Monthly Archives: November 2007

Seybold on wireless = early senility?

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Update:  Andrew Seybold’s reply:  http://www.andrewseybold.com/blog.asp?ID=132

Tonight PBS covered the smart phone market, and asked for input from Andrew Seybold.   He should have been a great choice and clearly has an insider view, so how could he say something this transparently absurd? 

ANDREW SEYBOLD: As much as I respect Google, the wireless industry can’t be an extension of the Internet because wireless bandwidth is finite. It’s a fixed resource, and it is shared bandwidth. The more people who use it in a given area, the less data speed they have.

Andrew, with all due respect – and considerable respect is due, I think you’ve missed something profound here.    Sure, wireless capacity must increase to accommodate all the data, and it certainly will.    There are already technologies like WIMAX and EVDO that will scale up to meet demand, and it’s likely that improvements and new technologies will emerge very fast in response to this cash rich, market.   In any case, it is now *crystal clear* that all players in this space are moving to converge the phone experience with the internet experience.    It is not clear exactly how that will shake out and eventually become seamless, but you are suggesting this is not even the *direction* in which things are moving.  

ERIC SCHMIDT: I completely disagree with the characterization that somehow the wireless network is going to be any different than the wired network, because there’s enormous spectrum becoming available through licensing programs, better radio design, faster computers, and so forth.

Thank you Eric, you are absolutely right.  In fact I expect you already have several plans in place to make the higher speed and broader bands available to prospective gPhones and Google Phones and Android equipped phones.  

TechMeme still Rulez!

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[Following is this is a revision of a post I did over at WebGuild.org – the Silicon Valley social networking and tech education group] . 

For bloggers, Gabe Rivera’s TechMeme has become a top technology watering hole, ranking and finding great blog posts and tracking the discussions that form around them.

Fred Wilson, a New York Venture Capitalist and great blogger, is lamenting the good old days when he thinks TechMeme had more of the stuff he wants to read – more of the old guard tech bloggers and fewer popular newspaper articles.

Unlike Fred, I’m happy with what I see as a diversification of the early TechMeme post universe. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that the “old guard” does all the best blogging, and TechMeme does a great job of unearthing new voices for me.    Frankly, I’d like to see even more new voices.   As I’ve noted here before we need a blogging revolution (hmmm – I guess I’m too lazy to lead it?!   I was supposed to get Scoble a list of “great new voices” and have not done that yet, though it’s on “The List”).     My criticism of TechMeme is more along the lines that by design it will become too focused on the insider rumor mill rather than the most significant technology news stories.    But I appreciate the fact that you want “most significant story” to be defined by objective processes rather than a handful of editors.  TechMeme is doing a great job of that so far.

In general I find I prefer the new fresh voices to the old ones.  Fred wrote that he likes new voices too but appears to be tired of TechMeme’s increasing number of legacy media stories about tech issues.  I agree the old schoolf folks often miss the big picture, but they are driving much of the national debate on these issues so I want their take as well as the insiders angle from well-connected bloggers.    I also appreciate that legacy media folks check their spelling, usage, and their facts – a point that should not be lost on many bloggers including this one.    (But the spell checking takes an extra 30 seconds …. I have no time for THAT inconvenience!)

Thanks to TechMeme I find a lot quickly, and I also have the site doing some of the human filtering for me because I know Gabe won’t run lousy blogs.   Are people writing specifically to TechMeme to get links there, as Fred notes?   Sure they are, but this just creates the challenge we get with all news media – a sort of echo chamber where all the insiders are talking about the same stuff.   That challenge is not really TechMeme’s fault – the solution for that is more good bloggers which will diversify the conversations even more and get people talking about things and linking to things they had not though about before.  

[groaning] after I wrote the post above, TechMeme managed to have one of it’s dumbest top stories in some time – a clear indication of how insulated our silly tech community can become from real world issues. 

Google “like” Phone Pictures. Bug labs modular phone to run Android SDK

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Update: The headlines are misleading.   This phone is not by Google, but will be able to run “Android”, the Googley operating sytem from the Open Handset Alliance.   This is an important development but different from a true phone from Google.     

There are reports that a Google Phone or gPhone will be out shortly.   Here are some pictures. There is not much buzz about this yet so I’m not clear about the source of these rumors, but it makes sense to me that Google will put something out much earlier than the “middle of 2008” we’ve seen in a lot of reports.

Based on the early pix I’m not sure this device is going to win any design awards – looks more like a geek design than the stylish iPhone design that has helped make Apple the clear “smartphone to beat” and brought them such success in this market.    However on balance I think that *cost* will be the key.     If the gPhone can come in under $100 and do all the neat things promised by Android and the Open Handset Alliance, I think it’ll be so broadly adopted as to be an unstoppable mobile force.  

