Google: recursion. Gotta love when nerds throw in easter eggs for other nerds.

I’m sure this is as old as the internet, but it’s new to me. I’ve definitely seem something similar in my algo books (in the index for Loops says see Recursion, and for Recursion says see Loops.)

(via Reddit – What did the cooling system say to the sound card?)

At :25 in, I was astounded. I love engineering.

MOG Music's new web app brings its interface up to speed with competitors like Rdio

I consume a lot of music, and there’s no way that I could ever afford to purchase every album I listen to for $14.99. That’s where music subscription services come in. As a recent convert to MOG (from Rhapsody), I get excited every time I get even just a weekly update in my inbox letting me know what music has been added recently. But the announcement of an entirely revamped web app launched into Google’s brand new Chrome Web Store is something that anyone who loves music should pay attention to.

To get you acquainted with what it is exactly that MOG offers, here’s a quick summary of the $4.99 /month service (for $9.99, you get the mobile app too):

Unlimited Music: Access to over 10 million songs and close to one million albums, on-demand.
High Quality Audio: Music is streamed at 320 kbps; better than any other music service.
Best-in-Class, Personal Radio: The most powerful music discovery engine on the planet (powered by MOG Mobius).
One-click Access: With one click, get instant access to New Releases, Top Artists, Top Albums and Editor’s Picks.
Anytime, Anywhere: Unlimited access to the MOG app from any computer using Chrome or Safari browsers or on your TV (Roku and GoogleTV).

The Good (a.k.a. why it’s better than what it was)

So why is this new web app a good thing? Because the way that we interface with MOG’s library has been vastly improved. For starters, the browsing of MOG’s huge catalog and the managing of the ‘Play Queue’ all happens in the same browser window now. Where you used to click a button in one window to add a song to the queue in another pop-up, now an addition to the queue affects the window you’re looking at. This really unifies the user experience and brings MOG up to speed with the user experience that competitors like Rdio already offer.

Another improvement is the way in which you now browse and discover music on the site. When you click on an artist’s name after you either search for them or just happen upon them while browsing the site, a dropdown summarizing the content pertaining to that artist is shown. From here, you can view that artist’s discography, see their top tracks, play a radio station built around their sound, or dive deeper and see the individual songs that make up an album. Because the site is built as a web app meeting to the (relatively) new HTML5 standards, the absence of pageloads makes browsing the site super smooth. Jumping in and out of artist pages is quick and painless.

The Bad (or hopefully ‘The Temporarily Left Out’)

The site isn’t perfect though. As a beta release, this is understandable, but there are a few things that I hope are in the pipeline to be implemented soon. The first thing that stuck out to me was that playlists are nowhere to be found. When someone gives you unlimited access to a 10 million song catalog of music, you want playlists. In a larger context than just music discovery, the curators of today’s information landscape provide a great service to the communities that they belong to: they help content of value bubble to the top for everyone to enjoy. Leaving out playlists leaves out the ability for quality music to surface. Only a small fraction of the catalog is ever seen.

Another addition that I’d love to see is the ability to see more than just the music content offered by MOG when viewing an artist’s page. When I’m in a discovery mood, I want to know everything I can about an artist: their bio, maybe some photos, a few similar artists, etc. Last.fm does an incredible job of bringing this information forward on their artist pages.

Finally, I can’t scrobble any of the music I listen to with the new web app! I have no idea what percentage of MOG users are also Last.fm users, but this issue is bordering on being a deal-breaker for me. I’ve been OK with the inability to scrobble songs on my iPhone, but if I can’t scrobble on my desktop either, then I’m left in a pretty bad situation. This seems to be such a small feature to implement, I hope MOG throws this in very soon.

The All-In-All

So where does this leave the music subscription space? Rdio has a great interface and iPhone app but no catalog. Rhapsody has a gigantic catalog but the worst interface out there. MOG offers it all: the ideal UI, a large (and quickly growing) catalog, and mobile apps that are winning awards as fast as they can be awarded.

• MOG.com (the old interface)
• The MOG Walkthrough
• MOG Music – Chrome Web Store

Solve this problem and win $1 million!

This is from a few months back, but I figured that the N != NP problem is always relevant so I might as well post it.

Here’s a quick summary of the problem:

“P versus NP” is more than just an abstract mathematical puzzle. It seeks to determine–once and for all–which kinds of problems can be solved by computers, and which kinds cannot. “P”-class problems are “easy” for computers to solve; that is, solutions to these problems can be computed in a reasonable amount of time compared to the complexity of the problem. Meanwhile, for “NP” problems, a solution might be very hard to find–perhaps requiring billions of years’ worth of computation–but once found, it is easily checked.

The “P versus NP problem” asks whether these two classes are actually identical; that is, whether every NP problem is also a P problem. If P equals NP, every NP problem would contain a hidden shortcut, allowing computers to quickly find perfect solutions to them. But if P does not equal NP, then no such shortcuts exist, and computers’ problem-solving powers will remain fundamentally and permanently limited. Practical experience overwhelmingly suggests that P does not equal NP. But until someone provides a sound mathematical proof, the validity of the assumption remains open to question.

