Are the Sharks a playoff team?

March 1, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

San Jose Sharks’ playoff quest hinges on improved defense, health of key players – San Jose Mercury News:


So who are these guys? Are they the tight, efficient defensive team that totally shut down the NHL’s most productive offense in beating the Philadelphia Flyers 1-0 on Tuesday night? Or are they the collective sieve that gave up 35 goals stumbling through a 2-6-1 trip. Give up that many goals, and you all but guarantee more losses than wins. The Sharks have 20 games — and if things fall their way, the playoffs — to provide the answer. But that “if” is what separates this season from the recent past and doubles the doubt that seems to surround the Sharks every spring.

Short answer, yes, although they are showing a distinct capability of messing it up enough to miss given how tough the west is.

Do I like the moves made at the trade deadline? Overall, yes. I like the three players (Moore, Galliardi, Winnick) Doug Wilson brought in. I think they’ll definitely help. I’m sad to see Jamie McGinn go, but he was something Colorado wanted, and I expect they’ll be happy with him. McGinn really matured this year, and showed himself to be a solid fourth going on third liner, but when his role was expanded and they auditioned him as a support player on the first and second line, that just wasn’t where he thrived.

McGinn was a player I really enjoyed watching this year. Simple play, hard play, consistent play. He reminds me a lot of Jeff Odgers (he is, actually, notably more talented than Odgers was); It would not surprise me to see McGinn play a third/fourth line role for a number of years in the league and it also wouldn’t surprise me to see him given an alternate captain position at some point. The Sharks did not give up on him or dump him, he was a value piece in the trade (unlike someone like Jed Ortmeyer).

He’s fun to watch. He brought the right attitude. He’ll help Colorado with it. Thanks for everything Jamie.

The incoming players will help the penalty kill, which we need. And hopefully make defense in general more consistent. What the Sharks really need is to get healthy; too many injuries affecting the wrong people. Losing Doug Murray hurt this team more than most folks seem to realize, and really hurt that long road trip.

I’d still play Greiss more and Niemi less, at least until Niemi shows he’s got his game back. The shutout was nice, let’s do two or three more games like that, and then I’ll relax. maybe.

The bigger question is not whether this is a playoff team, but a contender. Right now, I’m not convinced. My pick out of the west is Detroit, and I’d pick Vancouver over the Sharks right now, too. The Blackhawks are in the same “not convinced” mode as the Sharks, and I’m very wary of seeing the Kings in an early playoff round, and god help whoever meets the predators in the first round.

I just named six teams (including the Sharks) that are seriously worrying. In other words, there’s no easy first round. There’s no easy round; it’s three rounds of war to get out of the West (again). Let’s assume, just for the sake of it, that the Sharks somehow win the Pacific, and see the Kings in the first round, Nashville in the second, and Vancouver or Detroit in the western finals. Is that a set of teams the Sharks can beat in three rounds and still be able to compete in the cup final?

I’m not convinced. And if the Sharks fall to 6th or 7th in the west, and hit Detroit or Vancouver in the first round, and then have to play the Kings or Nashville, and then whichever of the Canucks or Wings they didn’t get in the first round? Good luck with that.

It’s important that the Sharks get it together and win the west, or the playoff trip is going to be beyond perilous. Even under best circumstances, winning the west is amazingly tough. and if they fall short? It’ll be more because of health issues than the trade deadline deals (or lack thereof). It’s just an amazingly tough conference — and I know fans won’t be happy at the prospect, but I’m just not convinced this is the best team in the west. it’s maybe the third best. Or even fifth, but the difference between third and sixth or seventh is really tiny. No margin of error, and this year, the sharks have been on the wrong side of that margin more often than not.

I guess we’ll see.

 

Posted in Sports - Hockey

How about those Sharks?

February 26, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

Day 16.5 — Engine issues keep Sharks grounded in St. Paul, no new info on Couture, those darn deflections | Working the Corners:

No, not the angst that comes with a 2-6-1 roadie. And not even the literal pain that Todd McLellan is dealing with after getting smacked with a stick early in the second period.

 

Because of on top of all that, on top of the fact they’ve been on the road since before Valentine’s Day, the Sharks are not flying home as planned tonight.