Kindle – market mini-analysis

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OK, I just got it. The Kindle does have a market. Bezos is correct of course that the reason books persist in the digital world is their ergonomic appeal. With the Kindle he’s working to maintain that book advantage while adding the digital improvements modern technology can offer – that is a library of Alexandria at your fingertips.

Yet the obvious challenge here is what I’ve noted before – laptop users won’t switch to a device that offers ergonomic improvements but less functionality and more cost, and non-tech people won’t adopt tech approaches this quickly. So, who does that leave in the Kindle market? Jeff Bezos is one person, and I think he’ll buy one. I’d probably buy one if I had money to burn on a redundant but somewhat better device for my reading.

So the Kindle market will be heavy duty book readers who *also* like technology *and* have a fairly high threshold of disposable income. This is not a trivial number of people, though it’s probably only in the neighborhood of about 1-2% of the US population. Let’s assume that the number of people who are heavy readers and would like a Kindle and can afford a Kindle are 2% of the US population. That’s a potential market of 6 million people, which does not seem all that problematic. If they can penetrate 10% of this market and sell 600,000 devices along with the many books people will buy at 9.99 maybe it won’t lose money, and perhaps even could evolve into a device with broader appeal.

But I wouldn’t bet on this.

Kindle debut kindles more skepticism than interest

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Amazon’s Kindle just does not make sense to a lot of folks blogging about it.  Including me.   Today the device was introduced by Jeff Bezos of Amazon via a presentation that appears to suggest he thinks this is the new evolution of reading.   Cuniform, then books, now the Kindle.    Actually, I sort of “get it” when you reasonably suggest that in a digital world the book is a cumbersome technology, containing only a single work in a relatively heavy casing.   The Kindle is thus a virtual library of Alexandria in 10 oz plastic box.   That’s pretty cool, right?    Right, if we did not have alternative technologies that offered even more.     As I see this the Kindle is a superior reading device to a laptop or iPhone because of better ergonomics.   However, given the cost and limitations (you can’t call with a Kindle), I agree with Forbes that this device may be obsolete before it even hits store shelves.  

Who will buy this expensive, highly specialized gadget and then pay fees to read things they could read for free on a computer?   Forbes has a more balanced story than Newsweek’s favorably hyped “Future of Reading” silliness that I think was more a product of some exclusive they got from Jeff Bezos than a reasonable analysis of what the Kindle offers readers.

But enough negativity.    I want to thank Jeff Bezos for spending so much money helping to design a product that will at the very least help to create the next generation of devices.   As a heavy user of heavy laptops I know we have a long way to go here.   We need a world where your phone/pda/mp3/browser also functions as a book reader.   I think that will come from the phone side of things rather that a separate “reader gadget” Kindle approach, but who knows?    Maybe this is the breakthrough device to get the luddites computing?     Is their interest kindled with this innovation?    Wait….nope….they don’t even know it exists. 

Kindle as “Future of Reading”? More like Present … of stupidity.

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I don’t usually pan products here but the Kindle coming out from Amazon tomorrow is *really* a bad idea.   Not because it wouldn’t be neat to have a great reading device to replace books, but because of the demographics involved here.   Amazon is going to be lucky to sell enough Kindles to keep this project going through Christmas.     Part of the challenge for the Kindle is that it’s ugly.   Butt ugly based on the picture, though some are saying the Kindle picture does not do it justice.

Newsweek Reports with a title that is now in first place for journalistic hyperbole gone mad. 

But even if the Kindle was an AppleEsque stylish, techological beauty, who do they think will buy these things?

The early adopters of techology – folks like me who have a lot of computers, a laptop, and a fancy phone *already have* devices where we can read blogs and websites and books.   Oh yes, most of that reading is free on my laptop, where the Kindle is going to charge you – even for blogs if early reports are correct.  Sure it would be nice to have a portable reader for the coffee shop when I don’t have a real book to bring there.     But I *do* have a real book around somewhere that I do bring to the coffee shop if I’m not bringing my …. laptop … which gives me more than just reading capabilities.    Can I blog from the Kindle?    I’m not going to carry a Kindle AND my Laptop around with me.

OK, so what about those folks who are not attached to their technologies pretty much every waking hour?   The folks who may not even have a laptop to carry around.    They are going to budget $399 for a .. ummm …. ugly Kindle?  Huh?  The folks who don’t particularly like computers or gadgets and don’t think it’s fun to have a laptop at the coffee shop are going to jump right out and buy an ugly, new, unusual ….. uber gadget?     No.    What will the marketing say “Luddites of the world wake up and get out your wallets, because the Kindle is the high technology for YOU!”

