The many rumors of Apple’s final Macworld » VentureBeat

The many rumors of Apple’s final Macworld » VentureBeat:

The Macworld Expo, formerly the most anticipated Apple event of the year (before Apple kicked out its legs by pulling Steve Jobs and announcing it was pulling out entirely next year), starts on Monday. Not surprisingly, rumors of what we can expect from Apple at the event are all over the map. Apple’s senior vice president of product marketing, Phil Schiller, will be giving the keynote address in place of Jobs and he certainly will have some things to announce, but what?

I find the low expectations for this keynote fascinating. It’s almost as if Apple is planning that. Maybe they are. Why?

Well, one reason might be because there’s nothing much special to talk about. Always a distinct possibility.

But — what better way to kick off the Steve Jobs transition and turn it into a non-issue than to have Steve pull out from the keynote, announce it’s leaving the macworld trade show after this year, and then use this final keynote to introduce something really different, revolutionary and blows our minds. Now THAT would be the way to start shutting up the “apple iz doomed without Steve” crowd.

I have no reason to think that other than this lack of hype going into this keynote seems very orchestrated, and that, to me, indicates Apple might be up to something.

We’ll know next week, right?

The rumors:

One of the better and more balanced look at the rumors circulating recently. Well worth a read.

Me? I’m staying out of the rumor mill. But I will point back to something I said back in early November. I still think it makes sense to see the Mini and the Apple TV merge and turn into the first generation of whatever Apple plans on having live in your living room with you for the next decade…

NHL hits home run with new Classic – Sportsnet.ca

NHL hits home run with new Classic – Sportsnet.ca:

Walk into Wrigley Field, and it isn’t the rink in shallow centre field that grabs your eye. It is everything else.

It is the hockey banners hanging in the concessions areas under the stands, Chicago Blackhawks players pictured where Chicago Cubs are supposed to be. It is the faux brick on the outside of the rink boards (a nice touch), or the way they plastered the outfield wall with equal parts billboard ads and pictured ivy.

They’ve got snow-making machines in the outfield, for a winter look that’s guaranteed no matter what the weather.

God, it’s so nice to see coverage that isn’t from the “let’s figure out all of the things that can go wrong, and then assume they happen and then blame the NHL” crowd.

me, I can’t wait. Will it be perfect? Of course not. Will it be memorable? Definitely. Will I be glued to my sofa? yes. Will it be worth it? Oh, yeah, baby.

Why I’m Not Worried About Steve Jobs’ Health » Webomatica – Technology and Entertainment Digest

Why I’m Not Worried About Steve Jobs’ Health » Webomatica – Technology and Entertainment Digest:

Because Apple has managed other, daunting transitions expertly, I fully expect them to manage a “post-Jobs” transition with equal skill. Have a little faith, people. This is Steve Jobs we’re talking about, the stereotypical control-freak. There’s no way in heck he’d leave something like this up to chance.

horrors. common sense. We must stone this person before he takes all of the fun out of the rumor mongering.

Jobs health rumor hits Apple stock | Macworld

Jobs health rumor hits Apple stock | Macworld:

Apple’s stock fell abruptly on Tuesday, but later recovered some ground, after an online report said CEO Steve Jobs bowed out of next week’s Macworld Expo keynote address because of declining health.

In a report it labeled “rumor,” the gadget blog Gizmodo quoted an unnamed source as saying Apple “is choosing to remove the hype factor strategically” by holding the keynote without Jobs, whose “health is rapidly declining.”

Now, it’s not going to happen, but wouldn’t it be fun to watch the circus if the SEC were to contact a site like Gizmodo with a letter of inquiry about the sources for this rumor to investigate whether they were doing this to manipulate the stock price?

Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior | chrisbrogan.com

Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior | chrisbrogan.com:

I’m sick of robots. Truly. Your automated direct message back thanking me for following you does three things exceptionally well:

1. Irks me because it’s a robot.
2. Annoys me because you ask me to click your junk.
3. Tempts me to go back and unfollow you on principle.

tweetdeck You don’t need to use robots to thank me and click on your stupid website. If you’re too busy to be an actual human on a social network, don’t join another social network. It’s okay. We understand.

I’ve run into a couple of these recently, and it took me a bit to realize what it was. Given how bad a reputation this kind of auto-responder has in the e-mail marketing world, I’m amazed people are adopting them into Twitter.

Please stop.

I’ll go a step further than Chris. If I get auto-DMed, I will immediately unfollow you. Period. I will also follow you if it turns out your twitter feed is nothing more than self-marketing, nothing more than an alternative to the RSS feed, or contains nothing interesting to read. But if you start our “relationship” on twitter with a sales pitch, I’ll treat you like any other telemarketer and not bother giving you the time to prove to me you’re worth my attention.

Don’t be lazy. That’s what these auto-DMs are. You’re better off with absolute silence than this stuff. Really.

Lightweight event syndication with trusted feeds « Jon Udell

Lightweight event syndication with trusted feeds « Jon Udell:

the item carries enough information to participate in a (still mostly nascent) network of calendar events. Beau Bristow doesn’t know that his concert shows up at elmcity.info, or that on March 7 it’ll show up at citizenkeene.ning.org and cheshiretv.org. And he shouldn’t need to know. But he ought to be able to take it for granted that events he posts to some kind of syndication source — could be Eventful, could be another public service, could be a personal iCalendar feed — will propagate.