Mechanical trouble grounded their charter plane and they’ve all been brought back to their usual hotel in St. Paul, which luckily had not filled the necessary 40 or 50 rooms.

How about those Sharks?

Two losses to end the nasty 9 game road trip; they had a chance to turn this trip into a mediocre one, and ended up turning it into a disaster. You now have to look at this team and seriously think “given how the western conference is playing out, they could miss the playoffs”.

I can’t figure out why. the word being used by the team and players is “fragile”, and that’s true — when a mistake happens or a bad bounce, this team freaks out a bit, and suddenly they’re down a couple of goals. Niemi is off, can’t find his game; at least Griess seems to be stopping the stoppable goals.

I don’t know why this team is like this. The core players haven’t been like this in the past. They haven’t tuned out the coaches, they aren’t pissed at the GM, they are playing hard — just not playing smart. They seem (mostly) to play late parts of the game hard and intense, it’s starts that are killing them. Or in Minnesota, a good start, but they had about 3 minutes in the third where they gave up a couple of goals. They don’t play 60 minutes of good hockey, and playing 45 minutes kills in this league.

I said earlier in the week I expected Wilson to make a trade to shake up the chemistry. I’m more convinced now something needs to be done. The scary thing is that I’m not sure the coach or GM knows why things are off, or how to fix it. The players definitely don’t — they seem mystified as to why they’re this way. It’s not lack of interest or effort. It’s lack of sharp focus and execution. And that’s not necessarily easy to fix.

Maybe a shinto priest for an exorcism. If things weren’t bad enough, tonight the coach gets brained by a stick and knocked out (thank god is wasn’t WORSE than that, but there were five minutes there when I was wondering if this team had stressed him into a heart attack), and now, the plane breaks, and they can’t even get home until tomorrow. So even the hockey gods seem pissed at the Sharks right now.

Laurie turned to me tonight and said “I am so glad we don’t have season tickets this year, because if we were paying $100 a seat to watch this hockey, I’d be really pissed”. And she’s right. I miss the folks we used to sit around; I don’t miss dragging my butt to the arena 35 times a year and all of the disruptions that imply — and I don’t miss being in the arena for the games. I do still love the team and the game, but I’m really enjoying being able to not worry about it until game time, turning on the TV, and if they mess it up, pulling out a book or the iPad and multitasking around it… And the way they’re playing hockey this year makes that decision seem even smarter….

In any event, the road trip is done. Well, the last road game is done for this trip. hopefully the team can get home. Unfortunately, they haven’t shown that “home” is a fix of this, either…

And now, to the trade deadline. I wonder who won’t be in teal on Tuesday…

 

Posted in Sports - Hockey

Dealing with Crap apps in the catalog…

February 23, 2012 by chuq | 2 Comments

There’s a kerfluffle going on with the Apple App Catalog over “crap app”, which is a bit of a misnomer because the primary anger is being aimed at developers who build apps aimed at grabbing money with poorly designed copycats of more famous apps. Sort of like what Zynga now does for a living, but not on Facebook.

What caught my eye were phrases being thrown about like “Apple’s missed opportunities to prevent disaster were such simple and quick fixes”, which, once I stopped laughing, made me want to cry in sympathy.

It’s not simple. It’s not quick. If it was, Apple would be doing it.

In my previous life, I was involved in these issues on a regular basis. Before we hired our App Review gods and goddesses, I didn’t duck fast enough and got do do that as well. I was in on the discussions with the lawyers setting up the rules early on; I was consulted (as the voice of the developers and official tie breaking vote when needed) on apps we weren’t sure passed the smell test on whether they should be published.

So I can pull out and play the “been there, done that, no T-shirt” card here.

And the reality is, it ain’t easy. And what Apple probably would LIKE to do it probably can’t, and would open itself up to various legal challenges and a whole can of really foul tasting worms.

Your first problem: one of the underlying concepts of the DMCA process that gives companies a safe harbor is that they take a hands off approach to the content. There are some broad areas where exceptions to this are carved out, especially around adult content, and there are some areas where companies have decided to do some broad fireaxe enforcement like the “make me rich, do nothing” apps. But the reality is, once you start policing content, you start opening yourself up to liabilities on all of the content you do not police. It can even cost them the safe harbor, and then the entire app store infrastructure could be at risk.