This past summer I worked for a social gaming company in Mountain View. I remember getting into a good discussion with some coworkers about this problem. That’s another reason why working in nerd-land was nice; conversations about unsolved computer science questions are par for the course. That being said, my algorithms class last semester was nearly the end of me.

What Does ‘P vs. NP’ Mean for the Rest of Us? -MIT Technology Review

(via Boing Boing)

A Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo helmet to be exact. This video made my day, and I love that DIY projects like this exist.

I think that I heard, back around the time of the Alive 2007 tour, that the real helmets cost thousands of dollars to make. Check the link below for a more detailed explanation of how this was done.

Daft Punk: FINAL! -Volpin Props

Simply put, you start with a grid of boxes. The boxes are in either of two states: alive or dead. To play the game, you start by turning some boxes alive, and running these rules over and over:

• A living cell with 0 or 1 neighbours dies, by underpopulation
• A living cell with 4 or more neighbours dies, by overpopulation
• A living cell with 2 or 3 neighbours survives
• A dead cell with 3 or more neighbours becomes alive, by reproduction

I’m not sure why, but we learned about the Game of Life in one of my computer science classes a few semesters ago. I thought it was interesting at the time, but it (sort of) came in handy when I interned at Microsoft. Every year the company puts on “Puzzle Day” which is a program-wide competition between teams that are solving puzzles all day. One of the puzzles was just a wide grid with seemingly random boxes colored black. It came with some clue about “life”, and I figured that it was simply Conway’s Game. Little did I know that there were custom rules that we had to figure out to solve what the boxes revealed… Sadly, this wasn’t one of the puzzles we solved, but we came close, right?

Conway’s Game of Life in HTML5

wait, I thought Firefox, Chrome, and Opera supported HTML5 too...

Apple has been catching a lot of flack for it’s HTML5 Showcase page it recently put up on its website. And for good reason! The problem with the site is that it purports to be a page intended to

show how the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser, new Macs, and new Apple mobile devices all support the capabilities of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

So what’s the problem? You can only view the demos with Safari. If you’re using Firefox, Chrome, or Opera – all modern browsers that support HTML5 – you get the error message shown in the image above. The fact that Apple is browser sniffing and excluding products that are all capable of displaying the content on those demo pages is troublesome.

Christopher Blizzard of Mozilla summarizes the issue and what’s really important in this way,

The most important aspect of HTML5 isn’t the new stuff like video and canvas (which Safari and Firefox have both been shipping for years) it’s actually the honest-to-god promise of interoperability. Even stodgy old Microsoft, who has been doing their best to hold back the web for nearly a decade, understands this and you’ll see it throughout their marketing for IE9. (Their marketing phrase is “same markup” – watch for it and you’ll see it everywhere in their messaging.) The idea that the same markup, even with mistakes, will be rendered exactly the same. HTML5 represents the chance for browsers to work together and find common ground.

It really sucks that Apple thinks it can push the market around like this, but it’s great to see that people aren’t going to take it.

intellectual honesty and html5 -Christopher Blizzard

Abstract

Although personal computers have become everyday items in children’s lives very few children have learned anything about programming. And while programming has been reserved for the most technically-minded engineers in the past, its core concepts have the potential for helping students learn concepts in math, science, and other areas requiring analytical thinking. Recently, programming environments and languages have been developed with the goal of having a “low floor,” a “high ceiling,” and “wide-walls.” Two projects that have had considerable success in their endeavors are Scratch and Processing. While they are targeted at different audiences – Scratch for elementary school students and Processing for high school students and older – both have successfully introduced people to programming who otherwise couldn’t have overcome the barriers to programming.

Software Literacy

“The ability to ‘read’ a medium means you can access the materials and tools created by others. The ability to ‘write’ in a medium means you can generate materials and tools for others. You must have both to be literate.” (Kay)

It has been quite a few years since personal computers were introduced into the marketplace, and since the late 1970s, they have become a commonplace item across the country. While this generation of children and students have come to be known as “digital natives,” very few know much, if anything, about programming and the critical thinking concepts that make it up (Resnick, Maloney and Monroy-Hernandez).

Being able to quickly learn software and the ideas of how to write code have tremendous potential for helping students learn concepts in math, science, and other analytical thinking fields. But what characteristics must the tools we use to teach software literacy have in order to be most affective? It has been argued for years that programming languages should have a “low floor,” a “high ceiling,” and “wide-walls.” This triplet of characteristics means that the language should have a shallow learning curve, create increasingly complex projects, and accommodate a user’s various interests (Papert).

Meeting these three requirements has not been an easy task for tool and language developers. But two projects from MIT exemplify success in these three areas best: Scratch and Processing. Scratch teaches children age 8 – 16 programming concepts through a building block metaphor. Processing brings together a programming language, development environment, and teaching methodology to appeal to the visual design and electronic arts communities. Each of the tools has its strengths and weaknesses, but both appropriately serve their intended audiences.

