: why the current US patent process is broken

2011-07-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

1. the USPTO grants lots of patents on the everyday engineering solutions that designers and engineers come up with to solve typical engineering challenges. this adds huge and unnecessary legal risks to firms creating and commercializing products.

2. patent law puts the burden on firms to determine whether their products infringe any patented concepts/implementations, yet most IP lawyers advise not doing any IP research before/during/after development and commercialization in order to to trigger 'willful infringement' provisions in current patent law.

3. even for firms that would like to find out before/during development how many dozens, hundreds, or thousands of aspects of their designs are already patented, there is no practical way to accomplish that goal now. Patents are written cryptically, using obscure legal language that can rarely be parsed even by the engineers who developed the ideas. Worse, there are no decent tools for efficiently finding patents in areas a firm might want to investigate. It is very unlikely that any US legislator or judge has a good grasp of how expensive in dollars and time it would be for a firm developing one product to fully vet the product for infringement before launching it.

4. the faulty filter at the USPTO creates a 'gladiator ring' dynamic for firms: even if they recognize the ethical and practical shortcomings of the patent system, if they want to survive they must fight in the ring. Fighting means (a) getting weapons (filing patent applications on anything and everything, and hoping some get granted whether they are non-obvious or not), and (b) using the weapons against the other gladiators in the ring (filing offensive litigation against other firms going about the business of developing and commercializing products). The gladiators would really rather not have to fight each other, but within the ring of business their weapons are only useful against each other, not Rome (the USPTO and inane circuit courts)

'facilitators' like IV will be a necessary evil to grease the skids of product development commercialization. Just as soon as our government stops granting monopoly rights to non-innovators, however, these guys are toast.

it would be an illuminating exercise to come up with a laundry list of obvious things that have been patented to show the extent of the issue.

as an aside, there is a population of web commenters who use lazy arguments about how companies 'steal' from other companies and 'freeload off other's R&D'. Nothing could be further from the truth in my experience - companies don't build products, product development teams composed of people create products, and rarely if ever do engineers and designers reverse engineer competing product software or services in order to copy implementation details. It would be an interesting study to try to track a truly novel idea that warrants a patent and follow the propagation of the idea through a population of engineers and designers that operate in the relevant domain, to validate whether people rip off competing products, or if not, how design patterns emerge from industry.

Purchases have consequences

2011-04-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

In various posts here starting in 2004, I have argued that home prices in Seattle, and probably the US as a whole, were unsustainably inflated. Tim Ellis made the same arguments (but more regularly, and with more data) on his Seattle Bubble blog. The implications were obvious then, and more obvious now.

The causes should have been obvious as well, but various liberal thinkers and polemicists are drawing the wrong conclusions and using these conclusions to fuel the wrong arguments. They are blaming the banks that lent money. The culprits are closer to home.

My family elected to stay out of the market and rent while the market boiled, and I tried to encourage my friends and colleagues to do the same. This was not just out of self-interest, but because of the probable impact to every sector of the economy linked to home purchases. It turns out that every sector of the US economy of the mid and late 2000s was linked to home purchases. We all benefit from a healthy economy. We all have a responsibility to our families, but as citizens we also have a responsibility to the country and each other. During the real estate boom of the mid 2000s, I saw friends, colleagues, and strangers make choices that contributed to the bubble, and hence to the outcomes when the bubble burst.

I'll make my argument as concisely as I can: mortgage lenders, real estate agents, appraisers, real estate developers, politicians, and others in the real estate ecosystem played a supporting role in fueling the bubble, but the leaders of the bubble were the families and individuals that bought and sold homes during this period.

President Obama famously said 'elections have consequences'. The lesson of the last several years is that purchases have consequences. Home purchases during the boom have had terrible consequences for our country. Businesses have closed. Tens of millions of people that might have otherwise had productive jobs are unemployed. Perhaps 100M people have lost most of the net value in the largest source of wealth that they have - their homes. The nation and the states are out of money. The mood is sour. The range and depth of services that government provides are getting descoped significantly.

Americans have the luxury of choosing where to spend money. This is part of the foundation of liberty - the freedom of contract. Nearly every business works hard to win business (purchases) from customers by offering good products, describing the benefits of those products, and encouraging potential customers to patronize their establishments. In a nation of free men, free trade, and vibrant businesses, in nearly all transactions consumers get to decide where, when, and whether to buy goods and services. Businesses don't get to mandate that consumers make purchases.

The real estate boom is notable in that for the most part, consumers bought homes from other consumers. There is no other large sector of the economy where consumers purchase goods or services directly from other consumers. It's fashionable to try to blame Starbucks for selling expensive espresso drinks, and although even in this case consumers get to choose whether to buy or not to buy, it's a true business (Starbucks) trying to encourage consumers to make a purchase. In the case of most home sales, it's consumers (home owners) trying to sell their homes to other consumers (potential home buyers). Yes, there are plenty of enablers - agents, advertisers, lenders, appraisers, etc. But the primary decisions - whether to put the home for sale, what price to ask, what conditions are allowable on the transaction, and ultimately whether to execute a sale with a specific buyer, are all under the control of the private citizen who owns a home. And home buyers are under no mandate to buy, they have free will and no law enforcement officer or civil servant ordering them to purchase a home. Renting, leasing, living hotels - these are all valid options. Selling a home is also a discretionary decision. There may be pressure to sell a home for legitimate reasons, but the decision to sell is made by the seller. Even in the case of selling a home to 'enable' a move due to a job transfer, it's a discretionary decision to trade off some benefits for other benefits.

During the boom, I met and read commentary from a lot of people who were boom cheerleaders. But I don't believe that a single person privately doubted that at some point, the boom would fade. I saw a lot of fear - fears of being priced out of the market as it went up and up, fears from regular people of not taking advantage of the unusual opportunity to make a lot of money before the opportunity passed. I also saw a lot of raw covetousness, greed, and selfishness - vacations, cars, gadgets, renovations, and all kinds of purchases funded with mortgage refinancing and HELOCs. A lot of people buried their concerns about the sustainability of these shenanigans, but the aftertaste of irresponsibility was there in every boom-enabled purchase.

For the last several years, there hasn't been that much soul-searching among the citizenry about the culpability for these personal decisions. There has been a growing list of writers, thinkers, and public personalities pointing fingers at politicians and at banks for the financial catastrophe. This is wrong, and dangerous, because it minimizes the responsibilities that are a necessary part of the liberties we hold dear. As individual citizens, we've got to recognize the culpability that each of us that sold or bought homes has in causing this mess.

If we allow ourselves to be led into raising pitchforks against banks and bankers before we recognize and accept our culpability, we won't approach the changes we think need to be made outside of our homes with an adequate level of humility and camaraderie. I have yet to hear of a single parent who has said to their child, "I thought we could afford your new iMac and Honda when we sold the old house in 2006, but in reality I knew the price we got was too good to be true. If it hadn't been for this inflated price we wouldn't have been able to pay for them then, and we shouldn't have bought them in the first place." I haven't heard a single home buyer get up at a town hall meeting and tell their city council, "I knew I was paying an inflated price for my home in 2007, and this contributed a 'comp' to the tax appraiser's assessments in our neighborhood, which probably went right in to an artificially high budget forecast for our town, which is why we're here today talking about why the city park has to close." Home buyers haven't started writing editorials in their local newspapers (or even on their blogs) accepting a modicum of responsibility for taking down our country's economy.

The Americans who lived through the Great Depression earned a reputation for thrift from those of us who came much later. For now, I can't see any recognition from contemporary Americans about their actions in this latest depression. We can't responsibly rebuild our economies and public finances until we consider our motivations and shortcomings, own up to our contributions, and change our hearts and minds about the causes and effects of this situation.

Living in Taipei

2010-09-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

I moved with my family to Taipei, Taiwan earlier this year, and took a new job with a new company. This is my first post this calendar year.

Taipei is a little exotic, but I like it. I'm hoping that after I finish recruiting the team I'm building, launch our v1 product, and get the planning for the next release under way, that I'll have some more time to read, blog, and travel around the country. It's a beautiful island full of new mountains, geothermal features, windy roads, and remote beaches ... and I've only really left the city four times in ~6 months.

Bilski, and why any contemporary software patent is likely a crap patent

2009-11-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

This is just a stub for now; I wanted to get this down as a placeholder and expound on this later.

Most of the software patents I've analyzed, and this is more than a few, make their central claims about solutions to engineering challenges. If I had asked one of the hundreds of software developers I've worked with over the last decade to come up with several potential options to any of these challenges, I'm certain they would have identified the models and mechanisms these patents claim as 'innovative'. I'm even more certain that these professional software developers would have faced no serious, insurmountable obstacles to implementing their proposed solutions in code.

This is the heart of my objection to the current state of software patents in the US - most companies try, and succeed, in obtaining patent protection for useful but not innovative, solutions to contemporary challenges. If an average software developer identifies and implements a solution to a challenge during the normal course of a product development cycle, this solution should not, by definition, be patentable - and the incentives for firms to seek protection for these products of the typical development process should be eliminated immediately.

my first podcast

2009-09-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

I've passed up various opportunities over the years to speak in public, for various reasons, including opportunities to do podcasts. But this week I yielded to the inevitable and had a public, live chat with Randy Ksar from Motorola's developer community team.

It was more fun than I thought it would be, but to be perfectly honest I felt fairly constrained in what I could talk about, and how natural and dynamic the discussions were with the folks asking questions over the phone and by twitter.

I'm gearing up to present a longer version of this podcast topic, but live and in person on stage in San Diego in two weeks. It's been a while since I've spoken on stage, but the topic is interesting (to me at least, and hopefully for the audience) and I've asked a colleague from the engineering team to jointly present so that we can structure the session as a dialogue rather than a soliloquy.

One of the aspects that struck me a few days after this podcast is how anything I say or do online is now practically a 'reference work'. People have talked about this for years, but it's really hitting home for me now: things I say or do, or things other people post to the web that I've said or done, will be there ... more or less forever. I'm not so sure this is a good development.

j

The hidden tax in your cell phone bill, and why operator retail is anti-competitive

2009-09-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

If you have a mobile phone from AT&T or T-Mobile, or Verizon or Sprint, or Alltel or MetroPCS or Cricket, you're paying a tax that you very likely don't see on your bill. It's not a government tax. It's the device subsidy tax.

Practically every American with a cell phone bought that phone at the same store where they signed up for their cellular service - their phone number, minutes, text messaging plans, etc. Something like 95%+ of Americans who have 1-2 year cell phone contracts bought their cell phone at a discount by committing to another 1-2 year service commitment.

And why would you pay the full, 'without a contract' price for a phone when it's available at a much cheaper price with a contract, and hey, you're going to need service anyway? If the operator will subsidize the cost, why not take the savings?

This should hardly be surprising given a few seconds of thought, but AT&T is not subsidizing your iPhone, and Verizon Wireless is not subsidizing your Blackberry. They are not bearing the cost of your cell phone on your behalf. They simply include this cost, aggregated and averaged across their customer base, in the prices they charge for service. You pay the 'device subsidy' in monthly installments, as a hidden part of your bill.

Here's the catch, and the reason this device installment payment plan is really a kind of tax: you can't avoid paying it, even if you don't need or want it. The operators don't offer voice or data or texting service plans that exclude this amortized hardware charge. Sprint doesn't have a 900 minute per month 'bring your own device' plan for $15 less than the standard 900 minute per month plan. AT&T doesn't have an iPhone voice and data plan for people who bought secondhand iPhones - at least not a plan that costs less than the regular iPhone plans, which include a hefty per-month premium to offset part of the up-front cost of buying a new iPhone.

Nope, if you just want to keep using your current phone, or bought a new or used phone somewhere else, you won't pay any less than the person who signs up for a plan and gets a reduced-price phone. Part of your monthly bill will be paying the monthly installment charge for that other person's phone.

This isn't merely unfair, it borders on being anti-competitive. It's not coincidence that nearly everyone in the US buys their phone from the same people who sell the service. The operators desperately want to control where, how, and under what conditions you buy your phone. And every single one of them in the US has only one type of plan - the 'we include the cost of your hardware' plan. Every single one. Because phones really are rather expensive, even in 2009, Americans have been been lulled into accepting the bargain from the operators, and have become accustomed to only paying up front for part of the cost of their phones.

It matters where you buy your phone, because different retailers configure the same phone models differently. If you buy your phone from AT&T, it comes with locks you might not be aware of - it will be locked to only operate when an AT&T SIM card is in the phone (and not, of course, a T-Mobile SIM), and it will have the 'administrator' for the phone set to AT&T. When you buy a Dell from Best Buy, Best Buy isn't configured as the administrator account, and Best Buy doesn't use that administrator account to set rules on what applications you are allowed to install, or how you use your computer. But AT&T does this on your phone, so that 'the network is protected'.

Now if you were to buy the exact same model of phone from Nokia.com, or Amazon, or one of the lesser known 'pure-play' phone retailers, none of these locks would be present. You could use a SIM from any operator and the phone will operate. You can install any application that you want. You could update the phone software with newer versions without breaking the law or voiding your warranty.

But buying phones from retailers other than the operators is horribly expensive - normally $150-$400 more expensive than buying the same phone from the operator. It's a classic bundling scheme. And there isn't an 'unbundled' option - actually there is an unbundled option, at least at AT&T and T-Mobile, and the service costs exactly the same as the full bundle.

Until one of the major operators offers a lower priced bring-your-own-device option, you will continue to buy your phone from their stores. They've blocked the non-operator retail channel from competing, since a phone without service is pretty much useless.

j

Craigslist API

2009-03-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen a single shred of news about an upcoming Craigslist API, or any hints from friends. But when I pulled up the Seattle CL site this morning I noticed in the status bar in Firefox that I was redirected back and forth several times between craigslist.api.beta.com and seattle.craigslist.com.

Interesting.

CL has been the most notable API hold-out and data access curmudgeon - they aggressively block anyone who tries to aggregate their information across sites/markets, and even some fairly innocent mashups. If they are trialling an API ... especially in this down market when bartering and used goods sales are probably going way up ... that would be very interesting.

j

Google Android and open source

2009-02-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

When I was at Microsoft I heard a lot about the evils of free open source software. I didn't buy all of the arguments, and haven't thought about this much in a couple of years.

I've been dealing with Google a fair bit in my current role, and I hear about open source pretty much every day. The Android team at Google seems to love open source. They've built an entire mobile operating system, made most of it open source, and don't charge anything for the client license if you want to ship a product.

And they want the folks who work with them to contribute their code to open source. They want my firm to lean on our third party vendors to offer their stuff to open source. Open source means free. Open source means that anyone can use it, modify it, and ship it.

On a call today we were discussing a very specific example, and the horror of open source hit me square in the face. Google would prefer to work with developers who will contribute their work to open source. Most developers have a hard enough time making money from their applications, and Google wants them to give away the fruit of their labor. I'm not sure that Google cares about how the developer is supposed to make money - or maybe they do, and assume that the developer will make money through peripheral means. Like advertising.

jason

Gearing up to buy a home

2009-02-18T16:42:00.000-08:00

There's confusion and volatility in the local housing market. Prices are dropping, but at hugely different rates depending on the listing.

It's about time.

I'm going house shopping.

j

As-built versus design intentions

2008-12-22T23:19:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of people who have "product management" titles. In my experience there is a smaller number of people who have experience managing products, and who have learned some of the basic lessons.

My first internship was at a nuclear plant in Florida, where I spent part of the summer climbing around the innards of the plant inspecting piping and mechanical systems. It was hot, somewhat dirty work, with a lot of very boring clerical aspects. But I learned one valuable lesson - there's a reason engineers inspect every aspect of a big system that's just been constructed: what gets built doesn't usually match the designs and plans. I logged dozens of instances where pipe hangers weren't where the blueprints said they were supposed to be, or even where the 'latest' document change requests said they were supposed to be. Sometimes I even found valves that were installed in a different orientation than the docs described, or pipe that was of a different grade than the specs claimed.