So you have to be really careful how and where you do your enforcement and bans, and you have to do these things such that you minimize opening yourself up to legal or PR fights over “you did that, why aren’t you doing this?” as well. These quickly turn into scenarios that make lawyers wake up screaming. And situations that boil down to “he’s ripping off this other person” become entirely subjective, and as a reviewer, you can make jokes about the app (privately), but you can’t reject it for that — until someone files the complaint of infringement. There’s a legal protocol defined here, and if you cross that line and start pro-actively rejecting apps, you are buying yourself and your company a whole lot of legal indigestion.

There’s just a wide swath of things that a company like Apple really can’t (and shouldn’t) do, and if they DO, they’ll end up getting yelled at. Think back over the last couple of years over every time an App doesn’t get through the review process into the catalog, and the developer complains, and everyone gets up in arms over “big brother Apple” and yells for a while. And here we are, calling for Apple to do MORE big brother stuff.

Apple is in a no-win situation here. Because you know if they did start being more pro-active here, it’d just feed the “apple is big brother” screamfests instead.

The Curious Case Of The (Cr)apps That Make Money | PandoDaily:

 

 

Apple has a serious problem on their hands, and it is one they need to fix it as soon as possible. No, this isn’t a diatribe about the lack of Flash on the iPad. And, no, this isn’t about the need for an SD Card slot for iOS devices. Instead this is an issue that Apple’s biggest ally – iOS developers – are complaining about, one that hurts the user, and one that could end up damaging the iOS ecosystem more than any set of labor issues ever could.

The issue we are facing, is the proliferation of scamming apps.

 

 

First, Apple needs to cut off the funds. Taking the approach of going to the root of the problem, Haddad noted that if Apple “makes it clear that if you try to defraud customers, then you aren’t going to get any money. If there’s not any financial incentive to scamming then it’s very likely that most of the problem will just go away on its own.” This would likely cut out most of the scam apps from the App Store.

 

As soon as you start touching money, it gets even nastier. So, if Apple cuts them off and doesn’t give them the money, then what? Apple keeps it? refunds it? If you refund it, what do you do with everyone who wants refunds for apps THEY feel are scams, but Apple doesn’t agree? What do you do about all of the people demanding refunds, and because the only way to get a refund is to have it declared a scam app, starts complaining that everything they decide they don’t want is a scam app?

This is a a PR and customer support nightmare. trust me on that. Even in a “no refunds for whatever reason” policy app catalog, refunds are a horror. This just makes it even more of a horror, because now a chunk of users will try to wedge what they want into this policy to get what they want.

Only real solution? How about a “refunds for seven days” for any app users don’t want? Developers, do you really want to go down that path? Apple would have to hold funds another 30 days or so before sending them to you to avoid having to claw them back. Users could pay for an app, use it a while, then get their money back; free seven day rentals of your full function app, effectively. if I were a game developer and Apple proposed this, I’d be headed to cupertino with torches and pitchforks. Be careful that the “fix” doesn’t create an even nastier problem.

 

However, in between the time that scammers hit the Top 100 and the time Apple is issued a takedown notice, many users can get irritated by the lack of quality apps in the store. To mitigate this problem, Haddad recommends that Apple start to curate the Top 100 list beyond automating it based on sales.

 

And whatever policy Apple implemented on this, it’d create a firestorm, because “the fix is in!” because it is.

The core problem here: Crap apps are like porn. everyone has their own definition (which overlaps in many, but not all, places), and everyone sees what needs to be stopped as obvious. And however you define these rules, it’ll piss off enough people that the firestorm will probably be continuous.

 

The real question is what happens if Apple does nothing and continues to use their flawed policies. It hurts the user, who loses their money. It hurts the overall App Store ecosystem, as people stop trusting the look of applications, decreasing sales. Finally and most importantly, it hurts the developers, who have to fight harder for users, as user trust will continue to decline. There are any number of end-game results, and none of them are good. Apple needs to nip this in the bud now, before it gets any worse.

 

All of which are to some degree true. But be aware of fixes that actually create different, bigger problems.