A History of Computer Programmers

It’s not difficult to find a highly detailed timeline of the invention of programming languages, but what is to be said for the programmers developing in those languages? Looking at who programmers have been in the past and how they’ve changed over the past fifty years can give us insight into who the programmers of the future might be. The continuing evolution of who computer programmers are and how they are viewed by the public is best explained through the lens of the level of the languages the programmers used.

A “real” programmer working on a mainframe computer

“Real” Programmers

The earliest programmers, or “real” programmers, are best characterized as the select few people in the 1940’s who understood how to operate the immense computers that filled the space of an entire room. They knew machine language, and poured their blood, sweat, and tears into writing it. Machine language is considered the lowest level language class, and it is the only language that a computer truly understands. These earliest programmers labored hard-wiring the switches and cables inside the machines with only the 0s and 1s that the machines could interpret (Lohr). Luckily, very few computer programmers still write any machine code.

1960’s Hacker Culture

The next phase of programmers moved from the cumbersome machine languages to a slightly higher level set called assembly languages. Assembly languages are one level of abstraction away from machine code and take advantage of human words like ‘add,’ ‘sub,’ and ‘mov.’ This abstraction allowed for many more people to learn how to program and bred a new group of people writing code not as their day job, but as a hobby. Some of these programmers, affectionately called “hackers,” were more enthusiasts than professional software engineers, but the results of their efforts are no less important. The World Wide Web and the Internet are both products of 1960s hacker culture. But while assembly languages were slightly less primitive than machine code, they were by no means simple to learn and understand.

Now and the Future

More recently, languages referred to as high level languages have spread as the most prevalent to code in. High level languages are strongly abstracted from machine code and, like assembly languages, must be translated back into machine code in order to be executed. This strong abstraction has allowed for people to teach themselves how to program. As a result, there are far more programmers today than existed even twenty years ago. And while most professional programmers still have a formal education in software development, the next logical step in the evolution of who programmers takes us to the general public.

Today, the software community is working towards the goal of universal software literacy. The hope is for programming knowledge to be commonplace and for ordinary people to understand how to conceive of a simple solution to a complex problem with the help of computers.

This shift of who a programmer is involves a similar advancement in the languages or software environments that these new programmers will write code in. We need languages further abstracted from machine code and syntax that more closely resembles human language to decrease the learning curve of programming and improve the readability of code. Even though software literacy for the general public seems like a lofty ambition, developments have already been made in this direction.

Scratch – the children’s programming language

Of all the programs that have attempted to introduce programming concepts to beginners, MIT’s Scratch has had the most success. Scratch is an interactive program rather than a syntax-based coding language; it employs building blocks to construct programs rather than relying on potentially confusing grammars. Developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and released in 2007, Scratch was build with its specific core audience of children age 8 to 16 in mind (Maloney, Peppler and Kafai). The creators of Scratch knew that since computers had been introduced in the late 1970s, they had become everyday items in children’s lives, but that very few children have learned how to program. Knowing this, the Scratch team set out to build a program that satisfied the triplet of having low-floor/high-ceiling/wide-walls and appealed to children (Resnick, Maloney and Monroy-Hernandez).

An example of a Scratch program that simulates a simple pong-like game. It highlights the programming concepts of loops, variables, user input, and conditional statements.

Give It Meaning

Scratch’s users learn important mathematical and computational concepts, as well as how to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. But how do they accomplish all of this without losing interest? By making sure that every aspect of the program gives meaning to the user’s work. Scratch does this in two ways: diversity and personalization.

Scratch is unlike many of its competitors because it has wide-walls and supports the creation of a diverse range of project types such as stories, games, and simulations. Scratch allows its users to make different kinds of programs as it is much more meaningful to work on a project that reflects one’s own interests. These programs reflect who each young creator is, as exemplified by Scratch’s built-in personalization features.

Scratch makes it easy for people to customize their programs by incorporating different media and allowing users to do things like import photos and record their own voices. Scratch succeeds in having both a low-floor and high-ceiling because kids can not only “develop abstract programs to do mindless things with a cat or a box, etc… but they could add their own pictures and their own voices to the Scratch environment. (Resnick, Maloney and Monroy-Hernandez)” When Scratchers build programs that are personally meaningful to them, they are more eager to learn mathematical and computational concepts that pertain to their projects (Resnick, Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society). How better to introduce the eighth-grade algebra concept of variables than to show a boy that a programming variable will let him keep track of how many points he has scored in the basketball game he programmed?

Make It Social

Once a child creates a Scratch program, she can share it on the Scratch web site in the same way that one would share a video on YouTube. The Scratch programming environment is tightly coupled with this sharing web site, and the 700,000+ projects that have been shared there are a testament to the vibrant community currently developing in Scratch. This website functions both as a location for viewing or collaborating on one another’s work and as a repository of material to learn new techniques and programming concepts from. Once a project has been uploaded to the sharing site, it can be run from in the browser, commented on or voted for, or downloaded for reverse-engineering by another Scratcher. Scratches share the same benefits as an open-source program like Scratch, namely that its users can keep learning from their peer’s discoveries.