Designs are critically important, but they aren't the gospel - when engineers and fabricators are building something, often times adjustments have to be made to account for real-world issues that surface. In a well-run engineering org, someone will capture the changes to the design docs, and the existence of a change will be noted on the original docs. A lot of systems are maintained over time, however, and sometimes in the process of servicing or repairing a system element a change in the configuration or design will be made, and sometimes those changes aren't documented and referenced in the design docs.

I don't work on big, multi-billion dollar nuclear power plants at the moment, for the last eight years I've been mostly a software planner and marketer. My specialty seems to be mobile operating systems, I'm now in a new role planning yet another smartphone OS. Operating Systems are arguably just as complex as a the mechanical systems in a nuclear plant, and over multiple releases a lot of good intentions add layer upon layer of entanglement to the pristine original designs. Software is much more ephemeral than mechanical systems, and harder to inspect. Sometimes a new component will be added in V3 of an OS that supercedes a function of a component introduced in V1, and the architects and developers will forget while planning v4 that some system resource uses that function from the V1 component, make a change, and silently break something. QA normally picks up issues like this, but since an OS is by definition a platform upon which other people will build apps, and is also a stateful machine with *a lot* of possible configurations, it's impossible to test every angle.

Which brings me back to my original observation - that not all product managers have learned the basic lessons of managing a product through the development life cycle. I've noticed that a lot of PdMs read the marketing requirements docs and feature specifications and product docs that the developers used up front in building the product as 'gospel' for what was actually delivered. That's a mistake. A good product manager, especially one managing a multi-generational product or a platform product/service, should maintain an as-built doc that reflects the details and limitations of the completed product. Or at the very least, a product manager should be aware of the reality that between planning and delivery a lot of decisions are made that can affect the features and performance of their product. And for product managers working with engineering teams that use an Agile-like development process, the need to author as-built docs is even more critical, given the inherently iterative and winding path that these 'chunked' developement efforts follow.

j

Operators and connected netbooks

2008-12-18T20:54:00.000-08:00

I'm in the center of a bit of a situation at work between Google and AT&T, and it's both uncomfortable and enlightening.

Mobile operators seem to want to control all the important aspects of the handsets they sell to consumers. I'm reading through a 1200+ page requirements document at the moment that describes in excruciating detail what any given handset must adhere to in order for AT&T to consider assorting said device. 1200 pages. That's nearly as long as Tolstoy's War & Peace. Some operators go even further, though, and actually design phones themselves.

Many people over the years have lamented this situation; it's one of the fundamental aspects of the wireless industry that mobile operators, in many markets including the US, control most of the distribution of phones to consumers, and they set the rules on what devices they will assort. When was the last time you purchased a phone that wasn't branded with an AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, or other operator's logo? Each time you buy one of these devices, you help strengthen the operator's hold on the sales channel, and they use this position as the default source for phones (not their position as the folks who run the cellular network) to set and enforce very prescriptive and not always consumer-friendly requirements on phone designs. People don't buy unlocked devices (which are typically the 'pure' variant of a given phone model and closest to the planner's and designer's vision, unencumbered by changes to comply with operator requirements) for a very simple reason - they are far, far more expensive, because there's no operator subsidy applied to an unlocked device.

My latest phone is currently listed for $99 at T-Mobile, and ~$300 from online retailers. The $99 version has T-Mobile branding, can only run applications certified by T-Mobile, and has a number of differences from the $300 version driven by T-Mobile's requirements. The $300 version is SIM-unlocked, so you can use it with any SIM card and GSM service, it's application-unlocked so you can install and use any application you'd like, and it comes configured with themes, ringtones, applications, etc. that I picked out along with the industrial and UI design team to match the style we were going for with the phone as a whole. I would expect that the $99 version will probably outsell the $300 version by about 200:1.

Imagine if the only way you could buy an Apple iPod Touch was to buy the device at Circuit City, and the folks at Circuit City forced Apple to modify the iPod Touch to suit their requirements, resulting in a Circuit City-branded Nano in a nice burnt maroon color, that can only play music bought from a Circuit City music store (and none of your music ripped from CDs), and that works on a WiFi connection from a Circuit City internet service partner. Oh, you'd like an iPod Nano instead? Well, Circuit City doesn't sell those (in this example), you can only buy those from Amazon. And the Amazon iPod Nano is only available in Amazon orange, and only plays music bought from the Amazon MP3 store. People in Thailand can buy a fully Apple iPod Touch or Nano in a range of colors, that will work with any music you've got, and have cool wireless web browsers that aren't on the US versions, but these exotic foreign iPods cost three times as much and don't have a warranty valid in the US. And they come with weird foreign power cords. And insead of chosing from a new iPod model every year, Apple only came out with new models every two years. In this alternate iPod universe you might not see nearly as many people walking down the street with white Apple earbud headphones as you actually see here in the real world.

I'm starting to see a crack in the system, though - netbooks and laptops with built-in cellular modems. Until recently if you wanted to buy a computer with a built-in cellular connection you skipped checking out the operator stores, because they didn't carry these kinds of devices. Now some of the operators carry netbooks with built-in cellular modems, and they've even started to apply subsidies to reduce the up-front cost to purchase these devices - as long as you sign up for a contract for service to connect your netbook to the cellular network.

I can't imagine that many consumer would be interested in buying a portable computer from their phone company if that computer imposed more restrictions than a computer available from a regular electronics retailer, even if the price is a little lower. If this is true, then the rationale for treating handsets differently from connected computers will likely erode over time. Which would help people in postions like mine spend more time planning products that excite consumers, and less time filling out muliple byzantine requirements compliance matrices and planning features that placate operator desires for control.

j

Blogging once a week for over five years

2008-12-16T21:56:00.000-08:00

I just realized that I've been maintaining this blog for over five years, and have averaged a little over one post per week - I'm coming up on my 400th post.

I've really got to spend a bit of time revising the layout; the standard Blogger templates are fine, but boring. And narrow. The world has moved to widescreen displays, yet my Blogger template would work just fine on an SVGA monitor circa 1995. I've got CS3, some (rusty) HTML skills, and blogging tools seem to have improved since I started, it's time to polish my site just a bit.

j

The US auto bailout

2008-12-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

The NYT is reporting this afternoon that Republicans in the Congress have decided not to support the $14B initial tranche of investments brokered by President Bush and Congressional Democrats. Given that the Congress is set to go on break tomorrow for the Christmas holiday, and GM and Chrysler have said that they lack the free cash to remain solvent through the holidays, it appears that they might finally be pushed into declaring bankruptcy.

So this flyer, which I saw in several forwarded emails, might not come to pass:

It's very, very unfortunate that the US auto industry has failed, but it has indeed failed. Producing product isn't enough to be 'successful', a for-profit company also needs to make efficient use of capital and produce a profit, and General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have ceased to produce enough surplus to sustain their operations.

I don't believe that the these three firms will simply dissolve, there are too many gems in their rubble to shut down their entire operations. I would expect that investors will buy the Special Vehicle team from Ford, as well as the Mustang brand and possibly development team, the Corvette brand and development team from GM, the light truck development team from Ford, etc. Perhaps some well-armed investor will buy the most interesting bits from each of the three companies and form a super-marque composed of just those cars and trucks that are still profitable and still in demand.

Look at the example of Porsche - this tiny little maker of high performance vehicles has profitably run their operations for decades, and managed their finances and investments very, very well. This year they launched the opening gambit in a a strategy to buy the Volkswagon group, which briefly pushed VW's share price up to the point that VW was the most valuable company in the world. A well run specialty maker can be profitable, and perhaps this is what we need in the US.

If by some stroke of manuevering Congressional Democrats and the Obama folks force a compromise, and the Big 3 are bailed out, they will almost certainly impose their own ideological agenda on these car makers, and this will very likely result in reduced investments in the very brands and products that are still profotable and sustainable. For the sake of all involved, I hope that no deal is brokered, the the Big 3 head into bankruptcy, and one or more private investors buy the good parts of these companies and form a smaller, more focused automaker that serves the demands of the market - and not the demands of politicans.

j

Cosmological observations

2008-12-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

I love astrophysics (and physics in general), and all of the complicated and beautiful forms of matter that we see out in space. Since I first read popular physics books on black holes and pulsars while I was in middle school I've been fascinated by the principles by which these objects take their form and propagate their effects.

Once I learned higher maths in college and graduate school, however, I began to develop a silent but subtle lack of comfort in the many multivariate and multidimensional physics model that astrophysicists were formulating to describe what we observe in space. Until this week I hadn't mentioned this discomfort to anyone, or written about it.

Linear algebra is a far too simple mathematical form to describe the complexity of physics in space (or on Earth), but my discomfort can probably be best described using algebra as an example. If you have 5 variables that are mathematically related to each other, you need 5 distinct equations relating those variables in order to be able to solve the system of equations. But 5 is just an example, the general rule is that you need Z equations to solve for Z variables.

With all of the complex models that we've developed over the years to describe fundamental physics, including general and special relativity, quantum, the cosmological constant, strings operating in Calabi-Yao spaces, grid theory, etc., and all of the increasingly detailed and complex models we've created to try to describe what we observe in the far reaches of the universe, including stellar formation, stellar collapse, gravitational lensing, red-shift, etc., I wonder if along the way we haven't created more complex models than the data should justify.

When we look into the heavens, we're observing electromagnetic radiation of one wavelength or another. A *lot* of measurements of the universe have been taken, using instruments gathering data across a very wide band of electromagnetic frequencies - microwave, t-ray, ultraviolet, the visible spectrum that our eyes can discern, infrared, radio, etc. And clever astronomers and astrophysicists have used various physical phenomena like massive stars to augment our view of the farthest reaches of the universe. But our Earth takes a pretty small lap around the sun, if you compare our orbit to the size of the universe, or even just the size of the Milky Way, and this has a serious impact on our ability to observe far-away stars and galaxies and such in three dimensions. We rely on inferences drawn from our postulated models of the physics of the universe to add data on the third dimension (distance from Earth, and speed approaching or receding from Earth) to these flat two dimension images our cameras snap. We also estimate the size, mass and distance from Earth of far-away stars using our models of physics, and many more detailed estimates like the age and energy of these stars. We use this data to help determine how these stars distort our observations of the stars behind them (along our line of sight).

The point here is that we create high-order models of the positions, speeds, acceleration, age, energy, and numerous other attributes of nearly all the luminous (and some non-luminous) objects we observe in space drawn from the light we gather. And from these individual stars and other objects we create models of the current universe as a whole, and further models that try to describe how the universe has developed over time, and will develop in the future. Some physicists even add to this model of the universe an 'ether' we now call the 'grid' (the grid is supposed to exist even in an absolute vacuum). But all of the individual variables in these models are all related: distance and size are related, as are distance and luminosity, speed and mass, mass and age, age and distance, etc. I wonder if we haven't created a really big cosmological-physical model with more variables than the data can justify.

j

Beliefs and the afterlife

2008-11-28T09:53:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about a basic question lately. A question that I've never seen voiced elsewhere but that seems elementary to forming an individual's world view.

There are a lot of different beliefs that various people hold about what happens after the human body has died. Some of these beliefs include simple decay of the body as the final process, reincarnation of an individual's soul into a new earth-bound life form, judgement by Jesus and disposition of one's soul to Heaven or Hell, absorption of an individual's life force back into an earthly pool of spiritual energy, the emergence of a massless and invisible soul set free to roam the earth indefinitely, judgement by Allah and disposition of one's soul to Paradise or Hell, rebirth into another universe, reincarnation as a more powerful being but in a massless and invisible form, etc.

Some people are unsure of what, if anything, will happen to them after their bodies die, but this isn't a view, just an uncertainty of the truth or likelihood of any particular possibility. But others place more weight on the likelihood or evidence for specific after-death options, and while while they might express less than absolute certainty that they know what will happen to them when they die, expect a specific outcome after their body dies.

So here's my question:

Does the belief that any particular person holds about what will happen to them after their body dies have any impact on turning that belief into reality?

If a man in India believes that he will be reborn in a different body after his original body dies, does his belief somehow impact the physical world even after his body has died? If I believe that a god named Jesus will judge my actions and beliefs about his existence and holiness and adjudicate my soul to a singular Heaven or Hell after my body has died, does my belief in Jesus before my death somehow sustain or bring into existence Jesus and his Heaven and Hell?

If a woman in California believes that she has intrinsic life energy, is this belief alone sufficient to instantiate actual metaphysical life energy and perpetuate the existence of this energy after the woman dies? If a boy in the Philippines believes that after his body dies he will be reborn as a superhero-like demigod, does the physical and metaphysical manifestation of his belief have any chance of instantiating an actual superhero rebirth? If I believe that I will return as a leprechaun after I die, does some physical or metaphysical aspect of 'me' act as an agent to catalyze the creation of a leprechaun imbued with my soul at some point after my body begins to decay?

I suggest that the answer to this question is no, an individual's beliefs about the afterlife do not somehow will into existence a physical and metaphysical afterlife constructed according to the individual's views. Humans cannot through intellectual processes alone impact the physical world while we are alive, so why should our ability to will conditions into existence grow after our brains have ceased functioning, and in ways that operate outside of the physical universe?

The answer to this question leads to other questions. If our view of the afterlife doesn't have any impact on the reality of our personal disposition after our bodies die, and we are powerless to will our beliefs into reality, then perhaps it is in each man's interest to determine whether there is evidence that points towards a specific process and reality after his body dies.

I posed this question to an acquaintance, and she told me she believes that the answer to the question is yes, that the details and fervor of her belief will catalyze the release of her life energy into a universal reservoir of life energy, and that my beliefs, whatever they are, will be realized and instantiated partly through the fact of my belief. I asked her whether she thought that her belief in the existence of a pool of spiritual energy could have any tangible impact of the disposition of my body and soul after I die, and she told me that she didn't think her views would have any impact on my reality. I didn't ask her whether she had given any thought to the possibility of creating for herself an afterlife fashioned according to her own desires.

Working on a legal philosophy that squares liberty with Christianity

2008-11-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

For years I've struggled with how to fit together God's laws with a pluralistic democratic legal foundation. After going for a solo hike in the Cascades yesterday (first snow of the season!) and focusing on this for a while, I think I've made a breakthrough in combining and reconciling these principles. I'm working on documenting this synthesis, and will then take a look around to see if this is original, or duplicative of pre-existing work.

If this model makes sense to me, I'll be delighted to have resolved this longstanding internal dilemma. The question then will be to figure out whether to do anything with this doctrinal model. My initial thought is that it might be worth considering shopping this around to some of the folks I know at think tanks and influential churches.

j

Apparently I'm in the minority locally and nationally.

2008-11-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

I've avoided checking the 2008 US election results and forecasted results all evening (was finishing watching a 3 DVD series on John Adams), but just checked the web before going to bed.

Apparently there are more people who disagree with my preferred candidates and ballot initiatives than agree, on the local, state, and national level. I'm not sure that a single person or initiative that I voted for is in a leading position as of this evening of the election. C'est la vie.

j

My first phone is available in stores in the US. Awesome.

2008-11-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

It has taken a long time, with a lot of hard work by a lot of people, but the first phone that I've directly managed through development and launch is now available at T-Mobile stores in the US. I walked into a local store today, and there it was, sitting on display and looking awesome.

The sell-in process to get this phone assorted at TMO was both difficult and easy (at different times). We beat out a competitive Samsung 5MP handset to win the slot that PIXL (commercial name is ZN5) occupies at TMO US, and spent a lot of effort to get the 'generic' model customized to meet TMO's branding requirements (which extend to the hardware, software, and radios). As of today the price (with a 2 year contract) is $99, which is quite a bargain given the quality of the imaging (and music) and slim design the team in Aalborg and Chicago managed to squeeze the camera into.

It was a huge milestone when we announced PIXL earlier this year, and again when it became available at retail in China and then EMEA. But there's nothing quite like having a product that you've labored over sitting on shelves in local stores. I spent 10 minutes in the store today just looking at each button, chamfer, color, and UI flow, thinking back to the multitude of discussions and design iterations that led to this current look and feel.