I am particularly fascinated by the lightweight, ad-hoc interaction between Eventful, Beau Bristow, and elmcity.info. This lightness is a powerful enabler.

I like to pay attention to the things Jon Udell does. This one really caught my eye. I’ve been interested in and exploring local and hyperlocal setups for a while, and this setup, with calendar event streaming into a distributed hyperlocal environment.

Wow; fun stuff. Stop and think for a second of a central server everyone can feed events to; they’re tagged and geotagged. From there, any site can subscribe to events via tagging and/or geotagging to create a custom feed of events that meet specific criteria. As he notes, some kind of moderation is needed, so you more or less filter that feed into a whitelist, a blacklist and a greylist, with some kind of notification that the greylist needs moderation as needed.

Suddenly, someone doesn’t need to know about a given site to submit an event to it; they merely need to feed the event into the system, and if it fits your criteria for your site, it shows up.

Even better, if you tie this into a search engine spider and maybe use microformats, you don’t even need to submit; simply placing the info in the right format on your site is enough to generate the event…

Some real potential here, no?

What do the Sharks loss to the Wings and the victory against the Canucks have in common?

Pop Quiz: what do the sharks loss to the wings, and last night’s victory against the Canucks have in common?

The losing team in both cases had back to back games with travel involved.

Does the fact that the Canucks came out with dead legs and were blown out of the building in the first five minutes mean anything in the long run?

Not really. And really, the same can be said about the Wings game. the media turned it into a big “benchmark” game, because, well, they have to have things to talk about, but in reality, the series between detroit and san jose is 1-1, both losing teams having played back to back with travel the night before. Doesn’t really prove much yet, other than there’s a good chance they’ll meet each other deep in the playoffs, and advantage to the team with home ice advantage (maybe).

Ditto the Canucks last night. The game started with the Sharks grabbing the puck and basically putting on about a four minute cycle exposition where the Canucks were lucky to get the puck out of the zone, much less get it to center ice and change (they really didn’t get it into the Sharks zone, much less control the puck). It ended as it seemed inevitable with a Sharks goal at 4:22.

It was clear from the start the Canucks simply didn’t have skating legs. they looked tired. They tried — and couldn’t. Schneider could have been better, but he got no help.

After the Sharks went up 3-0, they went into lock down mode and backed off, playing that grey area between embarassing a team by scoring a zillion goals and embarassing a team by not pretending to play. Sometimes, the Sharks get in trouble doing this and let teams back in the game, and Vancouver kinda sorta tried, but San Jose was too dominating. The shot count was really misleading — San Jose went into “find the perfect shot” mode early and worried more about killing clock than running the score.

A perfect case in point was one time when the sharks were on penalty kill and the puck turned over. Patrick Marleau pursued, and he clearly shut it down in center ice and timed his arrival to get to the puck right after the Canuck did. With Marleau’s speed, he would have easily gotten to the puck first and created at least havoc and probably a shorthanded chance with a clean show at Sanford — and chose not to, but did it in a way that wouldn’t “show up” the team or be easily noticed unless you’re in arena and watching closely. Rather class act, IMHO.

What you need to know about how unbalanced the game was: Jody Shelley getting power play time, because McLellan started rolling four lines.

How do you coach a game like this? I have this vision of McLellan behind the bench saying “boys, if you cost Nabby this shutout, we’re bag skating tomorrow”. Which sounds silly, but if you’re trying to teach a team not to let up when they’re dominating, that’s the kind of mentality you need. And last night, they did.

Last night’s game was about 10 minutes of Sharks domination, followed by 50 minutes of Vancouver “when does the plane take off?”

Not something you can use to make broad pronouncements about the Canucks or their season. And that says something about the Wings game, also, I think.

Reboot needed

LookIt: Reboot needed:

I used to make fun of Microsoft for their updates to non-essential software that, after installation, required a reboot. Apple has now trumped them. The recent update to Digital Camera Raw Compatibility “extends RAW file compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto ’08 for the following cameras” and “also addresses issues related to specific cameras and overall stability”. And it requires a reboot.

Note to Apple: this suggests that someone has messed up badly on determining which components of the operating system are critical to its operation

Not really. More that the release notes were worded badly.

Those updates actually update frameworks within the core of Apple OS, and they aren’t JUST for Aperture or iPhoto, but any application that uses the frameworks. You’ll see it in use in the preview function of the “open file” dialogs, for instance, so these updates actually live pretty deep in the OS.

It might be nice if you could update things that deep in the OS and not worry about it until a later reboot activates them, but that gets complicated.

So the problem here isn’t that Apple requires a reboot, it’s that it did a lousy job of explaining what it was doing and why. But then, we’ve been complaining about how they document updates for a while, and it’s only marginally improved from “fixes stuff”.

What does the Sharks blowout by the Wings really mean?

To me, the answer is simple:

“We’re not done yet”.

For all the Sharks have been rolling this season, Detroit is still the Cup Champions, and the Sharks are “simply” a team with a great start. They haven’t taken the mantle away from Detroit, and Detroit was clearly not going to hand it over that easily.

you can throw a lot of things in the mix: 2nd game in back to backs on the road, injured players (effectively skating a full line that a month ago was in Worcester), etc, etc. Bottom line: Sharks didn’t play well early, Nabokov gave up a couple of soft goals early, and the team let tired legs take control of the game after that. Oh, and the Wings wanted to make a statement, and did.

All of which says the Sharks have more work to do if they want to get what they’re shooting for this season.