The depth offered by Scratch is quite extraordinary considering the fact that it is merely an educational tool for very young children. It teaches concepts like conditional statements (“if” sometime is true, “then” do an action), iteration (going through each element in a list), parallel execution (multiple processes running simultaneously), and user input (keyboards, mice, etc.) in a manner that a 10-year-old can fully comprehend. Its replacement of a syntax and grammar-based language by a graphical user interface is wholly appropriate for the context of its use. But this veil of simplification must eventually be removed to reveal a more advanced, but hopefully not more confusing, development environment.

Processing – the electronic sketchbook

Processing was born from the idea of making a language that both gives visual expression to sophisticated forms of computation and acts as a teaching tool for those unfamiliar with computer programming (Maeda). Under the direction of renowned graphic designer John Maeda, Processing has been developed by MIT graduate students Casey Reas and Ben Fry since 2001. Processing’s syntax is a stripped down version of Java, which allows for a declined learning curve while preserving the power and flexibility of Java. Whereas Scratch is aimed at young children, Processing looks to serve an older, more educated audience of people in high school and older.

The intelligent development environment used by Processing is called the “sketchbook,” and all of the programs a user writes are referred to as “sketches.” While Processing is fully capable of generating full-featured software, its intention is much simpler than that. Reas and Fry want their users to sketch different renditions of what the finished product might be, much in the way that architects work with cardboard before building a skyscraper or musicians sit down with a piano before composing a concerto. Because Processing was created by people with primarily creative backgrounds, it breaks from the cycle of programmers making tools for programmers and “engages people with visual and spatial minds. (Reas and Fry)”

A piece generated by a Processing script from C.E.B. Reas’ ‘Process/Form’ exhibition at bitforms gallery nyc.

Programmers Teaching Artists Teaching Programmers

The two main audiences that come to Processing are artists and programmers, each with an interest in the other’s field of expertise. For both groups, Processing serves as an excellent jumping-off point from which one can explore other programming languages or creative theory. The variety of classes and workshops being offered at universities such as UCLA, MIT, and Hongik University in Seoul give evidence to Processing’s flexibility, with some classes approaching the language from a programmers point of view and others from an artist’s perspective.

As computers become more pervasive in the creative arts, programming skills increase in demand. One reason why so many people come to Processing and succeed in learning the concepts of programming through the language is because it embraces and is centered around artistic theory. In fact, the equivalent of a “Hello World” program given on the Processing learning web site is one line of code that draws a line. From there it moves on to giving the line a background and color (Fry and Reas).

A one-week workshop at Hongik University in 2003 brought together design and computer science students, and the interaction between the two groups illustrates Processing’s strengths in crossing over the two fields. When students without previous programming experience produced work that was visually complex but technically elementary, the computer science majors helped them understand more advanced programming techniques. And the inverse occurred with the students without any comprehension of basic design principles (Reas and Fry).

Conclusion

The concept of software literacy is not new. Ted Nelson wrote in 1974 that “the more you know about computers… the better your imagination can flow between the technicalities, can slide the parts together, can discern the spaces of what you would have these things do. (Nelson)” This is exactly the idea that Scratch and Processing are striving to further. Pushing programming onto unwilling students is not how software literacy will be accomplished. Rather, tightly coupling people’s interests with the manner in which programming is introduced to them makes them much more receptive to the ideas being presented. Also, we must not forget the reason for teaching programming concepts. The fact that educators are using coding as a gateway to many other critical thinking concepts is important; it betters education and expands how our minds conceive of solving problems.

Works Cited

Fry, Ben and Casey Reas. Getting Started \ Processing 1.0. 2007. 2010 8-March <http://processing.org/learning/gettingstarted/>.

Kay, Alan. User Interface: A Personal View. Addison-Wesley, 1989.

Lohr, Steve. “Frances E. Holberton, 84, Early Computer Programmer.” The New York Times 2001 17-December: F5.

Maeda, John. “When A Good Idea Works.” Technology Review 2009 September/October: 108-109.

Maloney, John, et al. “Programming by Choice: Urban Youth Learning Programming with Scratch.” ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education. Portland: ACM, 2008.

Nelson, Theodor. “Computer Lib/Dram Machines.” The New Media Reader 2003: 306.

Papert, Seymour. Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas. Cambridge: Basic Books, Inc., 1980.

Raymond, Eric. The Early Hackers. 2000 25-August. 2010 7-March <http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/hacker-history/ar01s02.html>.

Reas, Casey and Ben Fry. “Processing: Programming for Designers and Artists.” Design Management Review 2009 Winter: 52.

Resnick, Mitchel. “Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society.” Learning and Leading with Technology 2007-2008 December/January: 18-22.