Motorola has a lot of problems, and though the new CEO is moving quickly to try to resolve the most pressing and systemic issues, our most immediate problem has been a lack of exciting product in the pipeline. PIXL won't single-handedly lift Motorola's fortunes, but I'm hopeful that it will generate excitement, a ton of sales for TMO, and satisfaction for our end users - and in the process help Moto get back on a drumbeat of regularly launching products that matter. Unfortunately this won't come quickly enough to save the team that built this phone - many of the great engineers in Aalborg, Denmark (where I've spent many, many days and nights over the last 18 months) that developed PIXL have been affected by the restructuring that Motorola announced late last week.

Still, I'm excited about seeing this first phone that I can truly call my own. And hopefully they will fly off the shelves.

j

Arrington post is perfect example of 'no religion in the public square' censorship advocacy

2008-11-03T11:42:00.000-08:00

Michael Arrington used his position as editor of TechCrunch today to suggest that "we’ll look back on measures like Prop 8 as little different than attempts to stop Women’s Suffrage or the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s. Denying a fundamental right to a person - such as marriage - is hateful and backwards."

And more than publish his thoughts and advocate for this secular position, he used his tech pulpit to offer this suggestion, "Google doesn’t have any obligation to run ads like these, and I believe they would be correct in banning it." And in the comments on this post, he added this resolute statement, "I believe this issue has two sides in the same way that the slavery issue has two sides - right and wrong. There’s no right to free speech on Google, and this is hateful stuff."

There probably isn't a Right to free speech on Google articulated in our Constitution. But calls such as this for a complete restriction on political advertising that represents a mainstream religious view is dangerous. And make no mistake - there are tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of Christian Americans who view the institution of marriage as one grounded in religious doctrine, and who accept the various Scriptures describing marriage in glowing terms, and homosexuality as a despicable situation. Mr Arrington would push any debate or advocacy on the merits of protecting marriage in the US off the public sphere served by Google - a rather vast sphere given the number of sites that syndicate Google ads.

This is troubling because many of the largest consumer-facing technology companies have in recent years, and particularly this year, started taking sides in 'moral' political issues, and these companies seem to inevitably choose to support issues that run counter to Christian principles. That these technology companies would throw their weight (and sculpt their internal HR policies) behind secular causes is reason enough to be concerned, but if these companies were to enact 'secular' filters on their business practices, the open forum of the web would tilt in a distinctly secular direction.

j

Close enough

2008-10-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

Horsey's latest in the Seattle PI.
j

Damn the Congress and Damn George Bush

2008-10-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am just a little mad, as the title of this post would suggest.

President Bush signed a new law into effect yesterday, the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP) Act. Apparently both the US House of Representatives and Senate, as well as the Bush administration, have fallen utterly and completely in line with the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.

I positively, absolutely hate a slightly older law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and have posted my thoughts on various aspects of this statute on several occasions. The PRO IP act extends the DMCA. Let me repeat - the PRO IP act extends the DMCA, adding new enforcement powers and increasing fines and penalties for IP offenses.

And for the moment, there's nothing we can do about it - the bill passed both chambers and has been signed, while our attention was on the financial problems and election. Uggggggh.

j

Photokina 2008

2008-09-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

I'm in Cologne, Germany for Photokina, one of the two major imaging industry trade shows. It's a huge show, with hundreds of exhibitors and nearly as much flor space as CES. There's a ridiculously small news/floor space ratio for this show, however, compared to CES, CTIA, 3GSM, the Frankfurt Auto show, or other trade shows I've been to. It's much, much larger than the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show earlier this year, but with about the same amount of noteworty news.

DP Review has a concise summary of new product news coming out of Photokina, though many of the models listed were pre-announced before the show. Arguably the biggest news is the new 4/3 and micro 4/3 camera formats - and these are simply a 'standardization' of a redesigned light path design that gets rid of the multi-path design that's been used on SLR cameras for decades.

I'm a little disappointed and underwhelmed with the show, considering the expense and effort on my part and the group here as a whole to convene in Germany for a week.

j

Palin has me fired up

2008-09-03T22:33:00.000-07:00

I had largely mentally written off the 2008 Presidential election when Obama beat Clinton in the primary. He's an interesting candidate, and although his voting record in the Senate reveals a moral and political philosophy far too different from my own for me to seriously consider voting for him, he is an effective orator and seems like someone I'd socialize with (since most all my friends are liberal anyway). I didn't vote for McCain in the primary, and after he won the primary I just couldn't see old man McCain seriously challenging the young, urbane Obama.

That's a big, big reason why I turned down an offer to take a leadership role in the Republican party organization. And when I heard the news a couple of days ago that McCain had picked the female governor of Alaska to be his VP running mate, my first thought was that this could be a short-sighted attempt to curry favor by putting a pretty face on the ticket. But that was then, and tonight Sarah Palin turned things around and got me fired up.

So fired up, in fact, that I'm no longer writing off this election as an Obama win. I'm still a little skeptical of McCain's conservative credentials, and a bit put off by his conduct in divorcing his first wife. But I no longer think he picked 'just a pretty face' to be his running mate, after Palin's speech at the RNC tonight it seems pretty clear that he picked someone with values and circumstances similar to my own. McCain started to win me over with his responses and lively demeanor during the Saddleback debate, but it was just a change in the direction of my mental momentum. Now he's added to that momentum with his VP pick.

I can only imagine the multitude of fronts on which my intellectual, urbane friends and colleagues will find fault with Sarah 'Hockey Mom' Palin, especially in comparison with Barack 'Harvard Law Review Editor' Obama. Obama has a graduate degree from Harvard, has been a law professor, and can turn eloquent phrases. Palin has an undergrad degree from Idaho and was a small town sportscaster. Obama is feted when he travels abroad. Palin likes to fish, hunt, and hike. Obama is multicultural. Palin is an evangelical Christian from very white Alaska. Obama just seems more intellectual, smarter and more knowledgeable, and is a man in tune with modern culture. Palin seems like kind of mom who hoots and hollers during her kids' hockey games. But as much as I enjoy an intellectual discussion on world affairs, the nature of the rights of man, or whether development organizations should prioritize food, infrastructure, or good government first, I prefer spending time in the back woods, with people who understand that science and reason can't define or explain 'Why', and who trust the good will of strangers just a little more when they're carrying a concealed weapon. I get the strong sense that I'd enjoy time spent with Palin far more than with Obama.

And I'm not just impressed with Palin - McCain has earned some of my respect for recognizing and selecting Palin. If he saw in her before the spotlight was on her what I see in her now, maybe his philosophical constitution isn't quite as different from mine as I had thought.

Perhaps I was hasty in distancing myself from the party during this electoral cycle. Perhaps I should take a second look and see where I could help.

Al Gore's VP running mate endorsed McCain tonight at RNC

2008-09-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

Joe Lieberman is not your typical Democrat. He serves in the US Senate as an Independent, associates most strongly with Senate Democrats, but is well known as a centrist. But in politics you sometimes have to make hard decisions, and in the run-up to the 2000 Presidential election, Joe Lieberman teamed up with Al Gore on the Gore/Lieberman Democratic Presidential ticket.

Just to repeat, Joe Lieberman ran with Al Gore for the presidency and vice presidency against George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Tonight I watched Joe Lieberman stand at the podium at the Republican National Convention, endorse John McCain and the McCain/Palin ticket, and deliver this message to registered Democrats:

"I know many of you are angry and frustrated by our government and our politics today and for good reason. You may be thinking of voting for John McCain, but you're not sure yet. Some of you may never have voted for a Republican before and frankly in an ordinary election, you probably never would. "But this is no ordinary election, because these are not ordinary times, and trust me John McCain is no ordinary candidate. You may not agree with John McCain on every issue," Lieberman added. "But you can always count on him to be straight with you about where he stands, and to stand for what he thinks is right for our country regardless of politics.... As president, you can count on John McCain to be what he is naturally, a restless reformer, who will clean up Washington and get our government working again for all of the American people."
“Senator Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who I think can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But eloquence is no substitute for a record — not in these tough times,” Lieberman said. “In the Senate …. he has not reached across party lines to get accomplish anything significant, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party to get something done.”
"Both of the presidential candidates this year have talked about changing the culture of Washington, about breaking through the partisan gridlock and the special interests that are poisoning our politics," Lieberman added. "But my friends, only one of them has actually done it. Only one of them has shown the courage and the capability to rise above the smallness of our politics to get big things done for our country and our people. And that one is John S. McCain."

Damn!

j

Photosynth launch week

2008-08-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

From the various articles and posts that I've read, it sounds like Josh nailed the Photosynth keynote demo at NVISION - folks seemed to find his demo the most interesting of the morning. Awesome.

This caps a week of positive press about this Microsoft/U of Washington tech for automagically building three dimensional models from regular old digital photos.

Photosynth feels like the type of web service that Google might have put out in beta, back when they were still actively releasing interesting new services on a regular basis. It's got that app/platform angle going, has a direct link to universiy research, and it's easy to imagine how it could be used as a building block for other apps and services - all previous hallmarks of Google Labs projects. It's definitely not the sort of offering I'd expect to see come from Apple.

So Microsoft finally has an interesting, innovative consumer web service that neither Google, Yahoo, or Apple can compete with (for now). If the 'soft could just keep turning the crank on this kind of stuff, they wouldn't have to resort to hiring folks like Seinfeld and spending $300M on campaigns to tell people how Vista is more fun and useful than OS X.

j

Paintings from Dafen look like a great option

2008-08-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

I visited the Impressionism exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum yesterday and was awed by a particularly large and impressive painting by Albert Bierstadt called Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast:

It's about seven feet wide, and when lit from above is just stunning. Like anything in a top-notch museum, it's not for sale, and would be prohibitively expensive if it were to come up for sale. But I really, really like this painting, and have the room on my wall to hang this. A print would be relatively lame. What to do?

Enter the thousands of skilled, efficient, and dirt cheap painters in the city of Dafen, China. For $200 I can order a painstakingly painted replica at half size, which will be delivered (rolled in a tube, not mounted in a frame) in two or three weeks. For $700 I could just get an exact replica at full scale (6' 10" x 4' 4.5"), also delivered in three weeks.

Unbelievable.

Do I care that these are copies? Not at all - this seems like a much, much more appealing option than buying a print. Does this denigrate the value or rights of the artists? Nope - all the stuff I'm interested in comes from artists that died more than 70 years ago, so their copyright has expired and these works are in the public domain.

This is one of those great examples where China's incredibly low cost of living and excellence in individual tasks that benefit from practice and repetition creates an option for global consumers that didn't previously exist.

j

Amethyst Initiative: Unexpected, but welcome

2008-08-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

I'm completely surprised that the Amethyst Initiative, an effort to build support for "rolling back the legal drinking age to 18" has emerged seemingly overnight and received national attention. With the presidential election just a few months away, it seems surprising that the ecosystem that sources and escalates 'national issues' would enable an old, seemingly settled issue like this to surface.

I'm doubly surprised, perhaps actually shocked, that this effort is being led by folks from Vermont, and with the support of James Wright, the president of Dartmouth. When I lived in Vermont there was a palpable liberal orientation in the population, though there was also a typically New England independent bent as well. But it just seems unfathomable that James Wright, who has championed the other side of numerous issues, should choose in the twilight of his career at Dartmouth to put his weight behind an position that is so very ... classically liberal (and currently conservative). Good for him.

I am not interested in debating statistical data and cause/effect models on intentional and negligent homicide rates from before and after the age for purchasing alcohol was raised from 18 to 21. Nor am I interested, for the purposes of setting policy, in theories exploring the relationship between alcoholism and age. I am interested in freedom, personal responsibility, and consistency.

We don't grant the full mantle of individual responsibility on our citizens until they reach 'the legal age', which we have chosen to define and have very broadly accepted as 18. Until our children reach that age, parents and the government hold in trust numerous rights and responsibilities in order to protect our children and others from their own childish actions and the predatory actions of others. Once our citizens reach the age of 18 they are allowed to form company charters, enter into binding contracts, open bank and credit accounts, enter bankruptcy, marry, have children, buy property - including firearms and ammunition, apply for concealed weapons permits, join the military, lodge petitions, and vote in local, state, and federal elections.

We remove the shackles of protection at 18 because our society believes that all men (ie adults) are imbued with the full set of natural rights, and upon reaching adulthood the right to liberty trumps all other concerns - including concerns about protecting ourselves from our own actions. This liberty is accompanied by individual responsibility, and while responsibility might not always be exercised, it is always borne - if these newly of age citizens break our laws, they are treated as adults by the judicial system and charged accordingly.

Since 1984, however, we have held back two natural rights that have been at play for thousands of years - the rights to buy and consumer alcohol. Our federal government uses the threat of reduced budget transfers to the states should they choose to establish age restrictions more liberal than those set by the federal government. Fortunately the individual states still maintain local authority over the establishment of laws regarding the sale and consumption of alcohol.

The argument that led to this federal restriction was based on a muti-faceted appeal to the common good. The bargain that was struck was this - the rights of our youngest and most dangerously inexperienced adults will be abridged for three years per individual, and in exchange for this temporary oppression the lives of many citizens will be spared through the avoidance of deadly situations involving alcohol.

This has been and continues to be a fool's bargain. As in so many other topical issues, the core principle is the question of whether our society is capable of exercising the personal responsibility for our actions necessary to justify the unhindered operation of our natural rights, or whether our self-control is so fundamentally limited and weak that we must delegate to our government the responsibility to protect us from our own actions.

Freedom is not always safe. Some people make poor decisions in important matters, and can imperil themselves and others. If our 18 year old citizens are habitually incapable of making responsible decisions, they shouldn't be afforded the responsibilities of adulthood. If we choose to grant the mantle of adulthood but withhold the rights to actions with dangerous consequences, we set ourselves on an old and terrible path. For much of human history, rank and file citizens were ostensibly protected by their governments from external and internal dangers - and these governments often came in the form of so-called nobility, who were encouraged to look after their citizens with a benificent and wordly care.

We should either raise the age of adulthood to the current drinking age, 21, or lower the drinking age to 18. I'm in favor of lowering the drinkng age to 18, not because I'm oblivious to the danger of drunken 18 year olds and cars, but because we already trust these folks with the other rights and responsibilities of adulthood, and because I believe that we're safer when people are free to exercise their rights but held to account for their actions, than when we give up both rights and accountability to the government to protect us from our individual and collective selves.

j

Citibank customer support: We don't support Macs

2008-08-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

I tried setting up an account with Citicards today, so I can check my balance and transactions and such on the web. Should be no big deal.

Doh.

They require that you provide the security word to validate the account, this is separate from your password and is the backstop authentication used to verify accounts when you call customer support. I'm a security geek (to a certain degree), so I have my security word set to an alphanumeric string. I hit a snag setting up the web account because the CSR who entered this password over the phone apparently transliterated the string incorrectly - I've never noticed because I say the word correctly when I call, and haven't ever had to type it in (in fact, there is no customer-facing web form to enter or edit this security word).

This should have been no big deal - I just called customer support, explained the situation, and today a CSR edited the security word for me, and expected to be good to go. Nope. Because I had entered the string 'incorrectly' several times, the CSR explained that the Citicards web authentication mechanism invoked a stricter security protocol, which isn't supported on either Firefox or Safari.

So I have to wait 24 hours, and then repeat this account creation process from a Windows machine and use either IE or the AOL browser.

How can the prioritization of the AOL browser over Firefox or Safari make any sense? When I asked the CSR what my options were as a Mac user, his response was 'Citibank doesn't provide technical support for users experiencing issues while using an Apple computer'.

This is hardly a big deal for me, I've got multiple machines including some running XP and one running Vista, and there's always a public machine or a colleague's machine at work I could use. But it's very interesting that the cult of Apple doesn't extend to Citibank, one of the largest banks in the US.

j

The difference between Michael Phelps and the average swimmer

2008-08-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

It's not just practice, or physical ability, or competitive intensity that separates the performance of dominant athletes like Michael Phelps from the rest of the population.

It's also attention to detail:

When Phelps' goggles filled with water in the 200-meter butterfly Wednesday morning, he didn't freak out like most swimmers would have, even though he couldn't see more than a few meters in front of him. He simply knew how many strokes it would take to get to the wall, and was counting in his head.