As Matt Ingram notes, what in the world is Jeff Bezos smoking over there?.    The Kindle is yet another gadget designed by the folks who have everything for the folks who have everything, and therefore brings to the marketplace pretty much … nothing.  

OK, I’ve been mean and harsh because I think the Kindle is going to fail pretty dramatically.   I also feel bad because I understand Jeff Bezos is a cool, nice guy.    Yikes, I’ll never get a job selling Kindles door to door now, but the ugly Kindle truth is more important than that.   However, I would have to say that *some day* we may see lots of this type of device in libraries and coffee shops as a great way to bring people fresh and hugely diverse content without subscriptions to hundreds of magazines and papers and blogs and websites.   That is the neat part of this idea, but unfortunately for it to work the Kindle would need to kindle a lot of interest in the device as much as the idea, and this won’t do that.

23andMe and Me

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I just ordered up my Genome at 23andme.com    They’ll send the kit over the next few days, I’ll swab my saliva and send it back, and they’ll analyze the sample.  Then I’ll be able to see a list showing most of my genome. every single nucleotide pair of mine.  Obviously reading that report could get kind of boring …. “HOLY Crap, there’s *another* GATC sequence!”  Which is why 23andMe has a lot of cool online information and tools to graph and understand your relationships to your genome, your ancestry, and more.   It’s staggering that only a few years after cracking this holy grail of biology it’s available to everybody.   “The Language of God” for more about the philosophy of one of the key players in the quest for the human Genome.  

 Yes,  $999 is a lot of pizza and beer, but OMG how could I not do this?   I’ll report more here as I learn more about my genes. 

Most Dangerous Cities in America along with the safest

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CNN reports results from a recent study of crime in American cities, noting these as the most dangerous and safest ten USA Cities in each category:

Ranked Most Dangerous

1. Detroit, Michigan
2. St. Louis, Missouri
3. Flint, Michigan
4. Oakland, California
5. Camden, New Jersey
6. Birmingham, Alabama
7. North Charleston, South Carolina
8. Memphis, Tennessee
9. Richmond, California
10. Cleveland, Ohio

Ranked Safest
1. Mission Viejo, California
2. Clarkstown, New York
3. Brick Township, New Jersey
4. Amherst, New York
5. Sugar Land, Texas
6. Colonie, New York
7. Thousand Oaks, California
8. Newton, Massachusetts
9. Toms River Township, N.J.
10. Lake Forest, California

Since the results are the result of weighted crime stats it’s true you might come to different conclusions about safe and dangerous, and of course safety and danger are not just a function of crime.   I think I’d take a slight crime boost if it meant a big reduction in dirtiness and pollution, though usually most of the bad stuff goes together.    I was amazed at how Philadelphia was so much nastier in terms of downtown cleanliness than the Amish country around Lancaster, PA and I’m always surprised in San Jose and Silicon Valley how much dirtier and harsher the cityscape is compared to the nearby suburbs, which are generally “too tidy” for me.    Here in rural Oregon you kind of feel cozy when you see dozens of dirty lawn flamingos in the yard and 14 used cars in somebody’s driveway.

CNN Reports

Recycling Computer Parts

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Recycling old computers and monitors, especially the toxic stuff, is a problem that is going to get bigger and bigger.     A recent report suggests we are not handling this problem very well, and I know from my local recycling experiences this is seems to be case here in rural Oregon.    Of the 2 million *tons* of old computer parts (mostly PCs and Monitors I assume) most find their way into landfills.    Some 300,000 to 400,000 tons of parts are processed through “recycling” facilities, but the latest scandal suggests that most of this material is then send overseas where it may be contaminating other countries.

I have not followed up on this story, so it is possible that it’s like some other environmental red herrings where the economic benefits to the other countries are so great and the risks so trivial we won’t be doing anybody any favors by closing down the business, but obviously this type of situation looks ominous.

Technology and toxics is yet another topic where reason must prevail over scare tactics so we can develop clear, clean and economical solutions to complex environmental problems.  For example compact flourescent bulbs, when broken, leave trace amounts of mercury.   I learned this a few weeks *after* I swept up a broken bulb on our porch, completely oblivious to the fact this was – technically – toxic waste.   Does this mean we should not use compact flourescents which offer huge energy savings?   No, it but it suggests we need new technologies and different rules for how to handle mercury cleanup to avoid making a nation of lawbreakers.  Perhaps a Gov’t approved “mercury cleanup kit” so schools and businesses won’t need to start closing when somebody drops a bulb.