2012: The Year Scam Apps Killed the App Store | Impending:

 

A Beefed Up Fraud Team: I can only speculate at the size and competency of the App Store fraud team,

 

Is this fraud? If an app developer’s intellectual property is infringed, the DMCA process already exists to mediate that conflict and take it to a resolution. This isn’t Apple’s responsibility to deal with pro-actively, it’s the developer. If the developer initiates a complaint, there’s a (long, complex and ultimately off to the courts to decide) process to follow. It works, and it actually takes into consideration the issues of BOTH sides of the complaint a lot better than ACTA or SOPA ever did… Apple’s IP isn’t impacted here, so it has to stay out of it. As a developer, you need to work the system to protect your IP. Apple won’t (can’t, and shouldn’t) babysit for you.

 

Automated Returns: What I can’t fathom is Apple’s refusal to automatically refund all customers who were defrauded of their money. There have been hundreds of open and shut cases, and to this day Apple requires customers to jump through hoops and phone calls (in 2014!) to receive refunds. This is insanity.

 

Discussed above. Ask a high end department store about women “renting” dresses for parties to see how much fun a relaxed refunding system would be for developers. Especially game developers. Be wary of what you ask for.

 

Video Previews in the App Store: Requiring a short video demo of the app in action would have prevented the common scam of providing one or two misleading screenshots to fool browsing customers.

 

Hah! we did that. It works great! Apple should. seriously. Or you can post them to Youtube or Vimeo now, and link to them in your marketing material. Seriously, this is a great idea. It works. If you aren’t doing free trials or screen videos of your stuff (especially games) you’re missing a great marketing opportunity. Ways to enable this by Apple would be a nice addition.

 

Better Education of App Store Customers: Much like the fashion industry, the App Store’s plague of knockoffs created a problem of uneducated customers unable to recognize the real thing vs. the counterfeit until after the sale.

 

“educating the customers” is something people have been advocating forever. And it always fails, because there’s always a subset of them who can’t or won’t be educated. Which doesn’t mean you don’t do it, because to the degree you can do it, it reduces your problems. But — it won’t solve your problem. Just reduce it.

 

The App Store could have done a better job profiling quality studios and developers, beyond highlighting individual apps, and rewarded those who built an ongoing track record and reputation. Not just developers, but App Store customers as well, to weight their reviews and ratings.

 

In my previous life, I designed a neat social system to do just that, and couldn’t get the people who should have been interested to care. Heck, I sat in meetings with product managers where I had to explain why pulling an app from the catalog if ONE PERSON flagged it as offensive was a bad, bad idea. And I had to argue about that multiple times.

But heck, I still have the design, and I do think a self-regulating community could moderate a lot of these problems if properly implemented. It’s too bad we never got past “I think we should have a LIKE button” in my previous life. And I’m open to discussing this with the “right people” if they want my advice. You know how to find me (or send me a linkedin).

Automated self-policing policies are the right answer here, if done well. If done badly, don’t bother.

The big problem in all of this? Discovery in an app catalog ecosystem still sucks. We didn’t solve that problem. Apple has made some progress, but it’s still very much not a solved problem. And it won’t be any time soon. Because it’s hard. And that’s why when I see phrases like “simple and quick”, I laugh, to hide the tears. buy me a couple of beers, I’ll show you the scars… As a developer, frankly, you should know better than play the “how hard can it be?” game, because isn’t that what your non-developers friends say about that new feature they want you to add to your app?

If it was easy, Apple’d have done it by now. Seriously.

(hat tip: Daring Fireball for the links to these)

Posted in Computers and Technology

Next for the Sharks: a trade….

February 22, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

Dreger: Sharks a strong contender for Blue Jackets’ Nash:

The San Jose Sharks are emerging as a strong contender for Rick Nash. Sources say Columbus initially targeted Logan Couture, but was quickly told that was a non-starter. But, make no mistake, San Jose will stay in the mix until Monday’s deadline.

 

Nash and Sharks veteran Joe Thornton are good friends and have shown an impressive chemistry when playing together internationally that isn’t being overlooked. The Sharks would prefer an off-season deal to avoid the in-season disruption, but San Jose is keen.

Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson won’t discuss specifics on any of the deals he’s working on, but tells TSN there has been a lot of creativity suggested with a variety of his players. You can’t blame Howson for working outside the short list Rick Nash provided at the beginning of this saga.