Awesome.

j

The YouNoodle flaw is a common flaw

2008-08-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

I tried out YouNoodle for the first time today. They use a statistical prediction model to estimate the valuation of startups.

I plugged in some data and created a new model for a new startup to try out the site and test their model. I expected an output that would show a valuation interval, with either an explicitly stated confidence level or an implicit coverage probability using a typical value of 90% or 95%.

Everyone likes to see a single, specific value for predictions of quantifiable future events. My facility with stats is a little rusty now that I've been out of school for quite a while, but I remember the basic principles, and it's just plain dishonest to state a single predicted value for a probabilistic event. But I see this error all the time, and YouNoodle is just the latest example.

They predict a valuation of $48M based on the parameters I provided - but like many quantities, startup valuations are difficiult to predict, and valuations between peer startup companies can vary widely. So what I'd find way more useful than "we think this startup will be worth $48M" is something like "we're 90% confident this startup will be worth between $37M and $58M" or something like that.

j

Samsung goes analog (in a good way)

2008-08-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

It's the time of year when the camera OEMs start announcing their holiday device lineups, and Samsung just announced their new models today. The TL34D is the new top of the line device (taking that spot from the NV24), but the most interesting device in my opinion is the TL9.

Those two medium-sized analog dials show remaining battery life and remaining memory capacity, using a Full --> Empty gas tank design metaphor. It would be easy for this design element to get overused, but in this implementation it fits, looks great, and is super cool. Kudos to the Samsung industrial designer(s) who developed this.

j

Oh, the platforms I've used

2008-08-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

We hit SA (ship acceptance) this week on the ZN5, so I can now formally add Linux, or maybe more specifically LiMo, to the list of operating systems on which I've shipped products.

If more of my colleagues from my days product managing Windows Mobile were still at Microsoft, I'd feel bad about this move to the other side. At Microsoft there's just about no sin worse than efforts that further the propagation and acceptance of Linux.

But truth be told, I'm neither a Linux/LiMo guy nor a Windows Mobile guy. I've shipped and/or managed products on other operating systems. Here's a little trip down memory lane.

The first end to end product I developed that used an operating system was a portable navigation device for blind people, which used a Parallax implementation of BASIC. I ended up tinkering with this hardware quite a bit for my own hobby purposes, and built talking greeting cards, a wireless dive computer with a primitive heads up display mounted in my dive mask, and a few lesser items.

The second product I developed was an in-car MP3 player, which started off on an embedded OS but which ended up running an ultra stripped down version of Windows 95.

The next product I worked on (more as a manager than a developer) was a Spingboard MP3 player module for Handspring PDAs, which relied on the Palm OS. This product morphed pretty quickly into a full blown standalone MP3 player, and we switched to the Pocket PC OS from Microsoft.

The next product I managed was the telematics system for the US version of the Audi A8 (D3 generation), which is part of the navigation and MMI system, and this used QNX, an embedded OS.

The next product I managed was the actual Windows Mobile OS, initially the Smartphone SKU and then the Pocket PC and PPC Phone Edition SKUs. Ok, it's probably more technically accurate to say that I had the chance to manage several implementations of Windows CE, but fewer and fewer folks these days know what CE is, and more and more folks recognize the Windows Mobile name.

And that brings me to my current situation at Moto, where I've managed devices using Linux-Java and Symbian/UIQ.

So the full list includes Parallax BASIC, 'embedded' Windows 95, Palm, Pocket PC, QNX, Windows Mobile, Symbian/UIQ, and now Linux-Java/LiMo.

j

What the heck has Dell been doing with Zing?

2008-07-31T16:41:00.000-07:00

I just saw a report on Reuters that Dell is testing a music player that could go on sale 'as early as September'. Now I realize that by virtue of working in the industry, and especially as someone who worked closely with Zing on a family of products that was killed in early development, I'm privy to more inside information than your average journalist. But come on, it doesn't take an insider to connect the dots on this story - Dell bought a company last year that develops wireless portable media player software, hardware, and a content aggregation solution that lights up the device. It's been about a year since they announced the deal, and they are getting ready to (finally) make use of the Zing folks to roll out a Dell-branded product.

Maybe I just expect too much from industry reporters. And maybe I need to keep in mind that Reuters is one of the more purely 'news' driven media channels. But in my mind, the story here isn't so much "Dell test music player", but "First Music Products from Dell's Zing Acquisition Nearing Launch", with a strong secondary headline asking an imperative "Garriques and Tatleman Strategy To Be Tested.

I think that's the more interesting story and question - what kind of performance will Dell drive from the addition of Zing? ZSC had a decent PMP business going, but there's been zero visible output from the team since the acquisition. And in the interim, Yahoo Music has closed - and Y! Music was the marquis service for Zing's biggest success to date, the Sansa Connect. So there's a big question here - will the Dell-backed Zing be more successful than they were as a standalone operation? Will Dell's brand, channel capacity, partnerships, and bundling/cross-selling opportunities add the right fuel to the Zing fire to grow their business by an order of magnitude or more? Or will Dell bring dull and boring to Zing?

One interesting comparison will be to line Dell's upcoming PMP family and service up against the Slacker devices and service. Both will have hit the market this year with v1, and both come from similar roots. Slacker decided to brand their own products and go straight to consumers, where Zing decided a while ago to pursue a white label approach. I'm pretty sure both groups won't release their holiday '08 unit sales figures, but it would be really interesting to compare these numbers, as well as the 'activity' numbers - number of songs played, number of user generated personalization inputs, number of audio ads served, etc.

j

Auspicious times

2008-07-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

I received an email this morning from the president of one of the banks where I do business. I'm not regularly in correspondence with bank presidents, but these are auspicious times.

In his mail, this bank president reassured me that his bank is fiscally sound, with a stout capital ratio and a healthy loan portfolio.

I'm not old enough to have had direct experience with previous consumer banking crises, but when I started to read his note I immediately thought about the Great Depression and whether bank presidents took to sending reassuring notes prior to, and during that financial catastrophe.

I filled up my car with gas over the weekend, and paid $4.77 per gallon. Over the last week I've traded mail with more than five current or former coworkers who have been laid off who are hunting for jobs. This morning I read about more large scale layoffs at other firms in my industry. The 'unbreakable' Seattle housing market has, in fact, had a macro-scale decrease in home values. Smaller regional banks are folding, and our largest national banks are in a capital crisis - and have had to look to foreign sources for stabilizing investments. We are fighting two medium-scale wars. I feel pressure at work to shift 'fungible' projects to product development groups in cheaper countries - particularly China, where we've already shifted a large portion of part of our engineering. The price of my preferred brand of milk just went up to $4 per gallon.

I used to keep up a detailed mental model of our national economy by reading and thinking quite a bit about the structure, inputs, and outputs. As more time has passed since I left grad school and the more intellectually rigorous startup lifestyle, I've not kept up with economic developments and my mental model of the system has lapsed. So I don't really have a sufficient grasp of the data necessary to really feel confident in my opinion of the health of our economy. But given all the auspicious events and data points, things don't look good.

j

Skype hires a previous exec from my group as COO

2008-07-14T20:52:00.000-07:00

Interesting move. Scott used to lead a superset of the team that I'm on, but left well over a year ago (after the VP that I've worked for since I joined took the reins). He and his lieutenants (all of whom have also left) kicked off some of the initiatives that I've been executing for the last 18 months.

Skype has a lot of value to backfill as a result of their sky high acquistion price. Scott's got a long road ahead, but I wish him well.

j

Egg on Apple's face: MobileMe goes down on launch day

2008-07-10T12:40:00.001-07:00

I've been waiting to try out Apple's rebranded .Mac service, MobileMe, since it was announced. I have a subscription to .Mac, and have been hoping that this refresh adds enough meat to make the offering useful.

And when I went to the site today to check things out and try to migrate my account, all I see is the landing page and 'About' marketing fluff, with no login exposed. Turns out Apple's ops folks have some 'splainin to do - the service went down (or at least is underperforming) and is currently unavailable.

The iPhone App Store also went live today, and though I haven't tried it yet myself, it sounds like that service is up and running. It's mildly interesting that Apple launched two new web services on the same day, and botched one. My guess is that the mainstream media won't exactly pick this story up and run with it, but that tomorrow everyone will gush over iPhone 2.0 and there will be tv news crews in major cities dong on the spot interviews with folks buying devices.

j

Personal data syndication is yesterday's news

2008-07-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

Plaxo, Twitter, Facebook Pulse, Amazon Grapevine, and all the other personal data syndication apps and services out there seemed interesting to varying degrees when I first saw them in action. Folks seem to like to use the phrase social media to describe these types of offerings, but I think that personal data syndication is a better description for many of these sites and services.

And for the most part, I'm completely sick of these services.

I don't know if it's inherent to the apps and services themselves, or just the culture that envelops and breathes life into them, but I've lost interest in finding out when various people I'm connected with through these services gets into a cab in some random city, reads some nominally interesting bit of news, adds another 'friend', watches a funny 12 second video clip, or enjoys their sandwich at some shop in a far-away place.

Not all of the information flowing through these syndication channels is useless, but most of it isn't necessary or useful, and I definitely don't need to get all the updates on every little event or thought that everyone that I know generates all day long. All I really need is for my friends' contact information to be updated in the background if they change their details, and for most other apps the situation is the same - I just want updated personal information updated in the relevant spot. I don't need or want to be notified about a reply to a comment I made about a picture someone I barely know (but who just had to add me through social application x) last month. All these foreground notifications add noise and destroy my attention flow as they pop up here and there over the course of the day.

We've been working to bring some of these syndicated updates to your phone, and I've come to the conclusion (for now) that these various notifications really need to be used for application to application messaging, and for the most part kept out of sight of users - or at least exposed only in a dedicated view.

j

Dan, 'harbinger of doom', visits the West Bank

2008-06-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

I see that Dan has been visiting the West Bank.

Let's all pray that no (unusual) trouble befalls this already troubled land upon Dan and Sarah's departure - as has been the case in China (paralyzing snowfall), Tibet (riots and gov't military intervention), Chengdu (massive earthquake), Yangon (super typhoon Nargis).

j

It's great to see one of my products on the corp landing page

2008-06-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

When I helped manage Windows Mobile, we would sometimes get good placement on microsoft.com, but it usually wasn't very prominent, and since it's an OS that an end user can't buy or install, the call to action was always inherently limited. But that's not the case with an end-user product like a handset, and it's great to see one of my the products I managed on display and in full view on motorola.com.

Incidentally, while there's been lots of great coverage, there's one review that (as usual) goes into incredible depth: http://www.mobile-review.com/review/motorola-zn5-en.shtml.

j

Awesome, and hilarious

2008-06-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

Todd Bishop has an audio post today from Microsoft's first office manager, an older woman who was hired into Microsoft in 1977 as the fifth employee and first office manager.

This is a fantastic post that bolsters my opinion that a sufficiently motivated and intelligent person can succeed at any job and take on any challenge - regardless of age, experience, or other so-called credentials.

Miriam was hired while BillG was traveling on business, and when the 21 year old guy with long hair and jeans strolled past Miriam's desk and into the president's office the Monday after she started, she called the general manager to ask whether he knew who this blond kid was, and whether she should kick him out. A reasonable question, considering that Miriam was 40-something at the time, and the blond kid was starting to mess with the delicate computers in the back room. That blond kid, of course, was her new boss, Bill Gates, to whom she had yet to be introduced.

Bill three months after his initial introduction to Miriam

In looking at the pictures of Bill when he started MS, it's not hard to see why a new office manager might have underestimated his position or capacity. I could easily imaging the same thing happening today to the next Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, or Jerry Yang, or Sky Dayton, Mark Zuckerberg.

I *firmly* believe that not only is any sufficiently motivated and intelligent person capable of successfully taking on any challenge or role, but that there are many more people who fit this description than there are people who fit this description than we know about. The difference? Circumstances. Some people try and succeed, some try and fail, and many will experience some of both over the course of their professional and personal lives.

We have systems, well established systems crafted over many generations, to impose some order on the working world so that organizations can get work done, and most of these systems include some form of people-management and decision-making hierarchy. And within these systems we have people-management processes for defining who is qualified for what role, but these are really more focused on defining who is *not qualified* for which roles, and for trying to contain the inexorable pressure from individuals to seek more senior roles in this imposed hierarchy.

My take is that, in an organization comprised mostly of sufficiently motivated and intelligent folks, this organizational structure is an artifice imposed so that the organization can get work done, and that any individual could at any moment take the reins and have a more or less equal chance at succeeding. Human resources-types will argue that this is baloney, and that there are historical credentials and capability measurements that can be used as inputs to vetting mechanisms that are effective at selecting individuals for leadership positions. These same HR pigeonholers would have been very, very unlikely to give Bill Gates a leadership role at a software company in 1977, 1987, 1997, or 2007. Too risky, too unproven, and certainly not qualified to take on such a role.

This same logic permeates conventional people-management processes. We're all familiar with job ladders and leveling tables, where it takes X years in a role to be qualified to fill a role at level Y, and Q years and professional experiences R, S, and T to be considered for a position at level V. My take is that these filter-qualifiers are an honest attempt to impose some order on organizational resourcing, but that this is really artifice employed to deal with the reality that there isn't room in any given org for more than a small number of chiefs.

It's perfectly legitimate to create structure within an organization to maximize productivity, but too often this observable structure, it's accoutrements and artificial hierarchy-setting rules, and the position of individuals in this hierarchy are viewed as the measure of individual capability. And this, in my opinion, is a travesty we need to strive to eliminate. In the circumstances I'm describing the woman in the cubicle next to you would be your CFO - and she could handle that role tomorrow were the role not filled and the opportunity available.

There are many, many people out there with BillG's potential and motivation - not everyone will achieve what he has achieved, but it's too easy to dismiss his potential successors as 'too young', 'too unkempt', or 'not experienced enough'.

j

ZN5: We're launched

2008-06-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

I've been managing the Motorola ZN5 product line for quite a while, and after some twists and turns I'm happy to say that it's now launched.

China is the first launch market, and since the government restrictions on dual-mode handsets (WAN + WLAN) are still in effect there, we'll be shipping a version without WiFi initially. After China and the Chinese version we've got a couple more versions that will roll out to the rest of the world this summer and beyond.

It's been great working with Kodak and learning the real scoop on what it takes to make a great consumer-grade camera. We've dialed a lot of imaging goodness into the ZN5 (aka PIXL), and the result is that it's super easy to take and share great photos. Five megapixels might not seem like all that many, with all the 8, 10, and 12 megapixel consumer cameras available these days for $200-$300, but you'd be surprised how clear and sharp a large print of a great 5MP image looks. For some folks, the ZN5 could supplant a standalone digital camera.

We asked photographers in NYC, Beijing, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Mumbai, and London to shoot their cities over a 24 hour span using the ZN5, and we took the best shot from each hour of that day and posted them on Kodak Gallery. The results are pretty nice considering they were shot using a phone.

This device is the first phone I've launched at Moto, and the first device I've launched that runs Linux. It took me a little while to overcome my bias towards Windows Mobile (a product manager that doesn't carry forward a bias for their previous product probably isn't building the right stuff), but in this case LJ (our internal name for MotoMAGX) is the right tool for the job. It's fast, efficient, and we've already got all the operator branded services we need to cover most of the globe spun up on LJ - which makes it easier and more likely that we'll be able to put this device into consumer's hands in any given part of the world.

j

Weighing an offer to become an officer in the Republican party

2008-06-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

I don't actually consider myself super party-focused when it comes to political discussions and engagements. Policy formulation and debate are much more interesting to me than the art and work of consensus-building and marshaling of political resources. Like probably 99.8% of people, I care about issues and seeing them stay/become law more than I care about the workings of political parties. And although my interests usually most closely align with the Republican party, and I'm occasionally involved with independent groups and think tanks that tend to be more aligned with the Republican party than not, this isn't always the case.

All that said, I have previously held public office as a registered Republican, and have recently been pulled in to help with various Washington state party activities.