The good news is — losses like this are good, because they keep a team from getting lazy or starting to think it’s going to be easy. It gives them something to get motivated around to improve their game further, and this is the kind of team that will. I’m actually pretty happy that Detroit spanked the team — a close loss or a couple of bad bounces could be explained away, that loss requires some deep thinking and commitment to improve.

Detroit was clearly a much better team. Fortunately, it’s December, when a loss like this is a learning experience and not the end of a season. And once you get past that, you just move on. Both teams have won, at home, on the 2nd game of back to backs for the losing team. There’s a lot of hockey left to play before we really know which team is going to go further in the playoffs.

One of the teams the Sharks have played recently that really impressed me was Columbus. In the first game, which the Sharks stole, I was finding myself wondering how a team playing that well was 14th in the conference (as of tonight, they’re 11th; that’s part of the answer; they’re now playing well and moving up). but when you look at the standings, four wins separates the 15th team (St. Louis) from the 8th playoff spot. Unlike the easy, where you can presume that six or seven of the teams have already settled into the playoffs and you have four teams playing for that eighth spot, in the West, there are maybe four teams that are “safe” for the playoffs, and you have eleven teams playing for the other four spots. The hockey is that good, and the race is still that close — two or three wins or losses can shuffle the standings around in a major way.

Steve Mason has impressed the hell out of me, and as of now, is on my short list for rookie of the year. But the Bluejackets are really playing good, confident hockey right now, and they’re going to make some teams crazy along the way. Right now, they look to be one of the teams making the final eight, and more power to them.

The ever-evolving Macworld Expo

The ever-evolving Macworld Expo | Editors’ Notes | Macworld:

Apple certainly has a point when it says that it has more ways of reaching out to consumers than ever before, and if you’ve paid attention to Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses over the years, Apple’s decision probably didn’t come as a huge shock. He’s mentioned repeatedly how many multiples of Macworld Expo attendees the Apple retail stores welcome.

But it’s a world of difference to give mall shoppers a cursory, superficial introduction to the Macintosh platform, the iPhone and the iPod, and showing them a handful of accessories and software applications, compared to the Macworld Expo experience. To that end, Macworld Expo won’t be easily replaced or duplicated by a trip to the Apple Store, no matter what Apple says.

You know, I was just thinking… (always dangerous)

The one thing I haven’t heard is how the Mac community, publications, bloggers and enthusiasts can replace the lost exposure third parties are going to have following Apple’s ending of their work with Macworld. With a cooperative effort, modern internet technologies, some careful thought and some sweat equity, doesn’t it seem we can create something that’ll help replace this? And maybe make it better by making it permanent, not a one week death march that soon turns into a blur?

Seems to me there’s a cat to bell here.

I went birding! No, really!

The sun came out, the temperatures moderated, and I just needed to get out of the office for a bit, so I ran down to Redwood Shores for lunch and a birding run. I hit three spots, the front lagoon where a long-tailed duck has been reported hanging out with the scaups, and then on to the Davit lane lagoon, and the radio road ponds.

It took me about 30 minutes, but I found the long-tailed duck, which at first glance, looks somewhat like a young scaup, somewhat like a young scoter, somewhat like a — oh, hell, I don’t know what I find more challenging, young and female ducks, sandpipers, sparrows, or juvenile gulls. Choose one, they all drive
you crazy. (probably sandpipers….)

Of course, once I saw it, it was painfully obvious what it was, A younger bird without the long tail feathers, but with more white on the sides of the head and a different bill than the other birds. Of course, after 30 minutes of scoping the lagoon, I noticed it about 15′ out on the water, preening. Other birds in the area: pied-billed grebes and one western grebe, scaups, buffleheads, common goldeneye, and a few of the other random usual suspects like cormorants, gulls, etc. Nothing too unusual for the time of year.

Davit road was about normal; the redhead that’s been there for years was out with the mallards, hanging. One Barlowe’s Goldeneye in with the Commons, a brown pelican hanging out with the cormorants on the cormorant dock, and the pied-billed grebes were pairing off and vocalizing to each other.

Then on to radio road. Hit it during a rising tide, so lots of shorebirds coming in and hanging out. In the flooded areas behind the dog park, lots of stilts, marbled godwits, willets, and a nice flock of whimbrels. Out on the southern pond, I checked out the long island and saw nothing unusual. Scoping the water and the other islands I found a pair of black turnstones hanging out in a group of willets; not unheard of at this location, but not common. Then a smaller sandpiper scooted through, wandering in and around the sleeping willets and looking really skittish. At first thought I was thinking lesser yellowlegs, but it was smaller than that, more like the size of a spotted sandpiper. There are spotted sandpipers in the area, if not at that location.

Then I noticed the greenish legs. It gave me good, long, clear looks in the scope, and I did a comparison check with the guide. After I was sure I’d seen what I thought I saw, I headed back to work and pulled up flickr to do some more research. After doing that, I was convinced I was right, and I’d happened to run into a solitary sandpiper. Also not unprecedented there, but rather notable. I sent along the report to ebird and pen-birds; with a bit of luck, it’ll stick around and be confirmed. Even if not, for once I’m comfortable with the ID of a bird this unusual.

*****
Update: Ron Thorn thinks this was a red knot. He’s probably right, I need to do some research to make sure I understand how I got the call wrong. Back later.
*****

The long-tailed duck and solitary sandpipers are lifers for me, and (a bit to my surprise) black turnstone is a year bird. That’s a nice, pleasant surprise for a couple of reasons. The two lifers take my life list to 218, and my year list to 197.