Resnick, Mitchel, et al. “Scratch: Programming for All.” Communications of the ACM (2009).

the battle of Apple with HTML5 and the iPad vs Google with Flash and Chrome

OK, I completely understand the insane generalization I just made with the title of this post, but when it comes to online video adoption, I think it holds true. Apple has made it very clear from the launch of the iPhone that it really isn’t interested in working with Flash anymore. And as of the past couple weeks, Google has made it very obvious that it really isn’t interested in always doing what Apple wants.

Everyone knows that the iPhone doesn’t support Flash, and most people know that iPad arriving on Saturday won’t support it either. For a while, it looked like Adobe and Apple were making headway in cleaning up Flash so that it could run on Apple’s mobile devices without eating through battery life on the already life-strained devices. All that changed with the iPad. It’s become apparent that Apple has no interest in Flash and would much rather everyone move on to HTML5′s video tag.

As usual, when Apple says, “Jump,” there’s plenty of parties lining up asking, “How high?” In the past week, we’ve seen plenty companies announce that they’ve readied their “iPad compatable” sites that are devoid of Flash and HTML5 rich. The biggest of these announcement comes from Brightcove which lists customers like the New York Times, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.

In opposition to this, and further feeding rumors of bad blood between the two, Google has fully integrated Flash into its Chrome browser and operating system. While the vast majority of users have already installed the Flash Player plug-in, it’s interesting that Flash is comes prewrapped in Chrome because 1) it flies directly in the face of Google’s public support of the HTML5 standard and 2) it shows Google’s dedication to Adobe’s Open Screen Project. Essentially, Google’s sending mixed signals to the tech world. Are we supposed to completely support the new open web standards including HTML5, or can exceptions be made when a company (like Adobe) throws their proprietary technology in the mix saying it’s needed to build a ubiquitous platform for developers?

My vote? I say go with HTML5. I think HTML5 has great potential, and new projects like SublimeVideo and RGraph are perfect examples of this. Flash has had its 15 minutes, and it’s due time for us to dump it in favor of open standards.

lala.com's logo

One of the things I love most is when technology and music are combined to make something incredible. The iPhone, Last.fm, MIDI controllers, and Daft Punk’s pyramid are all perfect examples of this. Lala.com has been added to that list.

Lala.com in a nutshell

Here’s the process that Lala presents for consuming music. First, you can listen to any song in it’s massive online database for free. The catch? You can once listen to each song once. Now you can either download a DRM-free MP3 for about a buck, or you can purchase the web-version of a song for 10 cents. This web version of the song is now free of the one-play restriction and is added to your library.

Now to the second aspect of Lala. Using a small standalone app, Lala will scan your music folder and unlock the web versions of every song you have. If Lala doesn’t find a match in its database, it will upload your song to the cloud. Every song you have on your computer is now available for you to stream for free unlimited times.

Your music in the cloud

If you aren’t familiar with “the cloud”, just think of websites like Gmail or Google Docs where all of your information is stored on some remote servers (the cloud) instead of your local machine. With Lala, its of your music that is in the cloud.

This currently means that you can access all of your music for free on any computer with an internet connection. While this is the main feature Lala boasts right now, the potential of this reaches much further. Lala could integrate the subscription model of services like Real Network’s Rhapsody and Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace and quickly overtake them. Lala’s current monetisation scheme seems to be working pretty well for them ($.10 or $1), but there are so many other directions they can take in the future.

iPhone app

Engadget just posted an article showing a very early build of the iPhone app Lala has in the works. Right now, mobile devices like the iPhone are limited by their data storage capacities. Because of mobile phones’ small sizes, storage is limited to around 16GBs right now.  If Lala can get past the legal hurdles that the record companies present and get the web versions of songs to play on mobile apps, this storage restriction will be lifted.

I’m hooked

Lala has the potential to do everything that I want a media player to do. iTunes works well right now, but the reason I love it is because it syncs so well with my iPhone, not because of its ability to play music (and I’ve never bought music from the iTunes Store).

I believe agility will be one of Lala’s key strengths. If the company can continue to innovate the online music marketplace as it has, I see no reason why media desktop apps won’t be a thing of the past.

update: I’ve fallen in love with Lala’s “Mix it up” feature. It’s basically a playlist generator (ie. iTunes Genius), and it works great!

what the eventbox "unread" window looks like (click for a larger view)

Seems like this new little app called Eventbox is getting all kinds of hype right now, so I figured I’d check it out to see if it’s worth the $15 that its developer, The Cosmic Machine, is asking.

Functionality

While the functionality of an application is probably its most important aspect, in Eventbox’s case, it’s where it falls short. Eventbox tries to position itself as a place that brings together all of your friends’ online social postings for your to view in one spot. It’s essentially an RSS feed aggregator for social activity. As of v1.0, Eventbox supports gathering data from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Reddit, and RSS feeds.

While I’m all for what aggregators do (Google Reader is probably my most visited bookmark), there are far superior alternatives to Eventbox. Maybe if it supported more sites, although I can’t think of too many more that interest me, Eventbox would seem more necessary. Feed aggregators are necessary because people read hundreds of site’s postings, but as far as activity postings go, I only really need Facebook and Twitter. Two sites don’t warrant a dedicated app that can’t replicate each site’s full functionality (Facebook is about a bit more than status postings).  FriendFeed, Netvibes.com’s widgets, or any number of other online apps do Eventbox’s job with much more finesse.