And now the party has extended an offer to become an officer in the organization.

Up to this point I haven't really played a role in the inner working of the party, and that's partly by design and partly due to circumstances. I'm flattered that they've asked me to take a leadership position, but I'm not sure whether to accept the offer.

On one hand, I know that the 'right' side of the issues I care about won't become policy without momentum, and that building momentum requires some degree of organization. And organization requires people, time, and commitment, and the Republican party is, in many instances, the largest and most influential organization championing my side of some important issues.

On the other hand, I have a degree of discomfort with the notion of becoming part of a political apparatus that does not have an unblemished record, or of becoming a 'party shill'. I'm also hesitant to cement my status as a 'Republican', and accept the burden of advocating for some positions contrary to my convictions.

American citizens have an obligation to actively participate in the operation of our governmental institutions and democratic process. Many people disregard this obligation, or choose to remain sideline commentators, throwing barbs and complaining, but not sacrificing their time or energy to see through the implementation of the essence of their convictions. I don't want to take this path, but I'm also not sure whether the obligation to help man the machinery of our democracy necessarily requires inside participation in political party organizations.

j

Sometimes Christmas comes in June

2008-06-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

I thought about titling this post "Gadget bonanza", but since I've already used that title previously, and this occasion is more than a gadget bonanza, I think "Christmas in June" is fitting.

Here's why:

I'll post my thoughts on each device as I get the chance to put them through their paces this weekend and next week. I'm particularly excited about trying out the Samsung G810 and the SE G900 to test their imaging mettle.

The one device not shown in this picture is the device used to take the picture, which just arrived late last week - the Casio EX-F1. It's the most interesting and fun camera I've ever used, even though it's 'only' 6 megapixels. Here's why it's so interesting:

and ...

These videos are 600 frames per second and 1200 frames per second, respectively. Slow motion video is way, way more fun than I had thought it would be.

The most impressive aspect of the Ex-F1, though, is the 60 frames per second that it can capture at the full 6 megapixel resolution. Strung together into a video, that's like 3-4 times the resolution of full 1080p video, but at half speed. I shot the same waterfall in the video above at 60fps and the resolution and clarity is simply spectacular.

Now it's time to crack open some of these boxes...

j

pturb readers are Firefox users

2008-06-17T18:17:00.000-07:00

I added Google Analytics to this blog a while back, and have discovered some interesting patterns. For those folks reading this blog on the .com site, rather than through a newsreader, Firefox is the dominant browser by a large margin with 55% share. IE has 35% share, and the PSP, Opera, and Safari browsers are tied at 2-3% each.

Who reads blogs using a PSP browser?

Perhaps most interesting, to me at least, is that of your folks using Macs to read this blog, Firefox has a 9:2 advantage over Safari. Clearly Apple has some catching up to do. The Firefox vs IE split on Windows is more balanced at nearly 1:1.

And lastly, 70% of you are coming to this blog by clicking through the results of a Google search. Compare that to 0.5% coming from Yahoo, and *one* person who found this site by clicking through a Live search results. Chalk one up for Google, indeed.

j

Keeping things in perspective

2008-06-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

So much of my typical day, whether during the work week or during the weekend, is spent reading, listening to, or debating seemingly contentious issues. This OS vs that OS, McCain vs Obama, vacationing on the Oregon coast vs on Vancouver island, this parenting concept vs some opposing concept, blah, blah, blah.

Every so often I read or hear something that puts these arguments into perspective. Today Reuters helped provide some perspective by reprinting this quote from a leading Iranian newspaper, "starting this past Saturday...men with Western-style hair cut will be arrested". And in Iran, arrest means certain conviction, and they aren't the most lenient or progressive folks around when it comes to rehabilitation.

In the US, and most Western countries, we don't have to worry about getting arrested depending on how we choose to cut or style our hair, or worry about whether our "tight coats and cropped trousers" or other clothing styles will get us locked up for indecency. Iran is the global test case for Islam taken to its logical conclusion, and that destination is just awful.

I have the choice to work from home, or a vacation home, or go in to the office on most any given day of the week. If I go in to the office, I can wear a suit, or beach attire, or something in between. If I want to get another job, or change careers entirely, the only constraints are my ability to find and close a different job. If I want to run for President, or picket the state capitol, or not vote at all and leave the governing and deliberating to others, I'm free to pick my path. If I want to paint my car with green zebra stripes I'll certainly hear some complaints from the neighbors and earn some stares while driving, but no cop will stop me and no judge would fine me. I can eat as much beef and pork as I want - there are no societal taboos holding me back.

And if I want to shave my head, or grow my hair out, or wear a mohawk, all I'll feel will be the pressure and incredulity from my family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers - I would have no fear of detention and sentencing.

The US isn't perfect, it will never be perfect, and there will always be plenty of room for legitimate debate over potential improvements to our governmental organization and process
, and of course to our laws. But thank God I don't have to worry about getting arrested for the length of my pants or the style of my hair.

j

Why is MS launching a PND OS in 2008?

2008-06-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

Portable Navigation Device sales started to explode between 2003-2005, and the market is now relatively mature. There are 5th generation devices from Tom Tom, Garmin, and a whole bunch of other folks, as well as navigation-capable handsets from Nokia, Motorola, etc. Any successful PND maker currently in the market has already made huge investments over several product cycles in their OS, application suite, service integration, and UX.

The PND market is so mature, in fact, that device makers who started off by making PNDs are now entering the handset market. Garmin has announced the nuviphone, and startup Dash has already launched their first device, a WAN PND.

Entering the PND market now would be a risky proposition, especially during this period when smartphones are beginning to offer navigation features and experiences on par with, or better than the leading standalone PNDs. The PND market could very well follow the path that PDAs followed when smartphones began to mature - negative growth followed by a period of flat/slowly falling sales. This hasn't happened yet, but it's possible, and in my mind likely.

And yet here's my former colleague and neighbor Kevin Dallas introducing Microsoft's latest OS - Windows Embedded NavReady 2009. Even for current WinCE PND licensees this release has to look awfully thin - the key features have been supported in previous WinCE releases, though perhaps this release decreases the development time by some margin. For device makers who aren't already in the PND category, this release must look like a rebranding of WinCE with some added focus on integration to the MS services stack.

I love CE and Embedded. They're great OSs for building ... practically anything. It's amazing how many devices use CE. But NavReady 2009 looks and smells an awful lot like repackaging of existing a la carte code into a 'new, exciting' release ... which opens up few or no new options for device makers.

j

My letter to the FCC on the MPAA request to be able to literally control your television.

2008-06-12T00:45:00.000-07:00

The FCC has opened a window for the public to comment on a proposal from the Motion Picture Association of America. This proposal would enable networks and movie studios to pass along a signal to your set top box or DVR telling it to NOT allow certain shows or movies to be played on your TV or recorded on your DVR, and to literally turn off the non-HDMI outputs until the show is over.

What a load of horse shit.

My letter to the FCC was slightly more formal and reasoned :-)

Sir: I manage a consumer electronics team at Motorola, and would like to express my concern with the recent Selectable Output Control proposal from the Motion Picture Association.

The MPAA assert that "such a valuable offering necessarily would require a higher level of protection", yet present no specific argument to explain or justify the 'necessity'. On the contrary, the RIAA made similar arguments about the need to 'protect' digital music distribution, consumption, and management, yet RIAA member companies have learned from the problems that come with digital content protection systems, and have recently and swiftly moved away from copy protection requirements in digital music distribution.

The MPAA argues that releasing recent movies in hi-def on tv BEFORE release to disc would be a new, "exciting" model. While earlier release of theatrical content would no doubt increase and enrich consumer choice, i would argue that this is simply a minor change to the release window model used by MPAA member companies, not a new business model.

The MPAA also argue that this Petition is to remove a regulatory impediment, but it can be equally argued that MPAA would use this change to erect a consumer impediment to the free and unencumbered use of their personal consumer electronic equipment, equipment with a consumer cost that is much, much higher than the cost to consumers of purchasing or renting content.

Consumer have a reasonable expectation of performance from their home theater and consumer electronic equipment - that they will be able to consistently use their equipment to discover, consume, and manage various creative works, free from external interference in the normal operation of their equipment.

The MPAA argue that consumers will see a benefit from earlier access to valuable theatrical video content, and in a general sense this could be true under certain potential conditions. If access to this content comes with new, restrictive, and intermittent external interference, however, this proposed model will introduce consumer uncertainty and potentially confusion when some unseen hand reaches out and restricts consumer control over their own equipment. Will a consumer's television and digital video recorder work if Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is broadcast on channel X, when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull didn't play properly the previous evening when broadcast on the same channel? Will consumers see the value in replacing their 2007-model HDTV with a newer HDMI-equipped model so that they can watch Sunday night movies on channel Y, or will they question why channel Y doesn't work on Sundays with their new digital television? If consumers are uncertain about the conditions and circumstances when they have full use of their equipment, some consumer will be less likely to embrace and invest in new digital equipment.

Quantifying the relative benefits and costs of this proposal to the nation as a whole is rightfully for the Commission to decide, but the MPAA cannot in good faith argue that the imposition of SOC restrictions does not carry consumer costs. Nor can the MPAA argue that implementing an SOC ecosystem would not carry additional costs for all members of the video distribution, management, and consumption ecosystem. And the recent examples of the reduction in copy protection for digital music distribution illustrate that valuable content can indeed be successfully distributed in a mass commercial consumer environment without deploying an invisible hand to selectively control the operation of personal consumer equipment.

It is my personal belief that this petition, while not without merit, is misguided and would unnecessarily complicate the digital video ecosystem. If the SOC system proposed deployed and actively used, the net effect could be a net reduction in consumer perception of the value of digital entertainment, and hinder the propagation and penetration of digital television equipment.

Respectfully,

j

Perfect new example of a legitimately patentable sw innovation

2008-06-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

In many posts I've railed against patents granted for obvious technology designs. And there have been far more cases where I've heard about bogus patents and intended to post on them, but have lost steam or not had the time. I notice bogus patents so often that I've started to wonder whether my personal threshold for considering a design non-obvious is so high as to be unreachable.

Happily, I've just run across a great example of a very recent innovation that is, in my opinion, both novel and clearly patentable.

Aza Raskin and his team from Mozilla Labs have come up with a novel and intuitive way to navigate mobile web pages from a mobile device - touch and pan beyond the borders of the page to either zoom out, or to expose navigation and control functions. Sounds boring? It's not - check out the video demo.

Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

I live and breathe mobile browser, widget, and application rendering and navigation technology, and work in the business in a role where I have influence over mobile browser development, selection, and requirements. Ten minutes ago I had never considered using a panning UI control in a mobile browser to expose higher level navigation and menuing functions, and yet after watching this demo it seems entirely obvious, natural, and useful. This is an example of a solution to a practical, widespread challenge that was not previously obvious to a practitioner skilled in the relevant art. In other words, in my opinion, Aza's team has created a design worthy of the term 'innovation', and worthy of a patent.

It's cool to see a novel solution like this, and it's also reassuring to find an example of a contemporary technology improvement that I'm comfortable defending as patentable.

Of course, now that Aza's team has disclosed this innovation, folks skilled in the art of mobile browsers and mobile UI will now very quickly think through all the various permutations of 'physical UI canvas control input as higher level control function trigger', and in my opinion most of the resulting design permutations should not be patentable.

j

Firefox 3 has contextual URL auto-complete. Sweet!

2008-06-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Mozilla folks have a nice short walkthrough of the key Firefox 3 incremental features, and from my perspective the most useful new feature is smart/contextual URL auto-completion. Check out the walkthrough to see what I mean.

Only three more weeks!

j

A perfect example of great Apple marketing

2008-06-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Apple camp for kids. Free. Learn to make movies, or music, or photos - each session is three hours.

Simple, straightforward, and honest. And I've never seen Microsoft (or any other tech company) offer anything like this.

Effective? Hard to say, but I'm tempted to stop by an Apple store to see how many kids attend one of the sessions - and whether their parents stick around the store and shop.

j

McCain v Obama: Tech Issues

2008-06-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

PC Magazine has an interesting article on where McCain and Obama stand (as best can be determined from various direct and tangential statements and voting records) on five tech issues: digital privacy, IP (as in property, not IPv4 vs IPv6), visas for foreign tech workers, domestic broadband availability, and network neutrality.

j

How to handle the too-many cooks in the kitchen

2008-06-03T13:34:00.001-07:00

There are too many cooks in my new kitchen these days, and I'm not sure how to handle the situation. I'm not sure who let these superfluous cooks in, but they don't seem inclined to leave, and I can't overtly chase them out - they seem to know the owners.

Seems like every time I turn around to grab a cookbook or a kitchen implement there's an uninvited cook with their hands on the goods.

So far these other cooks haven't reached for the oven or stove, but they have been ordering ingredients, concocting new dishes, and talking about remodeling the decor. Before long they're going to want to cook up the dishes on their proposed menu, taking over the kitchen in the process.

So far it's been unproductive to point out the raison d'etre for the kitchen and the kind of cuisine we prepare, and although I'm still running the kitchen the owners have been eerily silent about these newcomers. I'm not sure how to handle this situation, but the knives look tempting.

j

Dartmouth Undying: "We think you're stupid"

2008-05-31T13:08:00.000-07:00

I've received probably fifteen pieces of mail about the Dartmouth alumni association election committee. This committee conducts the elections for Trustee positions for Dartmouth College. The board of Trustees direct the strategy and finances for the College, and oversee the administration.

Dartmouth's board of Trustees is one of the only top-notch post-secondary schools where alumni have direct, sizable representation - half of the positions are elected by the alumni body. Most other colleges and universities are led by boards where the board and the administration select future board members.

There's been a tremendous amount of discussion and debate before and during the current alumni association officer elections, because the board of Trustees has expressed their desire to change the number of board seats, so that a simple majority of the board is not elected by the alumni body, but selected by the board and the administration.

Regardless of the rationale for considering a change, the effect of the proposed change cannot seriously be challenged by reason - the balance of power over the governance of Dartmouth College would clearly shift away from the alumni body.

Any argument in favor of reduced alumni influence must touch on two topics - can the alumni body conduct proper elections, and whether there are candidates amongst the alumni body qualified to serve on the board. I can see no reason why the alumni of Dartmouth College are not capable of selecting from amongst a large pool of intelligent, successful candidates representatives who are qualified to direct the affairs of the College.

The stated rationale for changing the balance of representation on the board is to enable the selection of candidates with specific skills and experience unique to the oversight of a top-tier educational institution. The administration and a minority of the current board are apparently of the opinion that the current alumni Trustees do not have the necessary skills and experience.

Perhaps the real motivation is not so different from the stated rationale - the current alumni Trustees don't hold the opinions and beliefs that the administration and some other members of the board deem necessary to direct the affairs of the College.

For many, many alumni Trustees election cycles there has been low-intensity public campaigning for spots on the ballot, and the candidates backed by the alumni body have typically won. In several recent alumni elections independent candidates with a degree of commonality in their desire to push back on the recent and proposed changes at the College have successfully managed to win seats on the board of Trustees. And these independent alumni Trustees have not toed the party line with their colleagues on the board. More and more of these independent candidates are winning seats of the board, and they threaten to obstruct the development of propagation of the board and administration's agenda over the last decade, and possibly even alter the course of the development of the college.

Today I received another propaganda mailing, this time from a group called Dartmouth Undying. The first line of the second paragraph claims, "This election is about whether Dartmouth's affairs are managed by the Dartmouth family, or by New Hampshire courts and activists unrelated to Dartmouth. It is that simple." The mailing then implores me, as an alum, to vote the Unity Slate, and even includes a sample ballot with the Unity slate penciled in. The entire piece is an ad-hominem attack that avoids entirely the central issue.

They might as well have said, "We think you are stupid. Vote like this. Strength through Unity. The choice ends here." Oh, wait, they actually did end the mailing with that last sentence.