When I started 2008, I set myself a couple of goals. First, to hit 200 species on the life list, which I actually hit early in the year, and adjusted it to 225 to keep it a challenge, and to try for 200 species for the year. With everything that’s gone on this year, birding turned into an escape more than an initiative and I really didn’t push on the goals, and missed large parts of both spring and fall migration completely. Last weekend, watching the rain come down, I’d come to terms with not hitting the 225/200 goals this year. Now, suddenly at 197 for the year, there’s a chance I might be able to hit that number again. Just maybe.

The other goal I’ve had for a while was to actually discover (and have confirmed) a notable species. It’s one thing (and I’m not being negative here) having someone find the long-tailed duck and chase it down and say “yup, that’s a long-tailed duck!” — that can, in fact, be a significant challenge (just try it with, say, Northern Waterthrush, like the one in Mountain view that sometimes cooperates and sometimes doesn’t). But to be able to find a rare species, to really add to the knowledge of the local birder community — that’s something I’ve wanted to do (plus, it’s a nice indication of how my ability to ID birds is progressing. In the last year, I’ve progressed to “only kinda suck at it”).

The solitary sandpiper qualifies as that bird, at least it will if someone else confirms the ID. I’ve come close a couple of times before, last spring when we had what we believe was an Orchard Oriole up here in the San Mateo hills during spring migration, but we never refound the bird for confirmation.

So maybe I’ll hit these goals this year, magically. Be nice. If not, there’s always next year…

Hmm. where can I find three more species for the year list? there’s that damn waterthrush, maybe, and…

—

Location: Redwood Shores
Observation date: 12/17/08
Number of species: 36

Canada Goose 6
Gadwall X
Eurasian Wigeon 1
American Wigeon X
Mallard X
Cinnamon Teal 12
Northern Shoveler X
Northern Pintail X
Green-winged Teal 6
Canvasback X
Redhead 1
Lesser Scaup X
Long-tailed Duck 1 re-found near sofitel hotel among the scaups, continuing bird.
Common Goldeneye X
Barrow’s Goldeneye 1 found on davit road lagoon
Ruddy Duck X
Pied-billed Grebe X
Western Grebe 1
Brown Pelican 1
Double-crested Cormorant X
Great Egret 2
Snowy Egret 12
Turkey Vulture X
Red-tailed Hawk X
American Coot X
Black-necked Stilt X
American Avocet X
Solitary Sandpiper 1 Found on the radio road ponds about 12:30 among a flock of willets sleeping on the first round island in the southern pond; greenish legs, smaller than a lesser yellowlegs, greyish coloration. Same rough size as a spotted sandpiper, very skittish and active, darting in and around the sleeping birds. very similar to this bird:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lenblumin/2094073420/

Willet X
Lesser Yellowlegs 2
Whimbrel 10
Black Turnstone 2
Ring-billed Gull X
Black Phoebe 6
Common Raven 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

No Steve. No Macworld. No problem.

Apple drops the bombshell yesterday. Some have questioned the timing, but I think they were at a point where they had to commit to floor space in Macworld 2010, and better they announce it and control the spin than have it leak from IDG and turn into a PR firefight.

I think it’s a good thing, and been coming over the horizon for a while. Trade shows are brutally expensive for a company like Apple, and the push to make a major push in product announcements just AFTER Apple’s core sales period ends is increasingly silly. Apple’s not just (primarily) a computer company any more, but a consumer product company. It’s definitely not a “Mac” company any more, it’s much more, so from a business standpoint, Apple benefits least of pretty much anyone involved @ Macworld. It doesn’t need the keynote to generate press, it can create a keynote on demand with the press now.

The folks that benefit most? All those Apple people who never got christmas week off because they were crunching for MacWorld.

Folks who benefit the least? well, IDG is screwed. But I don’t have huge sympathy there. But the small developers and smaller mac companies where Macworld was a chance to network and get some visibiliity are going to have to figure out something else. WWDC might be an option for some as an alternative, but this leaves a gap for them, especially for the “walk around and figure out who you need to get to know” aspect.

On the other hand, if Apple’s cost outlay for a Macworld is $2-3 million dollars (and when you factor in payroll costs and etc, bet on it), it gets increasingly hard to justify trade shows, even Macworld. So I’m not surprised.

There’s lots of coverage of this “event”, as you might expect. A lot of it boils down to “things are changing, I don’t like change!” which is weird in a way, given Apple’s success is primarily driven by being willing to drive innovation and make changes and not be tied too heavily to the status quo.

A lot of coverage is being aimed at Steve’s health. Without diving into that too deeply myself or trying to say “no, it’s not” as a blanket statement, I seriously doubt it. Steve may well want to back off and reduce his workload, but if the keynotes made sense for Apple, Steve would do them. Take this more as an indication of the belief his time is better spent elsewhere, which leads back to believing that trade shows are expensive, time consuming and increasingly limited in their impact in return. Steve’s situation is a trailing indicator, not a leading edge of the decision here.

Business Week’s Arik Hesseldahl has one of the more thoughtful (read: I agree) views of this beast:

Bailing On Macworld Is A Good Thing – BusinessWeek:

The first thing that’s coming to so many minds in the wake of today’s announcement from Apple that CEO Steve Jobs won’t be making his customary keynote address at the Macworld Expo on Jan. 6, is the condition of Jobs’ health.