Design

Now that you know how ridiculous I think this app is, here’s how incredible its design is. In all honesty, Eventbox is a shining example of why people get hooked on Macs when they switch from PCs. The icons, the layout, the styling of its various animations, and the flow of moving through the app all contribute to something that looks and works perfectly.

I really wish that Eventbox had more of a purpose because it’s such a joy to work with.

Overall

I hope it’s pretty clear how I feel about Eventbox. It’s a beautifully designed application that I have no use for. There is praise coming from all around, but I can’t sing the same tune. I love Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and the rest of the social networking sites, but I already have a browser, and my homepage (Netvibes.com) already puts those sites together.

• Their site design is horrible. Apart from the Google.com search hub, the minimal approach is unnecessary. Some might argue that this style is the best kind of UI. I argue that it isn’t intuitive, and that the lack of any design doesn’t do any good.
• Adsense seems to be getting worse at judging what content to base the ads off of. Contextual ads aren’t revolutionary anymore.
• Innovation on projects like Google Docs has seemed to slow down. I loved Writely, but since Google acquired it, the plain UI has left is barren.

As you can probably tell, these problems aren’t issues that Google has actively done. They are all things that have occurred because of the expansion of this online ad company to encompass everything that an online service provider could offer. My problems with Google have been passively incured, until now.

Since Microsoft’s announcement of a hostile $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo Inc., Google has gone on the offensive and issued a public statement criticizing the offer. The post from Google’s official blog titled “Yahoo! and the future of the Internet” is a blatant attempt to bring negative attention to the situation.

In the post, Google states that while the internet has been about the principles of “openness and innovation,” Microsoft might try to “exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC.”

“In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions — and consumers deserve satisfying answers.”

Why is this a ridiculous statement? Because the listed web services (email, IM, and web portals) aren’t where the money is being made. Google is an ad company, so why would an ad company be so concerned with another company that – according to Google – will dominate these web service markets? Because Microsoft and Yahoo have made their attempts at ad-selling departments as well.

What Google fails to point out in this statement is that they are the dominant leader with more than 65% of the ad-sales market. Monopolistic practices by Microsoft? If anything, the monopolistic practices for revenue-generating departments have been on Google’s side.

• Official Google Blog statement
• Microsoft.com response

I don’t mean to come off as a Microsoft fanboy (I own a Mac for my everyday use, but I love my Zune) or as a Google hater (I use Gmail both for personal and USC email accounts). All I’m trying to say is that for too long, Microsoft has been an easy target to yell monopoly around. Just because a company is successful and has a corporate face (as opposed to Google or Apple’s fun-eco-friendly faces) doesn’t mean that its sometimes aggressive, market-upsetting actions are illegal.

As has been tradition for the past few years, the kickoff of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is begun with Bill Gates giving the opening keynote. Tonight marks the last CES keynote Bill will give, and his intro to the address was very fitting. Here is a link to the video that was shown addressing what Bill’s last day at Microsoft might be like:

Bill Gates’ Last Day At Microsoft

Can anyone say cameo? And talk about getting your money’s worth. I didn’t count, but there are probably around 10-15 semi/full-blown famous people in that 6 minutes clip. Regardless of the fact that Bill can obviously get anyone in the world to do anything for him, this video was a nice piece of comedy that shined above what usually amounts to loads of geekery at events like CES. It’s sad to see such an outstanding innovator leave the industry, but there is little doubt in my mind that the work that he will do with his and Melinda’s foundation will rival what he did at Microsoft in terms of positive impact on the world as a whole.

As for the rest of the keynote, he and his Microsoft helpers did announce some interesting technologies, most importantly the broadcasting of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics online with their Silverlight technology, but nothing really held up to the intro video. Even the Guitar Hero with Slash finale, it all seemed kind of lackluster when compared to the fact that an era of technology leadership is ending and that another is about to begin.

Addressing the CES conference, I probably won’t be covering any of it unless some product really jumps out at me. As for the Macworld conference, I’ll probably be all over that (even though I can’t go this year).

Sooo, I normally wouldn’t spend $170 on a wireless router, but I have a number of reasons as to why I decided to purchase this piece of overpriced Apple hardware:

1. I had $120 credit to a store, and I didn’t know what else to buy.
2. I needed a wireless router, and the Linksys router I was interested in was sold out.
3. I own a MacBook Pro, and I think that the whole Apple-addiction is getting to me.

I understand that none of these can atone for my careless money-spending, but I must say that this wireless-n router is pretty damn nice.

Let’s get the obvious points out of the way. It is beautiful simply because it was “Designed by Apple in California”. It’s white, geometric, and minimal in its design. And it isn’t really competitively priced, but what Apple hardware really is (I understand that it’s getting better)?

In my room, there are wires going everywhere, which is part of the reason why I wanted a wireless router. This cleaned up two stray ethernet cords climbing up the side of my desk (one for me and one for my roommate).