Dartblog has much, much more on this issue.

j

It's amazing how much a single night of poor sleep can mess with my intellect

2008-05-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

My sleep was interrupted a couple of times last night by a hungry infant, and I had to get up a little earlier than usual for work. As a result, I'm positively laggy and mentally un-agile today. Bleh.

j

NYT: Seattle housing market, once impervious, now slumping

2008-05-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

The NYT has an article today about the national drop in demand and prices for new and used homes, and specifically calls out the recent decline in Seattle's housing market. Sales in King county are down by a third over last year, and demand is up by 55% - and the result (thankfully) is that prices are dropping. Excluding condos, prices in King county have dropped by 6.5% in seven months.

It's about time.

The other notable news today is the long-running battle between folks like Redfin and traditional real estate agents seems to be over - the US Justice Department compelled the National Association of Realtors to make their MLS information available to internet sites.

Quite a day for Seattle real estate - taken together these developments may be the biggest change for Seattle's market ... ever.

j

Things you don't see every day. Unless you're Dan Hou, and you're traveling the world.

2008-05-23T17:44:00.001-07:00

IMG_3140, originally uploaded by HyenaLaughing.

Camel riding through the White Desert in the middle east.

IMG_2955, originally uploaded by HyenaLaughing.

P1090072, originally uploaded by HyenaLaughing.

Diving in the Red Sea.

It's tough work :-)

j

NARAL came knocking for money today.

2008-05-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

I was sitting on the couch this evening, feeding my daughter and watching tv, when someone knocked on the door. I carried my baby daughter with me to the door, where we met a stranger from NARAL, the folks who try their best to make it as easy as possible to kill pre-delivery babies. The guy seemed shocked to see a man holding a really small baby, made a brief, awkward gesture of interest, then asked me to give his organization some money and sign something.

My immediate, virtually autonomic response was, "There's not a snowball's chance in hell that I'm going to sign that, or give you money. I hope you lose you papers, and quit what you're doing. Now leave, fucker."

Certainly not my finest moment, but he took the hint and actually jogged away from my and my daughter. It was incredibly ironic to have this young baby killer enabler ask me for money while I was holding my baby. Ironic, but also incendiary. I need to practice controlling my anger - with the right response I could have had a more thought-provoking discussion with this idealist (if you can call extreme selfishness an ideal). I'll have to try harder when Greenpeace comes around (as they do every 6 months or so).

j

Amazon now delivers wine and beer to my door. Amen!

2008-05-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

We use Amazon Fresh semi-regularly. They've got the cheapest Ovaltine (which is getting more difficult to find at grocery stores), and we can order a small basket of goods at 8pm that will be delivered by 6am the following morning.

Today they took a huge step towards increasing their portion of our household food spending. They will now deliver wine and beer. And they'll deliver the beer chilled. And from what I can tell so far, they're discounting (or at least matching the lowest prices in other channels). Hallelujah.

j

Company politics

2008-05-09T14:44:00.001-07:00

I'm dealing with internal big-company politics. Actually, I've been dealing with it for years - but the dial has been really been turned up in the last year, and twisted to 11 since the top of the year.

I can manage through ambiguously defined roles, or the more typical situation with overlapping responsibility between different roles. I find it more difficult to deal constructively with situations where folks in separate reporting structures claim new prerogatives over some of my core responsibilities, and we disagree over the content of the deliverables associated with the contested responsibilities. If I had wanted to be a diplomat I would have joined the civil service.

I guess this is the nature of big-company politics when working on highly visible initiatives. Work on the little products and it's easier to fly under the radar and get things done quickly, and without much dissension.

j

Gadgets. More gadgets.

2008-05-02T17:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've done a gadget update. The latest additions are the Sony T2, T300, and TG1, Canon HF10, and Kodak v1273 and M1033.

I've now entered the world of HDMI, and the tyranny of ridiculously overpriced HDMI cables. And the even more ridiculously overpriced mini-HDMI cable.

On the whole I like the T2, especially given the price and 4GB of internal memory. It's got the same basic touch UI as the T300, but the T300 seems like a dot release of the T200, and I can't really see the delta value. The TG1 is on order, but I'm expecting it shortly - will be particularly interested to see the UI on this device, and how it slots in with the T-series, SR-series, and CX-series UI.

The Kodak devices are just awesome. They've made it so easy to take really more or less perfect shots - or maybe optimized given the constraints is more accurate. I like the touch UI on the v1273 - and even more that you don't really need to interact much with the digital UI to get done what you need to take those great shots.

The Canon HF10 is probably the best camcorder I've used. But even with all the great stuff they've packed in, it still doesn't feel ... effortless. Or cool. Camcorders are super expensive, but they are some of the more 'bleh' devices out there.

The Samsung HMX20C ups the ID game for camcorders just a bit, but even that slick 1080i camcorder just hasn't reset the camcorder bar. That's one of the next devices on the list. Someone is going to do to this category what the iPhone did for handsets - it's just not clear who will do it, or when.

j

Freedom and consequences

2008-05-02T15:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of examples in recent days have me thinking about the nature of freedom of speech in the public sphere, employment law, personal responsibility, and the relationship of freedom, responsibility, and consequences.

An engineering manager at Akamai was apparently fired for making comments that were published by a magazine, comments which angered one of his employer's customers. His comments were political in nature, i.e. public, though he did allow the magazine to publish the name of his employer, which no doubt lends weight to his reasoning.

A woman in Egypt was detained by the Egyptian government for 16 days for making a call through Facebook for a nationwide strike to protest increases in the price of food.

A man in Virginia was 'asked' by his manager at the US State Department to stop blogging on public issues, after a State Department investigation discovered that an academic Fellow on their staff was the author of a blog expressing positions contrary to contemporary US policy.

In these and other similar recent situations, my gut reaction is intense disdain at the actions of those who punish people who go on the public record with statements on public issues. I also feel some sympathy for those punished, but this is secondary to the initial spike of anger towards the punishers.

But after this spike of anger at the exercise of power subsides, I've started to consider these situations from the perspective of regulated societal norms (law), unregulated societal pressure, personal responsibility in the public sphere, and personal responsibility at the intersection of the spheres of work and public expression.

As Americans we embrace and defend citizens who make public statements in the face of government action. But should we embrace and defend citizens who make public statements in the face of commercial action? Should the answer depend on whether the subject matter is primarily public or commercial in nature? If we desire to embrace and defend those in at least some of these circumstances, is it desirable to codify this support in law, or is this support best left to unregulated societal pressure?

Tricky questions to answer. I'm not sure I'm keen on laws limiting the authority of employers to fire their employees, especially in situations that could affect the commercial operation of the employer. But I'm also not keen on employers firing employees for expressing themselves on the public record on issues that are clearly related to pending legislation.

Just two weeks ago I pulled back significantly on a post that might have crossed a line balancing private and commercial issues. Self-regulation. Self-censorship. Personal responsibility. I did this because I recognize that there is a relationship between the exercise of public expression, personal responsibility as a manager in commercial affairs, and personal responsibility as an employee.

If I were to publicly, punitively divulge product roadmaps, non-public finances, etc., that would clearly cross a line. One of my products has been recently leaked repeatedly on the web, and it's annoying, wrong, and I would support some form of punitive action against internal employees if they intentionally leaked this roadmap information with a desire to harm. It's less clear where the line lies in more political internal affairs, but for the moment I've decided that these details aren't suitable for public discourse. If at some point I leave this employer and am no longer privy to these affairs it might be acceptable to recount my experiences, but not while I am a participant in what should rightfully be considered private commercial affairs.

But it's really not very clear at all that there is a line, or where that line lies, in public issues that intersect obliquely or directly with my employer's commercial affairs. If my employer has the right to fire me for public statements on matters of public interest, is my freedom of public expression curtailed? Does the shadow of protection fall just to the edge of my stage for expression, and leave exposed the arena of consequences from public actions on this protected stage?

Does it matter whether I identify myself as an employee or manger of a firm - and if so, does it matter whether this information is actively ("I work for x") or passively (there's a web site somewhere that lists my employer as x) expressed? Is expression public or private when shared in email? Public or private when shared only with specific individuals on a social network? Does it matter whether the expression is in digital text, or in digital audio, or digital video? If I were to distribute an expressive work via voicemail to a small distribution list, is this different than a video podcast to my Facebook buddies? Do I have to DRM the podcast in order to adequately demonstrate intent to keep my speech private, and if sensitive information in such a podcast somehow got publicized should we enact laws to protect employees from resulting employer actions? Is a Twitter update with some juicy dirt different in nature or kind than a blog post on a public site?

In thinking through these issues, it feels like the web has changed the dynamic and maybe the definition of 'public expression', and in easing and increasing access to self-publication, brought to the fore these issues that previously were more black and white.

j

Moto has a product planning problem

2008-04-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Motorola is a company in decline. There's no debate on that topic. The issue isn't a lack of good ideas, engineering acumen, design savvy, or marketing know-how.

Motorola's problems stem from a more fundamental source - effective product planning.

Perhaps the recently announced reorganization of the Mobile Devices division will help remedy this planning problem. Perhaps not.

j

MS to Yahoo: Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

2008-04-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

Ballmer is such a badass.

I would imagine that Jerry Yang is fielding calls from at least several large non-employee shareholder this weekend who might be worried about the value of the value of their YHOO holdings.

j

Times are tough at Moto

2008-03-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

I've had an inside view of the unfolding situation within the mobile devices division, and it has been long in coming, slow to unfold, and painful at every step.

When I joined Moto almost three years ago the company was in a transition, though I didn't fully realize the extent of the situation until the end of 2006. It was during that period that the team building the new, growing, and successful product that I managed became at risk for layoffs. Starting in early 2007 most of the development team was laid off, and over the course of the rest of the year much of the operations team was also laid off. In October 2006 I worked in an office with about 80 people, and most of those folks were truly my co-workers. As of March 2008 there are fewer than 10 folks left from that team in my office, leaving over 100 empty offices and a persistent quiet stillness.

With no team to build new product, I was grateful to move into a new role with a new development team in early 2007, working on products that are meant to be part of the solution to MDB's woes. This team is based primarily in Denmark, so I've done a lot of traveling back and forth getting product defined and built.

Yesterday an adjacent part of my current dev team was hit hard with more layoffs. There's no direct immediate impact to the products I manage, but there will inevitably be indirect effects that become more apparent over time. There were other actions taken that haven't been publicly disclosed that will have a more direct (but thankfully limited) impact on my products.

I manage a family of consumer-focused smartphones and mobile web services. These are the types of products and services that Moto desperately needs out in the market to improve margins, perceptions, and to remain relevant as smartphones supplant feature phones. We need to build and launch more consumer smartphones, yet these latest actions cut the capacity of the few teams inside Moto capable of building these products.

Poor execution, misguided strategies, and ineffective and occasionally destructive executives have and continue to hamper the performance of a brand and organization with great capabilities. Thanks to these cuts, we have to compete with less capacity, and with lowered morale. Times are tough at Moto.

j

Hulu is promising. Can't argue with free video

2008-03-14T23:39:00.000-07:00

I've heard about Hulu for a couple of months, but just checked out their site tonight. Free streams of tv and movies, and a sprinkling of HD video. No sign-up required, and it's all free.

Pretty cool.

j

Thinking about buying a Blu-Ray player? Go PS3.

2008-02-18T11:25:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting to buy an optical HD playback device until it was a bit more clear whether HD DVD or Blu-Ray would take the lead in the market. No sense getting caught with obsolete equipment, or waiting for years for a critical mass of content to develop.

It's become clear in the last few weeks that Blu-Ray has knocked out HD DVD. The question now is whether to buy a player, and what to look for.

After doing a bit of research and shopping over the last two weeks, rather than buy a $399 stand-along Blu-Ray box, I decided to buy another $399 device capable of playing Blu-Ray discs - the Sony PS3.

I'm not really planning to do much gaming on the PS3 (the Wii and Xbox 360 have my full gaming attention these days), or use it as a browser, streaming video/music receiver or source, etc. I view those functions as a plus, and over time I'll probably take advantage of them. I'm thinking about my PS3 as a networked Blu-Ray player, backed by software updates from Sony should the device need any software updates to take advantage of future Blu-Ray updates.

I'm sure there's a financial analyst somewhere cringing at the thought of all the game license revenue that consumers like me will not be generating for the PS3.

j

Lunar eclipse this Wednesday

2008-02-16T23:08:00.000-08:00

We're in for a rare total lunar eclipse this Wednesday evening, the show starts at 5:43 Pacific.

j

Papers, please.

2008-02-15T21:53:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to Germany a while back, one of the first things that bugged me was the pervasive "I need to see proof of your proper status" attitude. If you've ever seen an old movie set in Germany, you've heard the line. Papers, please.

"Papers, please" is more than a simple request to see some ID. It's a manifestation of a mindset where individuals are viewed through a slightly suspect lens, pending review of the individual's credentials. Want to walk through a train station? 50/50 you'll get asked for papers by a cop - not at a formal checkpoint in the conventional sense, but the cop himself is viewed in German culture as the checkpoint. And he's probably going to ask where you're going, and "that's my business" is not an acceptable answer. Staying at a hotel? You'll need to sign a form stating the purpose of your visit, and leave your passport with the front desk. Want to ask a bank teller a question? There's a good chance you'll first need to show papers before the teller will even point you to the deposit forms.

The words you want to hear when your papers are being reviewed is "Alles in ordnung". Because if alles is nicht in ordnung, you're now as conspicuous as a punk in a hoodie walking through Tiffany's. And the point is that it doesn't really require much disorder to fall on the wrong side of "ordnung". Maybe you get stopped by a cop while you're on foot in a park, and you're headed to the bathroom before leaving the park to meet friends at a restaurant. If the restaurant is in the opposite direction from the bathroom you're walking towards, there's a good chance you'll get a raised eyebrow, followed by more questions about the nature of your friends and reason for meeting.

The mix of public and private challengers requesting (demanding) credentials sustains and perpetuates the German culture of credential-ism. It's not just the cops and government employees asking for your ID, it's also regular folks in regular private sector jobs. Everyone expects to be asked, willingly obliges when asked, and has laser focus on those who complain, resist, or inveigh against the rationale.

My reason for the seemingly random blather about Germany is that I'm seeing this "papers, please" mentality creep into American life. We can still board a public bus without hassle, but a free US citizen with a clean record can't board a plane with a jar of homemade jam. Credentials are required before a rep will set up an appointment to troubleshoot your cable set top box. A credit check is required to buy a cell phone. Your email is proactively scanned and will be flagged for non-compliance if you talk about potentially dangerous topics.

"Papers, please" is all about gates, gatekeepers, and status verification that can only be satisfied with acceptably clean and proper credentials.

DHS would like us to believe that gates offer security. After carrying a 2" non-ferrous knife stowed in my backpack through 15+ airports on over 200 domestic and international flight segments over the last several years, and into several federal buildings, the truth is clear to me - gates don't offer much security, but they are a control point.

America is all about presumptive innocence before proven guilt, personal privacy and freedom from being forcibly searched without cause, free internal movement without gates or gatekeepers, and government that exists at the pleasure of free citizens. "Papers, please" pisses me off, and is antithetical to the designs of liberty and hopefully American democracy.

j

The snow is melting at the pass...

2008-02-10T12:06:00.000-08:00

We've had an unbelievable amount of snow here in Washington since the start of the year. In the last two weeks there's been something like 12-15 feet of new snow that has fallen at the mountain passes, which has forced repeated multi-day closures of Interstate 90.

But the temperature has just hit the mid-30's at my favorite snowshoeing spot, so I'm headed out there today before the snowpack melts too much.

j

I'm a delegate

2008-02-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

I took part in the presidential primary today, and though this was my first time taking part in a primary caucus, I was asked to be a delegate in the next stage of the party caucus.

This is an unexpected turn of events, because I'm not really a Party person, I'm not keen on any of the well known candidates, and I've been less engaged in this election than any since I turned 18.

The next stage of the caucus is March 8 - should be interesting.

j

Kindle is cool. Sort of.

2008-02-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

The Kindle I ordered last year finally showed up, and I've had a chance to use it a bit. My pre-purchase impression has been reset after using the device - it's more of a legitimate platform and less of a toy than I had imagined it would be.