I don’t think his health has anything to do with it. Though I think the speculation that has come to surround his appearance in recent years is a minor factor in the decision.

I also really thought Jason had some good thoughts on this at Macworld:

Apple at Expo: What went wrong? | Mac Word | Macworld:

Tuesday’s news that Apple had announced that Steve Jobs wouldn’t be appearing at Macworld Expo and that the company would stop exhibiting at the show after 2009 came as a shock. I’m stunned that Apple has taken a 25-year-old event that has been the single best meeting place for the entire community of users and vendors of Apple-related products and treated it like a piece of garbage stuck to the bottom of its shoe. But I’m not really surprised: Apple has been leading up to this moment for a long time now.

Also worth reading:

Rob Griffiths @ Macworld:

The end of an era for Macworld Expo | Editors’ Notes | Macworld:

For several years, trade shows—technology trade shows in particular—have been in serious decline. From Comdex to E3, large trade shows have been dying out or drastically changing their focus. Even Macworld Expo hasn’t been immune, as the east coast show was canceled after the 2005 event. (The Expo was moved from New York in 2004, and Apple declined to participate in the Boston show that year; the show lasted only one more year before being canceled.) The annual San Francisco Macworld Expo, however, seemed safe from the troubles. For nearly 20 years, the January event has been the one place to see and be seen in the world of all things Apple.

Michael Gartenberg (as usual):

Macworld’s demise is of little consequence to Apple – mediabistro.com: MobileDevicesToday:

It’s been floating around all day as a rumor but it seems that not only is Steve Jobs not keynoting Macworld, but this will be Apple’s last year at the show. Given that, it’s hard to see how the conference continues. It’s clearly the passing of an era but I don’t think this is that major in terms of news for Apple. Over the last several years, Apple has downplayed the importance of Macworld as an event (and stopped attending the east coast show some years ago before that event ceased to exist). Apple, unlike many other companies has the ability to draw audience of press and analysts as needed. In addition, the Apple retail experience is a good showcase for consumers who want to see Apple products up close.

As for Steve Jobs as a no-show? I’d expect this to be a pretty tame Macworld in terms of news. If you’re expecting a major announcement in January, you’re going to be disappointed.

although I’m guessing if this really is the start of a transition from “Apple as Steve-center-of-the-universe” there’s no better way to do that than not have steve give the keynote AND come out with something kicker. It seems that there’s this presumption that because Apple chose now to make this change ti doesn’t have much to talk about. Maybe, but I think they chose this time to make this decision for other reasons, and perhaps having a strong product announcement is actually part of the plan here. We’ll see.

My bottom line — everyone’s hypered up about this, because, well, that’s what we do about Apple stuff. but ultimately, this is a big non-issue, and once past it and looking back on it with some time, we’ll wonder why we made such a fuss. Well, no, we won’t. we’ll be too busy making a big fuss about the next major apple non-event event…

Update:

John Siracusa at Ars nails it:

Fearless: Apple’s Macworld Expo exit is part of its DNA:

There are many words that characterize Apple under the second reign of Steve Jobs: resurgent, exciting, innovative, successful. I’d add one more to that list: fearless.

Most large corporations are afraid of change. Successful product lines, business plans, and especially brands are milked for every penny. And when there’s nothing left, when the thing’s been beaten into the ground until not a single ounce of value remains, only then will corporations reluctantly move on. But wait! Sometimes they quickly moved back, either because they lost their nerve at the last minute, or because the new direction proved even worse than the exhausted husk of the old winner.

Piper believes leadership shift at Apple is underway

AppleInsider | Piper believes leadership shift at Apple is underway:

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, one of the most outspoken and trusted experts on all things Apple,

One out of two’s not bad, I guess.

Is your web site making assumptions about your users?

I’m doing a little research for a project I’m working on for someone. Part of that project involves getting users up and running with Eclipse, and one of the things I wanted to document were a couple of fairly simple (or so I thought) questions:

“What is Eclipse?”

“What is an IDE?”

So I figured I’d go to the source — the eclipse home page — and see how they answer those questions, then crib off of it.

Well, as far as I can tell, they really don’t.

On the eclipse front page it says:

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. (We started with the best Java IDE ever and we’ve grown from there.)

But that really doesn’t say much of anything. It looks like it got run over by a runaway marketing focus group or something… If someone asked me how they could become a more productive programmer, and I said “go check out eclipse” without any real background in eclipse, actually getting started based on this site would be really tough.

And good luck finding ANY place on the site that actually defines IDE (integrated development environment). This site could really use a quick “elevator pitch” and a one page executive summary, as well as some basic definitions for newbies.

To me, it’s a very classic and easy trap to fall into — the people maintaining a site are so familiar with the material they forget that a part of their audience is new to it all and doesn’t have any context. This does NOT mean you need to “dumb down” your site to the lowest common denominator, but you should always design a site to include some kind of launch pad for someone completely new to whatever you’re doing – one of your user profiles should have literally stepped off of a boat after having been marooned on a remote island for a decade. “New to Eclipse? Start here!” page for people who will otherwise find the rest of the site somewhere between opaque and incomprehensible for all of the jargon. We tried to mitigate that with our “get started” page in the rewrite we did of the OpenLaszlo site recently, and it’s been pretty well received (but it can be better, and we’re looking at it).