Onto the setup. It was really easy, all I had to do was install the drivers/software that came bundled with the router; no different from any other router I’ve used. It recognized my incoming internet instantly, and my MacBook Pro recognized the router equally fast. It was setting up my hard drive where I found problems.

Try as I might, I couldn’t get my computer to pair with the hard drive. Even though the router recognized it, OS X wouldn’t for some reason. It turned out that my hard drive happens to be one of about 10 that no longer works due to some software and firmware restrictions. I hope that gets corrected soon, but I don’t think it will seeing as this router has been out for quite a few months.

All in all, this router works as it should. I have set it up as a wireless print server instead of a hard drive server, and it does what it is supposed to. Is it worth $170? No, but I had store credit and I think it looks nice…

Google, in a suprizing and dissappointing PR move, has decided to come out against Michael Moore and offer to place HMO ads directly across from search results that include SiCKO. Why? Because Google believes that:

Moore attacks health insurers, health providers, and pharmaceutical companies by connecting them to isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst.

Like many people, I have already seen Michael Moore’s SiCKO, the film about the sad state of the health care system in the United States. I saw the movie before it came out in theaters because Moore let it known that he wants people to torrent it, and that he didn’t mind at all that it was ripped to YouTube (although later taken off). But that’s beside the point.

I am fairly confused at Google’s reaction to the movie. Is this Google’s first overt move to reject it’s public user-base, turning instead to the big business ad customers? Of course, Google has more money to make by doing what it has done, but is it really worth it? SiCKO has received near universal praise for its criticisms, and I agree with the New York Times when they say that it is a “cinematic indictment of the American health care system.”

Apart from the purely capitalistic point of view (which is that Google is doing the right thing), today’s market relies on more than just your big money customer base. Companies must look out for the public, and I find this especially true for Google. While we, the average searchers, aren’t the ones directly paying Google, we are the ones looking at the ads. We don’t hold the large wallets, but in our massive numbers, we hold far more power than the businesses Google is trying to cater to.

This move by Google confuses me. I really hope that this does not become a trend in Google’s business tactics; it could lead to the gradual diminishment of one of the largest internet companies we know.

Update: Google has retracted the statements of their employee.

Note: All of the ? should be black boxes, I can’t get my databases to register the symbol, just check out the digg story.

Although Digg is currenly in the midst of a small scale user revolt over the release of their new comment system, its users are still able to submit great stories with even greater titles. Take this for example: ??? to declassify cl?????ied do?????ts. No, your browser isn’t malfunctioning; that’s how it’s supposed to look. The description for the post goes as such, “THE CIA says it it has decided to declassify most of a voluminous 1973 file known as “the family jewels”, which details some of the agency’s most notorious operations.” Fairly clever, huh? The comments for this submission are equally as good!

Please refrain from discussing or engaging in any sort of interoffice ????? or ????? or finger??? or ????sting or ????? or even ???? Even though so many people in this office are begging for it. And if anybody does anything with my sister Lindsay, I’ll take off my pants, I’ll shave ????. And I’ll personally ???… -jimsterbell

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-?? -praveenmarkandu

My thoughts on the new threaded comment system is that it ????’? so ????ing much that if I ever see Kevin Rose on the street I will ???? his ????? little ????. I HOPE YOU ??? KEVIN! -MikeonTV

Yeah, Digg users might be funny, but not a single one has any class.

Don’t get me wrong, I was BluRay to win this standards war. I believe that Sony’s PS3, while the most expensive, is the best “next-gen” console. I believe that it is years ahead of the Wii and of the Xbox360. But that argument needs to be saved for another day. Apart from the console wars being waged right now, BluRay is just the better format.

Has everyone forgot about Netflix? The one company that has risen above just being a “geek’s only” secret you shared with only your best friends. It’s public and normal people use it without a problem. Just for a second, think about what would happen if Netflix adopted HD-DVD. Obviously, Blockbuster is the larger of the two companies, but it is also falling much faster than Netflix is rising. If there was a coalition of sorts made of up every movie rental company/organization against Blockbuster’s adoption of the format, it could mean the end of both BluRay and Blockbuster. Of course, this won’t happen, but the Netflix situation certainly could.

Just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but just think for a second about the contradiction of your past words and current assumptions. As usual, only time will tell…

Of course anything that happens regarding Steve Jobs will make the tech blogs, but yesterday was a big day in the life of a newly converted Mac user. It was the start of WWDC, and as usual, Jobs gave his keynote as an opening act. Also as usual, there were massive rumors circulating both forums and blogs alike, some rumors came true, other fell back into the “save for next Apple event” pile. Here are some of the things announced today and my take left along side of them:

Mac OS X Leopard

• Desktop: We have a new dock and semi-transparent top bar. The new dock is definitely nice with the Stacks feature, but listing a semi-transparent bar as a feature? What’s up with that? If Jobs would have skipped the bar and focused solely on the dock, I would be much more pleased. Either way, the new dock is a definite improvement. It’s a step in the left direction.
• Finder: This is where I am most excited for Leopard. The finder has a whole new way of browsing through the files and folders located all around your hard drive. New icons that mimic the file/folder contents, new Cover Flow view, and and improved searching with Spotlight all excite me. I believe that Core Animation will be integrated somehow into the new Finder features which would make this new explorer even prettier.
• Time Machine: Nothing really new, but Time Machine looks nice. Admittedly, it is just a backup program with a pretty GUI, but what’s wrong with that? Having it integrated into my OS is very welcome.
• Spaces: Again, nothing new, but this is probably my second favorite feature coming to Leopard. This makes it OK for those of us who can’t fit four screens on our desks. It looks like it will have very intuitive integration into everyday use, and with the rapid increases in RAM size and decrease in prices, more programs are going to be open more of the time. One screen can’t really handle that without something like Spaces.
• iChat: A few new things make this simple text/audio/video chatting program even more appealing. You can now show your the people who you are chatting with your presentations, slideshows, or other things not pertaining to your face. Nice new features, nothing shocking though.
• Boot Camp: We all knew that Boot Camp would be integrated into Leopard, and although we were hoping that Apple would make it into a Parallels/VMware killer of sorts, Jobs presented it as a complementary product to these two others. The new Boot Camp will allow quick switching between your different virtual machines. Small update.
• Front Row: It will look like Apple TV, that’s nice… I guess. I don’t really use Front Row right now, maybe I will next year at college. This new interface doesn’t affect me too much.

iPhone

• 3rd Party Apps: No SDK, only web apps. Apple needs to learn that, although first-party limitations have worked thus far, competitors are coming in on all sides. Seeing as Apple is entering into a brand new market that already seems saturated with carriers and phone makers, being locked into the Cingular/AT&T contract sucks big time. Only web apps really hinders the capabilities for others to develop kick-ass applications.
• Size Issues: The picture of the iPhone has changed on the Apple website (which has also received a redesign). What is odd is that it now seems MUCH smaller than before. It turns out that after the old and new images are compared and the new one is vertially stretched, they match exactly. This is some shady imaging on Apple’s part. It looks like Andre the Giant’s hand holding the iPhone where as before it was Mini-Me’s.

Other/Misc.

• Safari 3 for Windows: I get the point of releasing an Apple browser for Windows. It can be used as yet another point of entry for Apple. It’s too bad that their product sucks. Mac users don’t even use Safari, why would Windows users. If Windows users are to use any browser other than IE (which sucks equally to Safari), they will either use Firefox or Opera. Apple still has a ways to go with this browser. They might want to focus on getting a home-court advantage before going to the visitor’s side.

  Update: Wired has done benchmarks on Safari 3, Firefox 2, and IE 7. Guess what? Apple lied. Safari is slower than both…

• Games: Another “why?” to me. Now that Parallels is making strides in virtualization with Windows and the integration of gaming on Macs using the Windows OS, why keep producing games for Macs? I don’t think it makes sense on a developer’s side. It makes perfect sense for Apple, but not for EA.

These new ads are very basic in nature. What do they show? How to work the device. Through clever workflow ideas (Calamari) they display the ways that the iPhone can easily switch from and to each different function in-between sessions. The narrator is soothing, the music appropriate, and the visual part is as simple as it can get: a hand holding an iPhone. Then again, it does have one level of complexity at times; its that damn second hand.

That second hand is going to be a big problem for Apple. The fact that the iPod is completely functional is one hand is amazing (but this attribute is repeatable). June 29th is the launch date according to these commercials.

Update: TUAW did an article about these new ads saying that the Mac ads should be more like this. I can’t agree enough. I feel that the Mac ads are rude and elitist. They are what make me NOT want to be like the Mac guy.

After realizing that there is no way that I could ever afford to buy all of the music that I wanted from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, I stepped into the world of subscription music services. After trying out just about every product on the market, I have come to the conclusion that Rhapsody is the best by far. Now imagine my dismay after learning that Rhapsody is a Windows only app! I was so disappointed that my favorite music discovery application was gone forever. Luckily for me, a few Google searches after getting over my sadness, I discovered Yottamusic.

Yottamusic seems (at first) to be just another subscription services sans a desktop application. It was the little note that says that Rhapsody users need not register that excited me. Yotta turned out to be an amazing service that uses the Rhapsody music library as a back-end and some great AJAX in the front-end to create a very sleek user experience. The best way to describe it would be to say that it is the Web 2.0 makeover of a service trying so hard to get out of the 1.0 stage.

Yottamusic works with many different browsers, and if you happen to be using one that they don’t officially support, they let you know immediately (but that doesn’t mean that your browser will be shut out). I understand that Rhapsody’s web service works with Firefox on OS X, but it’s interface and design is very sluggish and unintuitive. Yotta is its younger, edgier sibling that has all of the unnecessary bells and whistles left in the dust. If you do nothing else, check out the Intro Comic that they have to describe their product.

Update: Yottamusic has been shut down by Rhapsody. Replacement? Mog.