There's a lot to mull over here.
- The electrophoretic display on the Kindle is the most legible screen I've ever seen anywhere.
- The display technology used on the thin vertical cursor indicator on the right side of the main screen is very interesting - when the pixels are 'lit' they get silvery-reflective. Very cool.
- The interaction model sounds terrible in theory and on paper, but the reality isn't that bad - after 20 minutes I was used to the mixed model using the next/back tabs and roller/push wheel.
- The method for disambiguating tightly packed links is straightforward but effective. If you roll the cursor up to a line with more than one obvious link and then select the line, a disambiguation menu pops up that splits out the nearest links into a discrete set of navigation choices. The iPhone gets around this same issue using the touch zoom gesture, but for non-touch devices the Kindle method works.
- Pictures generally look terrible. The darker they are, the worse they look. Don't waste you time browsing Flickr on Kindle v1, because you won't see much.
- The content offer works. Period. Any biz dev team could have lined up book, magazine, and newspaper content deals. Getting agreements to offer 2 week free trial subscriptions and free previews is more difficult, but makes all the difference in suckering in, er, facilitating consumer usage.
- The page size is a tad small to really compete with a book, at least for me.
- The Kindle Store is great - maybe the best mobile storefront I've seen. Even better than the iTunes layout and merchandising on the iPhone (no personalization). It is missing one super obvious hook, however - a link to my Wish List. I've got about a dozen books on my Amazon Wish List, and these are at the top of my list of purchase priorities.

All in all it's a very interesting v1 mobile device. New(ish) form factor, new UI, new 3G service-is-included-in-the-purchase-price connectivity model. It will be interesting to see if Amazon opens up the Whispernet service to other device makers, or keeps it close to the vest.

jason

Things on my horizon

2008-01-30T23:03:00.000-08:00

My job is all about evaluating new ideas and pursuing growth opportunities by building and marketing products. I do this for work, but the opportunity radar doesn't switch off when I leave work. I've been stockpiling an assortment of product/business ideas since I closed my last startup. I began to pursue two of these ideas (on separate ocassions) on my own, then pulled back when other folks popped up on the same track. I pursued one at Moto for a few months with the backing of my division, then pulled back when the path to commercialization was blocked by an unexpected acquisition.

I've got four ideas, or maybe more accurately three 'concept domains', that I think have potential and haven't already been played out. One involves dogs. Another involves robots.

Both ideas would require a ton of capital to pursue. Software is cheap. Hardware is expensive - and what I'm thinking about involves big, highly engineered hardware. Unfortunately you need to be able to justify a pretty sizable pre-money valuation in order to raise the big VC money necessary to engineer hardware.

Justifying a $5M valuation isn't that hard for a sw startup - just show that you've got four people willing to work full time, and that you're working in an acceptably promising area, and you can raise $3M on $5M pre, and you're good to go. I've yet to meet a VC (and I know plenty of them) who wouldn't immediately jump up and leave your meeting at Starbucks if you proposed a $15M raise on a $20M pre for a hardware startup 3 years from initial revenues. Unless you've already sold a hardware startup, and even then it's a tough row to hoe.

Speaking of robots, iRobot just launched a $150 robot that will clean your gutters. Lame, but I could see wives buying these at Home Depot as last minute Father's Day gifts.

I just came up with the third idea a few weeks ago, and have put together the obligatory starter b-plan deck. This would be quite easy to get going, but difficult to protect or scale. But it's one of those problem solving products that fills a definite, legitimate gap for a specific, easily targetable market. And even if I ran with it, and it was successful, I'm not sure I'd want to be known as the "{foo}" guy.

My other idea is closer to home than dog stuff or robots - mobile devices. I'm still pondering the problem domain from different angles. Could be five minutes away from finding the white hot opportunity, or several months.

I like the dog idea the most, for sentimental reasons. Now if I could just find a less capital intensive problem that involves dogs and technology, I'd be on to something...

j

More gadgets have arrived, more on the way

2008-01-30T20:20:00.000-08:00

The Samsung G800 just rolled in, and I've got it with me here in Vegas. Nice materials on the hardware, the sliding action on the screen and on the lens cover is silky smooth, and the UI is subtly better than on the G600 (though still slow and boring).

Too bad it's saddled with a lame camera software experience. Samsung just still doesn't offer many software delighters (for which I am thankful).

An HTC Touch Duo also showed up recently, which I've been keen to try out. It's amazing how consistently HTC has stuck with, and iterated, the 3-4 basic designs they've been using for 5+ years. The gestures HTC (Horace Luke's team) has picked as recognized inputs make sense, but the aesthetic of the HTC-specific UI is uninspiring. At least the model is based on direct input on the actionable UI elements, rather than indirect action, or 'action at a distance'.

I also picked up a Nikon S51, which is the first WiFi digital camera I've used. The picture uploading is pretty easy, although I still haven't been able to claim the uploaded pictures from the web. The capture and review experience is pretty plain vanilla, like 98% of the digital cameras I've been using lately.

The new device on the way is the Amazon Kindle, the device developed by the Lab126 team. I've posted several times on the device and service this team was building, and it looks like I was half wrong. The Kindle is interesting for several reasons - it's Amazon's first effort as a device maker, it's the most well known device to date to include WAN connectivity that doesn't require a subscription, it's the only 3G WAN device I've ever heard of that doesn't require a credit check or a subscription, and it's got the biggest electrophoretic screen I've ever seen. I'm curious to see what pictures and video look like on this 'e-ink' screen.

j

When will King County buy more snow/ice clearing equipment?

2008-01-28T15:09:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to a snow-covered lawn, which was a beautiful sight. Lots of sun, still air, and fluffy white snow. Ahhh, how wonderful.

Unfortunately, after 30 minutes of skidding around my street on this (now packed) snow, I was unable to go to work.

I live near the bottom of a dead-end street, near the top of a pretty big hill. Every time there is even an inch of accumulation, I get stuck at home. Back on the East coast folks chuckle about piddly little amounts of snow like this. Here in Seattle it creates chaos, because the local government has made few investments in road-clearing equipment.

Apparently the local government considered increasing the investment in winter gear several years ago, and decided that the few snow days the city endures didn't justify the added cost.

Dear State & Local Government: I've been unable to traverse my street five times this winter, my neighbor slid down the street and into her front yard earlier this month, and I've seen dozens of accidents this season due to icy local roads. I'd much rather you deal with this issue and direct my tax funds towards snow and ice removal, than spend this money on things like football or basketball stadiums, public birth control assistance, or fancy monorails. If you could just keep the streets in my neighborhood and the interstate highways clear, I'd be really, really happy.

j

Off to PMA 2008 this week

2008-01-27T22:39:00.000-08:00

I was in Denmark this past week, spending some quality time with my engineering team, and 'enjoying' the blustery Scandinavian winter. I brought home an unwelcome guest, however - a bit of the flu. I'm off to sunny Las Vegas this week (for the second time this year), hopefully the marginally warmer weather there will help hasten my recovery.

I'll be in Vegas (possibly my least favorite place to visit) for the big yearly camera trade show - PMA/DIMA 2008. There have been a number of product announcements over the last few days, and I'm curious to see whether any truly new ground will be broken at this year's show. I suspect that many of the really interesting new products will be announced later this year around Photokina 2008 in Cologne.

j

Library of Congress has posted 3k+ pics on Flickr. Awesome

2008-01-19T23:27:00.001-08:00

This girl in a glass house is putting finishing touches on the bombardier nose section of a B-17F navy bomber, Long Beach, Calif. She's one of many capable women workers in the Douglas Aircraft Company plant. Better known as the "Flying Fortress," the B-1, originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

This is one sample of the thousands of historical pictures the good people at the Library of Congress have just posted on Flickr. Prety cool.

j

Kudos to the Cloverfield creative team

2008-01-19T00:07:00.000-08:00

I just got back from watching Cloverfield at the theater; it was one of the most unique and intense movie experiences I've ever had. A big part of the intensity comes from the hand-cam perspective used throughout the entire movie. The other major contributors to the intensity are the scale and form of the creature.

There isn't one single creature, however, in Cloverfield, there's a large beast, and numerous small creatures. And it's virtually impossible to describe the large creature - from a visual perspective it's a unique, complex composite of several real species. I see elements of insect, squid/octopus, and fish, and commenters on YouTube recognize elements of crab, bat, and dinosaur. And in the clearest, most stable footage, there's a clearly primate form to the upper torso. Oh, and it has gigantic chicken feet. And elongated reptillian forearms and hands.

Here's a video of several different views of drawings and renderings of simliar creatures.

Hats off to the creative team that worked on this, they've developed a creature that is unique, scary, and hard to define.

j

Yummy...scorpions on a stick

2008-01-15T00:01:00.001-08:00

Yummy...scorpions on a stick, originally uploaded by HyenaLaughing.

My friend Dan just left Moto to travel the world this year, along with his girlfriend Sarah. They're in Beijing right now, and ran across this completely revolting fast food item.

Fried scorpions on a stick, anyone?

j

CES 2008 has been ... blah

2008-01-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

The most impressive thing I saw at the show was the 150" plasma tv, and the coolest thing I saw was the Microsoft Surface tabletop display, which was announced like two years ago.

This wasn't a big show for mobile devices. Except, of course, for the Z10 :-)

I spent some quality time with my peer who manages this product, and learned all kinds of interesting tips and tricks.

j

@ CES 2008

2008-01-06T15:02:00.000-08:00

Vegas is one of my least favorite places, but every year one of my favorite events happens here - the Consumer Electronics Show. Here's a shot of the venue from my hotel room:

The torrent of news has already started, and the most interesting trend I've picked up so far is the increasing reality of wireless high-def video transmission (around your house, not over the air broadcasts). The robot-related product announcements that have come out over thw weekend haven't been especially newsworthy in terms of new functions or features, but the volume of new products is up. It will be interesting to see if there are any new product categories where robots make an entre that are announced at the show.

On a more basic level, it will be interesting to see if there's any truly worthy news at CES this week, or if Apple will steal the show next week at Mac World, like they did last year during CES with the iPhone announcement.

j

Thoughts on the Nokia N82

2007-12-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

I've been using an N82 for a couple of weeks, and have gone through a range of opinions on the device over this short span. Initially I thought it absolutely rocked. Then some of the initial glow wore off. Then I was re-energized by the out and out utility of some of the applications.

Over the last week my opinion has cooled again, as I've been spending more time with the iPhone.

The N82 is the best N-series device so far, with the most feature-rich OS release. There's not room for much argument around this. But the hw design details just pale next to the iPhone. And the sw ... ahhh yes, the sw.

From one perspective, the latest version of S60 is a great achievement, the cumulative result of years of sustained development. And there's all kinds of great stuff coming down the pike - the roadmap is packed full of goodness.

But from another perspective, S60 sort of feels like a late-Twenties Model T. A hugely successful, mature release of an iterated product line, but a product line that will be overtaken by the times. NOK management seems to fully appreciate the scale of the shift that's going to happen - they have insisted on calling their N-series devices multimedia computers, rather than smartphones. But, and I say this as someone who has helped develop and ship products on Palm/Handspring, Windows Mobile/CE, Linux, and Symbian, smartphone operating systems can't compete with a mature modern computer OS running on suitably optimized hw.

The iPhone runs a throttled version of OS X. At some point Apple is going to get their web app platform figured out, and will roll this into vX of the iPhone product line. Couple that with the ever-decreasing cost of computing cycles, and the exploding amount of memory on handsets, and in just a few years we'll all (in the US, at least) be carrying computer handsets.

Or so I predict :-)

j

The Apple guide to software design

2007-12-29T21:50:00.000-08:00

I've been spending part of my Christmas vacation studying up on Apple. Their market cap has reached $175B, every tech pundit seems to think they are unbeatable, and in my job I compete nearly directly with their iPhone business.

I've been familiar with Apple since about 1984. My first computer was a Mac IIe, and my second machine was a Mac IIc. The first program I wrote was done in BASIC on the IIc, when I was about eight. But then I discovered Windows, and didn't use a Mac again until it was forced on me during grad school. This experience, largely with the iMac, didn't excite or inspire me to consider switching. Indeed, I did switch briefly during an 'experimental' period in grad school, but that switch was to Red Hat running on a Dell laptop. I wasn't tempted to seriously reconsider Apple for my personal computing until they made the switch to Intel hw, and even though I'm writing this on a MacBook, it's still more or less an experiment, and most of the time I spend on this machine is spent in XP running on Parallels.

Since my first experience with the IIe, I've held the opinion that Apple hw is prettier and more elegant than competitive devices, whether tower or laptop computers from the WinTel ecosystem, mice, keyboards, the Newton, or portable media players. I've never been a believer in the superiority of Apple's software, however - from either a usability/design or development platform perspective. I've disagreed with the WSJ/NYT/CNET/consensus view of Apple products as 'better than the rest, but misunderstood' for as far back as I can remember. Even the holiest of Apple design breakthroughs, the iPod physical and digital interface, never struck me as very usable or clever.

But in the last year Vista and Leopard have launched, and of course the iPhone launched. I've used and abused Vista, and saw plenty of early drops when I was at the 'soft. Grand ambition meets poor, late execution. Leopard is much more evolutionary than Longhorn, but it feels more well crafted. And the iPhone is largely the same story - design concepts seen elsewhere (Palm, Pocket PC) have been well executed, resulting in a package that emotionally feels more like a breakthrough than my intellect will permit.

So in my opinion, Apple has now turned the corner on software, and is in a position to continue to roll out pretty, well crafted hw, matched with increasingly useful, usable, and potentially innovative software. Which made my little discovery during this break all that much more interesting - the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.

Reading this doc has led me down all sorts of interesting paths over the last couple of days. I had heard of Rendezvous a while back, but now understand how this compares and contrasts with uPNP and DLNA. I have a better sense for the specific areas where OS X is more sophisticated than Vista in handling fonts. I can now put a face to the name Cocoa (and have a better sense for how to compare/contrast this with Silverlight and Flex). And I learned a few unsettling things about mixing SVG with xHTML.

It's good to be able to take a little time off and read up on this stuff.

j

It's a gadget bonanza

2007-11-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

I'm in device analysis mode at work, and have been loading up on new gadgets at an even faster pace than usual. I've been carrying a rotating ensemble of cameras and camcorders, taking pictures and video of various outdoor and indoor scenes. This year's crop of holiday devices are better than ever, but there's a noticeable emphasis on secondary and tertiary features that don't really add much value. And of course, the megapixel count continues to grow. I've got several devices with 12 megapixel sensors, but I can't really tell the difference between 8, 10, and 12 MP when viewing the images on my computer.

The coolest gadgets I've been using, however, are a little less oriented around productivity - the Guitar Hero 3 wireless Wii guitar, and a shiny new MacBook Pro.

The Wii GH3 guitar is simply awesome. I've used the wired xBox version, and the freedom to jump around that the wireless version provides makes for a more enjoyable experience.

The Macbook is also interesting, but in a different way. The first thing I did when I got the machine was load up Leopard, then Parallels, then Vista-on-Parallels. I like the Mac UI, but it's gonna take a while to get acclimatized to the one-button trackpad.

Apple does their best work when they "think for the consumer", eliminating unnecessarily complex processes for completing UI tasks. For me, though, a two-button trackpad provides the right level of control, and eliminating one of the buttons is forcing me to change my preferred method of cursor control. And nothing is more basic to computer operation than cursor control.

All in all, though, I like the Mac. It's unbelievable that other PC OEMs haven't launched hw with the same level of fit and finish.

j

Got the LG Viewty (aka the KU 990)

2007-11-14T19:03:00.001-08:00

... and it's very, very mediocre. It feels like the hardware is full of air. And the large touchscreen has the same problem as the LG Prada (which uses the same basic interaction model) - it doesn't work nearly as well as the iPhone.

The picture quality is ok, but that doesn't really matter when the device is a crappy phone.