One other thing the Eclipse site does that bothers me: as you navigate through the site, the “HOME” button in the nav menu changes meaning. It’s always called home, but if you navigate to a wiki page, HOME turns into the home of the wiki site, or if you go to the demo site, it returns you to the home page of that site, not of the eclipse site in general. There’s a second home button on the bottom page nav bar, also called HOME, but that home button takes you back to www.eclipse.org.

Having two buttons named the same but doing different things, with one of them changing based on things that aren’t communicated (there’s no visual change to identify main site pages from wiki pages from whatever pages) just seems like bad navigation. I realize what they’re trying for, but it doesn’t work for me. That, of course, and $5.00 buys you a latte at Starbucks…

The main point here is this: is your site making assumptions that are going to trip up someone new to the site? If so, how is that going to affect them being willing to adopt in or use whatever it is you’re presenting? And how do you plan to fix it?

Social media at its worst – post-mortem cyber-bullying | Measuring Social Media

Social media at its worst – post-mortem cyber-bullying | Measuring Social Media:

The problem of cyber-bullying hit me hard last week. As I wrote last week, I volunteer as a critical incident stress management debriefer. Most of the debriefings I do are with first responders – fire, EMS, police, dispatchers and similar workers. But our team also reaches out to the community; when you hear on the news that grief counselors are available to an organization after an incident, that’s us. The reason cyber-bullying is on my mind is that over the last few weeks, I have spent quite a bit of time with teenagers who are trying to cope with the suicides of friends.

Confidentiality is paramount, so I cannot offer any details of any incident I’ve been involved in. But imagine a middle school or high school student who learns that a friend has committed or attempted suicide, who goes to that friend’s MySpace, Facebook or other social media home page and finds mean and horrible things written about them. What’s worse, imagine if those things were written after their friend took that awful step.

I came away from one recent set of debriefings absolutely convinced that if there is any possible way to do it, the industry should figure out a rapid way to disable, freeze or at least moderate the pages of any minor who has been a victim of violence. I emphasize “rapidly” because word gets around fast (a whole separate problem; texting is not a good way to find out your friend is dead) and cyber-bullies can post unbelievably nasty messages in no time at all.

One of those important things we tend to forget in designing sites; social sites need some way for the authorities to contact them quickly and reliably and get things frozen while real life gets sorted out. Sad that it’s needed, but it is.

Capitals Web editor will play backup goalie against Sens

Capitals Web editor will play backup goalie against Sens – Puck Daddy – NHL – Yahoo! Sports:

Pretty amazing story coming out of DC tonight: With Jose Theodore out with a hip flexor, the Washington Capitals are turning to Web site producer Brett Leonhardt as their emergency backup goalie tonight for Brent Johnson against the Ottawa Senators.

good luck to him, and may brent johnson FAKE a groin injury five minutes into the first period, just to make him sweat a bit. Just in good fun. (Brent, if you do, $100 to the charity of your choice from me.)

Tech Pundits, Take Yo’ Meds!

Tech Pundits, Take Yo’ Meds! « The Angry Drunk:

I know that you tech pundits have an all consuming desire to see Apple compete in every market in the known Universe; but you really need to stop mistaking the voices in your head for official Apple PR

Amen!

I’m watching everyone hype themselves into a netbook frenzy again.

Hard to believe, from listening to the pundits out think themselves, that Steve himself said this:

Steve Jobs: Netbooks are “nascent market”, Apple will wait and see | The Industry Standard:

n response to a question about netbooks, the ultra-compact, comparatively underpowered notebooks that seem to be gaining traction recently, Jobs said the market was “nascent” and Apple wasn’t ready to enter it. But the company was taking a “wait-and-see” attitude towards the small machines. McCracken told me that Jobs “seemed pretty neutral” about them.

about seven weeks ago.

Yet people actually ignore what steve actually says and go off predicting what he’s going to do. Do you really think Apple is going to shift from “wait and see” to “here’s the new product” in january?

sigh. and some of the worst at this get paid to blather. why anyone pays attention to them I dunno. not that I’m calling down the wrath of Rob Enderle or anything, but….

Some thoughts on Sean Avery

I guess I picked a bad week to give up sniffing glue…

No, seriously, a combination of having my boss leave at the start of the month, picking up a copy of the office head cold that’s been going around, and realizing OMFGITSDECEMBER sort of distracted me from blogging about stuff for a bit.

The cold is finally receding, so I can think, work is finally setting down with the new boss and an understanding of who’s picking up what pieces, and I no longer feel like I’m going to show up for christmas dinner a week late — although I’ll be two weeks late getting the frigging christmas tree up this year. Part of me almost says “don’t bother”, but I’ll regret it if I do.

But it’s given me some time to watch everyone else talk about (and posture over) Avery and think through this thing a little bit more.

When I spoke last on Avery (damn, less than a week ago. how time flies when you’re having fun), I said:

For those wondering why he was suspended for this comment, you can’t take this in isolation. It’s not THIS comment, it’s that this is just the LATEST of a string of increasingly out of control comments. And that’s the real issue here

And I believe that’s been proven out. The suspension wasn’t really about what he said (sorry, people who want to be over-picky about the appropriateness of his comments) but that he said it. It’s come out that he’s been called to the carpet two previous times (at least) by the league, having had chewing-out sessions with both bettman and colin campbell in separate situations. Bettman told him if he stepped out of line again,he’d be suspended. He stepped out of line. He got suspended.

That’s why just looking at the situation is easy for those looking for an easy reason to complain, but life’s never that simple.

Worse, it’s clear Avery has personal issues he needs to deal with. That’s what “anger managment” is all about; it’s PC code for “you’re going to sit down with a shrink and we’re going to try to get you help”. Anger is only one aspect this could be about, but when you start reading the various things that have been popping up, the larger picture of Avery is really pretty sad (for example, try here and here )

That the team was considering waiving him BEFORE this happened is telling. So is that team members went to Jackson in the pre-season to say it wasn’t working and he was ripping up the locker room.

In some ways, I think the league did Avery a favor here. They took the action out of the Stars hands — and it was clear the Stars management was all set for a nuclear wasteland. By suspending Avery and giving him six games, he gives both Avery and the stars a chance to calm down and think it through — which just might give Avery a chance to repair some of the damage and not find himself thrown off the team permanently.

It ALSO avoids a major war with the NHLPA, at least for now. It seems the PA is willing to accept the six game suspension, but from comments made by Paul Kelly, any attempt to suspend the contract would start the fight. I don’t blame the NHLPA, either, the suspension of Avery by the league is a precedent that starts a slippery slope the PA doesn’t want players on, but it looks like the PA is willing to accept that. If the stars try to void the cointract, however, all hell will break loose.

Given how obviously pissed everyone in stars management was at this and how Avery played them all for fools, an attempt to void the contract (“damn the contracts and call the lawyers!” by Hicks was almost inevitable. Bettman and the league has stepped in and created a situation that has given all involved some time to get the tempers out of control — and honestly, I think he deserves credit for that. Not that people will give it to him.

In any event, it’s now basically up to Avery. Maybe this was the kick in the pants he needed; maybe he’ll regress. We’ll see.

If I were the Stars, I’d waive him, send him to some place in the AHL, and tell him he has to earn his way back on the team. I doubt a contract voiding would survive the NHLPA and a court fight, and no other NHL team’s going to touch him (Ray Emery has a better chance of hitting the NHL right now) — but if Avery takes his “anger management” seriously and works to prove he’s trying to solve whatever issues cause scenes like this), and he goes to the AHL and shuts his mouth and plays hard and works hard and keeps his life straight — then maybe.

Honestly, though, I doubt he will. I don’t think it’ll be that simple or the ending will be that happy. But it’s really up to Avery to make lemonade or throw the lemons at old ladies…

And ultimately, the person who most deserves an apology from him is Brett hull, who got thrown under a fleet of busses here. Hull has to explain to his owner that they wasted millions of dollars of the owner’s money on — THIS — but he still desrves to be a GM for the Stars. I find that a hard thing to believe Hicks will remember fondly in future years, you know?

And that’s really the bottom line in all of this. WHAT he said really doesn’t matter here. It’s that he DID say it, the context of when and how he said it, and his history of these kind of out of control behaviors that led to this. And honestly, six games is a lot better for him than many of the things that could have happened if the league hadn’t stepped in… The league probably did him a big favor here; one wonders if he’ll take advantage of it…

I’m guessing not.

When will the thinking begin? – From The Rink

When will the thinking begin? – From The Rink:

I have a hard time believing the NBA and NFL are going to have to cut back considerably and the NHL will escape unscathed, but at this point, that’s where we’re at in the commissioner’s eyes.

I don’t for a minute think it’s fair to interpret what they’re saying they’ll escape unscathed. Bill Daly today noted the league’s put in a hiring freeze, and in fact, Bettman said this:

“The sense is that we are doing OK this season, but there is a great deal of uncertainty about the future, particularly next season.”

“Probably a good indication for us will be how playoff ticket sales go. But while there is concern, there is also hopeful optimism.”

In reality, the business cycles for these leagues are all different phases and the leagues aren’t easily compared. In hockey, most of the revenue for the league is in for the year — the next time significant revenues come in will be in the playoffs, and Bettman clearly sees that as a bellwether for things moving forward, but right now, they know roughly what the revenue situation is going to be. They have, in fact, telegraphed their thoughts by indicating they think the cap will be roughly flat this season and they’re more or less guaranteeing it goes down the season after that.

So there’s no pretending going on in the league that they’re going to avoid this. What the reality is, though, is that the major pain won’t come until later, going into next season. There’s no reason to lay off now — and I expect they hope they’ll be able to limit future layoffs through the hiring freeze and the attrition that can be expected between the end of this season and next. But if there are layoffs, and there probably will be, expect them to happen off-season.

What happens if revenues go down next year while the cap stays flat? Less than you might think; remember one aspect of the CBA is the escrow account. In past years, the escrow money’s been sent on to players. If the revenues decline, then some (or all) of that escrow money will be held back by the owners — this scenario being the reason the escrow account was put into the CBA in the first place.

So things may potentially be ugly, but the league’s got things in place to adapt to it, at least to some degree. Players could potentialy find themselves with 10-12% pay cuts if the entire escrow account is returned to the owners next season, even if the cap stays flat. And it’ll be interesting to see how much of the escrow goes to players this season; I wouldn’t expect a 100% payout.

So the thinking has been going on for a while. What the league isn’t doing is panicing; revenues seem sustainable now and they can use other methods than layoffs to handle reduced revenue issues when they finally hit — which they probably won’t for another six months or so. And the CBA was designed to help here, and my guess is, it will.

The NHL’s rapid revnue growth the last few years also helps, because it makes the downturn somewhat easier to handle; most companies don’t hire as quickly as they grow, which reduces the need to layoff when things turn.