So here's yet one more mobile product that involved who knows how many people during development, and it's really very mediocre in a world of black N95s and iPhones and SE k850s.

j

Good and bad marketing

2007-11-04T14:44:00.000-08:00

Nokia was in town this week. More precisely, an event marketing outfit that NOK hired was in town, doing some brand awareness and product show and tell in Westlake Center. Inflatable tents with folks pulled from off the street lip syncing, vans with product kiosks, that whole bit. This is exactly the kind of 'direct connection' marketing that marketing folks dream about, and I'm sure there are a couple of Nokia US marketing managers and directors that will have this US roadshow listed prominently on their performance review.

But while there were plenty of people checking out their stuff, there wasn't any clear call to action or linkage to where to buy the handsets they were showing. I know how much these kind of roadshows cost, and the payback just doesn't justify the expense - especially when the execution is as medicore as what I saw in Westlake this week. Lame marketing.

On the other hand, I just watched an example of clever marketing:

This MasterCard clip was shown during an NFL game, and the pitch is short, clever, and funny. And the clip can be personalized with a synthesized name inserted into the lead-in on a microsite, and if you really think it's funny, you can send a link to the clip to your friends, and it will be personalized with their name. And of course, MC gets contact data for both you and your friends. So it incrementally builds the brand, might even inspire you to spend a little money (presumably using your MasterCard), and helps build an email/CRM database for the MC marketing folks. Good marketing.

j

Tomorrow's big milestone: 250k frequent flyer miles this year

2007-11-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

I'm headed to Europe tomorrow for work, and on this trip I'll cross the 250,000 mile mark for the year. And it's only the first week of November.

I used to think FF status was kind of cool. Now I consider it just a minor (though valuable) luxury that pales next to the inconvenience of frequent travel. I love being able to take a shower in a first class lounge after a transcontinental flight - but I like being able to get a good night's sleep in my own bed even more. It's neat that I could exchange my miles for a 50" plasma tv - but I'd rather have back those weekends that I couldn't go hiking with my dog because I was traveling, especially now that she's getting older and I'm becoming aware that she's only got a couple of years of hiking left.

I know the name of the pilots who fly the Seattle-Chicago route, instead of the names of the men in the Tuesday morning bible fellowship group that I signed up for but have consistently missed.

Yep, I'm hitting a travel milestone tomorrow. Another day away from my family, my bed, and my life.

j

Got more goodies - N95-2, SE k850i

2007-10-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

The Nokia flagship stores in the US received their first shipment of the N95-2 today, and I've got one. I had a chance to spend some time with this model last week at the Symbian Smartphone show, and my initial impression has been reinforced - this model is incrementally but demonstrably better than the N95. The unified on-device and web search is particularly cool. The stub app for the yet-to-be-released N-gage platform is also interesting.

But the N95 still isn't nearly as sexy as the iPhone.

I picked up a Sony Ericsson k850i last week in London, and am particularly impressed with the size of the incremental advancements over the k810. The automatic lens cover is slick, and the blue 'flare' that accompanies the lens actuation is great eye candy. And in what might be a second to the iPhone, they've made use of a tilt/orientation sensor to drive an automatic landscape/portrait orientation change to the UI depending on how you're holding the device. Too bad the only apps that seem to use this are the picture reviewer, and a 3rd party Marble Madness game.

The pseudo touch screen is also an interesting feature - resistive soft keys just below the screen are matched with on-screen fingertip sized visual indicators that light up when you touch the screen. And the color of the visual indicators seems to be tied to the device Theme, in a nice 'we went one better' implementation.

j

Headed back to London

2007-10-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

I was in Sunnyvale last week, and the weather was... sunny (except for a brief rain interlude). Even though I spent most of my time indoors, it was nice to see the sun. Seattle has had a particularly crappy start to the fall/winter, with tons of rain and wind, and very little sun.

This week I'm headed to London for meetings and a conference, and I'll be spending quite a bit of time on the Tube, in trains, and in cabs. Hopefully London will be as sunny as Sunnyvale, and not as rainy as Seattle (ok, this is probably not realistic - but I can still hope), so that I don't end up soaked.

Next week is Chicago - where I hear the weather is still balmy. Hopefully it will stay that way a bit longer.

j

This is why I support (and exercise) the 2nd Amendment

2007-10-11T19:07:00.000-07:00

A hitchhiker approaches you while using a deserted rest stop bathroom on a lonely stretch of road, and asks for a ride. You decline to offer the hitchhiker a ride, and walk away. The hitchhiker gets angry and follows you to your car, where your wife is sitting in the passenger seat. His demeanor and the content of his speech clearly imply that he's assaulted people in the past.

You have a 9 mm handgun sitting in your vehicle.

What do you do?

Yesterday, not far from Seattle, Dennis Shaw grabbed his gun.

It turns out that this was more than a nuisance threat, this was a man who had just been released from jail, and who had been arrested more than 50 times. When he saw Dennis' gun, he apparently got even more belligerent, which prompted Dennis to fire a warning shot in self defense - a 'let me and my wife leave this rest stop now, and stop threatening us'.

Dennis is 66 years old, and in the heat of the moment his warning shot hit Dennis in the head, critically wounding him.

The lesson I draw from this situation is this - if you are a scary compulsive lawbreaker and you violently threaten a gun-wielding American, you might get shot in the head. You might not deserve to get shot in the head, but that situation is a real possibility. And lots of Americans own guns, and lots of us have concealed carry permits. Some of us even carry larger caliber weaponry than what Dennis Shaw was carrying, and you certainly wouldn't want to accidentally be shot in the head with something larger than a 9mm bullet by a defensive American.

j

Enjoying London

2007-09-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

I'm staying at the Hilton Paddington at Paddington Station in London this weekend - the place where Paddington Bear comes from.

I've got to say that this Hilton, and the brand new Hilton Warsaw that I stayed later in the week are simply great hotels. Pricey, but great. And it's super, super convenient to be able to walk out of your room, take the elevator, and walk across the station and into a waiting train for a quick ride. For a person who used to love the Paddington Bear story, it's also (fleetingly) charming to see the Paddington Bear merchandising around.

I was watching focus groups all day yesterday, and the day before and I'm glad I made the trip over to watch in person. You learn far more from watching people in person when conducting primary research than waiting for someone else to send you the report, which can't capture the evolving reactions or small domain-specific comments that interviewers might not catch. I'm always torn when watching focus groups, however, over whether to consider tailoring the product features to match some partial sum of the group comments, or to use the research to figure out which market segments will be most receptive to the as-spec'd product.

j

On my way to Warsaw and London

2007-09-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm in Chicago tonight, on an extended trip that will take me to Warsaw and London for some consumer testing research. There's nothing quite like trying to check in to your hotel at midnight, only to find out the travel agent has screwed things up and scheduled your reservation for the following week.

So I'm at the ultra-swank Days Inn this evening, where the sheets are thin, but where there's also abundant free WiFi. I suppose every now and then it's good to stay in a spartan hotel, to keep some perspective on what a normal hotel looks like. Tomorrow I'm back to a first class seat to Europe and a trendy international hotel near the Old City in downtown Warsaw.

j

Should US companies just write off European markets and their Socialist regulators?

2007-09-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

The EU just won a long, long case against Microsoft, a case which from my perspective was absolute bullshit. Neelie Kroes, the EU "Competition Commissioner" (who probably owes the existence of her job, and the political platform it provides, to the fact that Microsoft exists), managed to bring to closure a case that's about 10 years too late, in a situation where the market is in fact already proving more than capable of regulating itself.

The EU won some money (just under a billion dollars), and the right to be able to force Microsoft to strip out all the applications that come with Windows in SKUs that ship in Europe, and will be able to force MS to disclose the internal interfaces that their various client and server applications use to connect to Windows. All this in a situation where Apple has been readily gaining market share, and where consumers face basically no lock-in, and have complete freedom of choice over the computer operating system that they purchase.

The old canard that Windows is really the only choice for an OS has been proved false - just look at the 25%+ market share Apple now has in the US, amongst computers bought and paid for by individuals (rather than by their employers). Yet Neelie Kroes and the anti-capitalist European Union just couldn't resist bringing this case against MS, and fought till the bitter end, when circumstances around the original justification had changed. And now they've won, and will be able to pursue a whole bunch of other American companies who are just a little too good at serving the needs of the market - Apple, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Rambus, etc.

We're not there yet (even Microsoft still has more to gain in Europe than they have to lose), but at what point should American tech companies just give Europe the bird, and tell them to take up the issue of their unmet needs with their political leaders? Oh wait - Europeans wouldn't be able to take this up with Commissioner Kroes with their ballots, because the entire European Commission is appointed, not elected. Oops!

It is interesting that in Microsoft's case, European consumers have much more direct influence on Microsoft than on the politicians who act in their name. If Europeans don't want to buy Windows, they don't have to - and there are other perfectly acceptable alternatives. If these same Europeans think Neelie is doing a crap job looking after their interests, there's little recourse to replace her with a different politician.

But this brings me back to my main point - at what point should American companies write off Europe? If you've got low market share there, and thin margins, there are two ways to view this - that Europe has a ton of upside potential, and you should compete as hard as possible to realize that potential, or that Europe is a pain in the ass, and that you should focus your product development and marketing efforts on more welcoming consumers in other markets.

j

Got the LG Prada - it's pretty cool

2007-09-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

I picked up an LG Prada in London, and it's an interesting little device - little being the operative word. It's much smaller than the iPhone, and has a cute animated koi poind homescreen.

The browser isn't competitive with the iPhone, and it doesn't have widgets, and it does a worse job recognizing touch inputs. But everything else is pretty decent, and as a phone it's a bit more useful, since it's smaller.

j

Are PE money managers disrupting and leeching off of society?

2007-09-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

Just read an interesting article this morning about the effect that private equity (and hedge funds in particular) career ladders are having on the perceived value of an MBA. This got me to thinking about the value and effects that private equity money managers have on society.

In general, I'm deeply suspicious of young people who make tons of money. This is an inarticulate statement, but there's something that doesn't sit right with me when I see or hear about teen and 20-something athletes, bankers, money managers, actors, etc. that make multiple millions of dollars per year.

But at least athletes and actors provide a tangible service that is accessible to large portions of the population, and their pay is partially proportional to how society at large values their cultural contribution.

People who move money (or large assets) around and get paid large sums don't provide a service that benefits large portions of society - they provide a service to specific individuals, and in the case of hedge funds and other private equity instruments, the individuals being serviced are the most privileged members of society. Successful real estate agents fall into this class as well, and my opinion of the profession of real estate brokering isn't much better than PE money management.

At the same time, I'm thankful that our society is structured to allow and enable anyone to pursue any line of work, and that there aren't cross-industry legal caps on wages. While many of these 'smart kids' could provide more value to society as medical researchers, teachers, etc., I'm glad they are able to pursue their own greedy ends, rather than face a government mandate. That said, this freedom comes at a cost, and in the case of hedge fund managers, and PE managers in general, the cost is that some are able to receive extraordinarily renumeration for work that provides little or no value to society. There are secondary effects as well, like price inflation in the communities in which these individuals live.

I'm not sure whether my antipathy towards money managers and other professions with a low value/pay ratio can be justified on moral principles. Perhaps it's just envy or jealousy (I hope not, but it's possible). Or perhaps the settings on our society and government have been tuned in a way that maximizes other values, like freedom, that in some special cases comes at the expense of fairness.

j

I say it's great...to be...a Flo-rid-a Ga-tor

2007-09-15T18:35:00.000-07:00

My oh my, the Gators simply rolled over the Tennessee Volunteers today. There's a lot of football left in the season, but at this point Florida looks like a solid championship contender.

j

No room at the Ron Paul rally in downtown Seattle last night

2007-09-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

I tried to get in to the gathering in downtown Seattle last night to hear Ron Paul speak, but there wasn't enough room to get in the door. Must be good news for his campaign if his conservative platform can draw a big crowd in Seattle.

It was pretty funny watching the typical 4th and Pine Seattleites react to the Ron Paul supporters on the street corners - the pedestrian crowds didn't seem to know how to react to signs promoting conservative messages. 99% of the time the folks waving signs on these street corners are delivering strongly leftist messages.

j

A water-powered energy machine?

2007-09-14T16:39:00.000-07:00

Folks have been working on water-based fusion experiments for years, trying to figure out a way to extract energy from one of the most abundant compounds on Earth. Most of these experiments have failed to deliver anything close to net-positive power outputs, and the field has been tainted in the popular imagination by a few quasi-fraudulent claims.

But what if we didn't have to resort to dangerous, tricky fusion processes to extract power from water? John Kanzius might have discovered a novel method for extracting energy from water, or at least a method for generating hydrogen from salt water, which could be useful for fueling hydrogen-powered cars.

While developing an experimental technique for irradiating cancer, Kanzius and fellow researchers noticed that the radiation, in conjunction with seeding particles, caused a salt water solution to hydrolyze. The process released enough free hydrogen to sustain combustion for as long as the solution was irradiated.

All very interesting, but the trick will be in determining whether the energy input needed to power the RF equipment will be larger or smaller than the energy that can be converted from the combustion process. RF components are notoriously inefficient at converting electrical power into propagated RF power, particularly when you're trying to focus the RF energy in a specific frequency range. There's also the more basic question of whether the energy needed to break the H2O bonds is more or less than the energy liberated in the combustion process.

<It's interesting that I still remember the basic chemical principles behind this stuff, but can't remember the relatively pedestrian free energy values for these simple chemical equations. I memorized these values for numerous chem and physics classes in college, and now I've forgotten even the units for the values. Use it or lose it, I suppose.>

My suspicion is that this finding is legitimate, in that a directed high-energy RF beam will indeed hydrolyze salt water, but that the losses in the electrical-RF conversion, and the heat-electrical conversion, will end up consuming more energy than is liberated in the hydrolysis.

j

Dave Carpenter, Master of Hyperbole

2007-09-08T14:54:00.000-07:00

I just read an AP piece about MOT's 'pledge to break out of the slump' by Dave Carpenter. Nothing too fancy in the first few paragraphs, until you get to the middle, when Dave busts out this whopper:

Motorola is in the process of introducing the Razr 2, although it is not expected to come anywhere near the success of the original phone. The market is now dominated by Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

"The market is dominated by Apple's iPhone"? What market is he referring to? The US market for $500+ handsets, between July and August 2007? The iPhone is hot, no doubt about it, and the big price drop will certainly help drive volumes. But come on, this paragraph clearly implies that the iPhone dominates the same market that the RAZR and RAZR 2 play in. And Apple's iPhone volumes are tiny, tiny potatoes compared to the multiple millions of units that each RAZR SKU generates.

j

on the road, from Notting Hill

2007-09-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

I've had a bit of a hankering to check out Notting Hill since I saw the movie. I've never been to London before, and since all I need at the moment to be productive is an electrical socket and some WiFi, I'm hanging out at a Starbucks next to Portobello Road. My first impression of London matches up pretty well with my expectations.

The one aspect I'm not keen on is the wifi roaming fee that T-mobile charges- $.18 per minute for connectivity. That's ridiculous, and now that I think about it, is going to cramp my work. I'm not keen on paying $10 an hour to get my work done.

j

2 am ponderings from the road

2007-08-27T23:12:00.000-07:00

After a long, long flight across the country, I sat down in my hotel room this evening and watched Steve Jobs' speech during the 2005 Stanford commencement ceremonies:

This was by far the most humanizing account I've ever heard or read about Steve. I've been thinking about making the switch to Apple for a while, and stopped by the local Apple store over the weekend to check out the latest Macs. After hearing a bit more about Steve's story, I'm far more likely to splurge on a Mac at some point.

This got me to thinking about robots. I've been thinking about what's next for a while, what new frontier of consumer technology is ripe for growth, and I've come to the opinion that computing, wireless connectivity, and sensing technology have reached the point where we could start making major strides in personal consumer robotics.

iRobot has done a great job introducing consumer robots into the public view in a subtle way with the Roomba and Scooba. After using the iPhone for a while, watching this commencement video, and seeing Microsoft's attempts to create a robot operating system, I wonder if there isn't room for someone to commercialize a line of consumer robots using Apple's design and marketing principles. I'll have to put some thought in to this on the flight home.

j