So to me, this is more about some journalists crying wolf than the league whistling in the graveyard. What I’m seeing is a league being very aware and proactive, and getting yelled at for things not being as negative as people seem to expect them to be.

Life could be a lot worse. A few days back, James Mirtle posted attendance numbers for the NHL, showing them down about 1%. Even given some teams like the Panthers pushing free and discounted tickets like crazy, paid attendance is likely down no more than 2-3%. Taht’s not all that bad, and from the numbers, only four teams are playing below 80% full (Atlanta, carolina, tampa, columbus), and four more below 85% (Phoenix, NY Island, New Jersey, LA). Eight teams below 85% full may seem bad, but that leaves 22 teams playing above 85% full, and frankly, when you look at the teams suffering attendance, they are also teams suffering from bad play, except for New Jersey, which is having problems filling its new building, but always seems to have fought attendance issues.

To some degree this just reinforces that winning hockey sells tickets, good markets or bad. And losing hockey just encourages fans to sit on the sideline; the bad economy just amplifies those changes.

Some fuss has been made of the cities with significant attendance drops: Tampa and Atlanta around 12% down, Carolina around 11%, Nashville, Los Angeles, Buffalo down 7% or so. Not minimizing that, but do you blame fans in Tampa and Atlanta for staying away after the off-season owner-fun (in Tampa) and the horribly disappointing season last year after finally making the playoffs and convincing fans maybe things were getting better? Or in columbus, still without a playoff series? Bad teams SHOULD suffer in attendance, or what motivation do they have to get better? (snide side glance at the Toronto fans injected here). Lost in the noise of all this are teams like Washington and Chicago, where reinvented ownership (with the hawks) and a really good, up and coming team (in washington) have gotten people excited again, with 25% and 15% increases. So it balances out; teams getting better get fans on board, teams getting worse lose them. It’s easy to focus just on the bad news, but the reality is, it’s not all bad out there.

Compare that to, say, the NBA. 30 team league, and currently, four teams are playing at 70% or below capacity, and a total of 13 teams are playing at 85% or below capacity. No wonder they’re laying off, but where the NHL has been growing since the end of the lockout, the NBA’s been struggling, and it’s showing this year. Last year, they only had 2 teams under 70% and six teams at 85% or below. Compared to those numbers, the NHL is staggeringly successful this season being down only 1-3%.

Or consider Nascar, which only a couple of years ago was being seen as one of those sports taking the NHL out behind the shed and giving it a wedgie (not without some justification, either); the current feeling seems to be that if the automaker bailout doesn’t happen, NASCAR won’t be laying off, it could well simply cease to exist.

Then there’s the KHL, which in the preseason some were thinking was going to hurt the NHL; now, a few months later, teams are missing payrolls (or barely making them) and there seems a good chance the league won’t make it to season two. How things change.

In the ECHL, we’ve seen the first franchise failure.

And over in europe, one of the major soccer leagues has come out and said it needs — well, basically, a salary cap and escrow system just like the NHL built, or it’s likely in deep trouble.

Oh, and it looks like Arena football is going to fold, period. Can’t get financing.

We tend to over-focus on the issues around the league, and some media types seem to get off predicting the worse (and we, as fans, don’t hold their feet to the fire when they prove, time and again, to be woefully inaccurate…). But when you look around the pro sports industry globally — honestly? The NHL is in for some rough times, and some of those times are going to be painful — but in the larger context of other leagues, it seems like it’s done what it can to minimize the pain, before it had to do so in panic mode. So now that those bad times are here, surprise, the league isn’t panicing. And some folks seem to see that as a bad thing…

McEnery’s Market

San Jose Inside – McEnery’s Market:

Of course the Public Market will be a boon to McEnery and his partners. By investing $5 million to build a pedestrian mall, expand a parking garage, and help with the construction costs of several new structures near San Pedro Square, the City is in effect helping the private enterprise that McEnery and his partners have launched. But these investments will likely also benefit other Downtown businesses and the city as a whole. That’s how these public-private partnerships work. And as we have seen, they work.

We are hearing, in the weeks since the project was announced, from the doubters who can’t see a Public Market succeeding in San Jose. Others simply can’t get past the idea of tax dollars benefiting private businesses.

Count me as one of those people who’d love to see a thriving public market here in the south bay. Anyone who’s been to Pike Place Market in Seattle has some idea of what it can do and be — but I’m even more of a fan of Granville Island in Vancouver. Even London Quoy in North Vancouver, Granville’s smaller brother, is a neat spot for shopping and lunch.

The naysayers — mostly, they seem to not want to see McEnery benefit. If it makes financial sense for the city, we shouldn’t let the personalities involved stop it. Too bad the city of San Jose spent, what, $30 million trying to stop the county from building the theater on the fair grounds, especially since it looks like neither theater will ever get built, at least in my lifetime; it sure would be nice to have that money for projects like this.

I do, though, have questions about this public market; the area has tried this concept once before, in Mountain View at the Old Mill property, and it had this same kind of enthusiasm and it failed miserably. I’ve never seen a cogent explanation why — it wasn’t the greatest building, but was in a good area, good local population, good support, strong interest and good vendors early, lots of parking and nice access. And it failed.

So why is this proposal different and better? Why will it succeed where the Mountain View one didn’t? Before the city commits to this, I’d love to hear why this second run at the public market won’t end up like the first one, especially since, while I like the San Pedro Square area, access and parking aren’t going to be as good as the old Mountain View market had?