Having watched the Sharks stumble through this road trip, and especially last night’s loss to Columbus, one thing is clear: there’s something off about the team. It’s not tuning out the coach, or not caring, or not working hard, or lack of commitment, or any of those things. But still, this team’s just not right.

And while bringing in Dominick Moore is a nice deal, that’s not going to fix it. This team, as much as anything, needs a kick in the butt and a shake of the neck, and when this has happened in the past, Doug Wilson hasn’t been afraid to do the kicking.

I smell a trade brewing. Not a spear carrier, 7th rounder going back trade, something fairly significant.

But I can’t convince myself it’s Rick Nash. I’m sure they’re talking; Wilson talks a lot, and sometimes, you talk and end up with Joe Thornton. But I’m not convinced a Nash trade would make the Sharks better. Different, definitely. Better? Not so sure. On the other hand, I don’t think this team necessarily needs to get better. I am convinced it needs to be different or they’re unlikely to shake this funk.

The problem is that a Nash deal would require some significant assets going back. I would assume, with Couture not an option, that it’d be a significant forward and a defenseman. Would you really want to give up both Pavelski and Doug Murray? Because it might take that, and a draft pick, and maybe a prospect, to do the deal. I’m not convinced.

So I tend to think Wilson will go in a  different direction, and look for a top six forward. To get it, he’ll need to give up something good, and my thought is that’s going to be defensive depth. So my nominee for trade bait is…

Doug “crankshaft” murray. Not because I want him gone (not a bit), but because he’s the kind of player that will bring back a significant talent — and I see no chance the Sharks would trade Vlasic, who is the other defenseman they’re probably fielding lots of calls over. oh, they’re probably hearing about Demers, also, but I don’t think he’s going to bring back a top six forward.

Now, the short term problem is that Murray when and had his throat caved in, and it’s hard to trade someone who’s injured. But I find it interesting they sent him home, but still haven’t put him on IR. I wonder why…

So we’re close to the trade deadline. And as usual, my greatest hope is that trade deadline day hits, and nothing of importance happens, just to let us enjoy watching the crew on TSN sweat it out and read their favorite poutine recipes on the air. But it won’t happen.  And this year, San Jose is in the mix, and needs to be. It’ll be interesting to see what Wilson does. I can’t see him doing nothing.

(and since I know Doug reads my blog, another piece of advice. Start Greiss for a couple of games, let Niemi take a break, and see what happens. It might be disaster, but Niemi’s a bit of a disaster right now anyway…)

 

 

 

Posted in Sports - Hockey

Day Tripping Panoche Valley

February 22, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

With Monday being a holiday, I took advantage of it to do an extended day trip, spending a chunk of it out in Panoche Valley and ended out at Merced Wildlife Refuge in search of a pretty sunset. The day started about 6:30AM, ended about 7:30PM, and covered about 320 miles.

Panoche trip

The primary goal of the trip: get out, get alone, do some thinking, make some decisions. Oh, and Panoche Valley is a very interesting birding area in the winter, and full of interesting geological details and other things of interest worthy of pointing a camera at. The morning started out cool and damp — raining, actually — but the weather prognosis was clearing, so I decided not to go back to bed (tempting, though). I got on site about 8:30 at Paicines Reservoir, which was surprisingly quiet, other the the adult bald eagle (always a kick) sitting in a tree watching the area.

A big part of the trip was to give the new lenses a series workout and start understanding how best to use them, and to integrate the T3i into the mix and get a good feel for the picture quality and what it can do (and, compared to the 7d, what it can’t). I love being back in a two body photo gear configuration; for a trip like this, I put the 300+1.4x on the 7d, and the 24-105 on the T3i, and swapped in the 70-200 as appropriate. That seemed to work quite well through the day.

Every time I bird Panoche, I come back thinking I should spend time exploring it as a photo location. This time, I did, and I really came away wishing I’d done so before. the landscape is — the best description I can think of is “starkly beautiful”, ranging from wide open ranch lands to lots of convoluted hillsides to areas that look straight out of a desert. There’s a lot of oak, and that’s a tree I find fascinating and I’ve started exploring how to show that beauty.

It wasn’t a great day for photography; it started out early very damp and grey with weak light. I hoped it’d clear to partial cloudy, but by mid-day, it was in some areas fully cleared, leaving me with glary light and bad shadows, and the birding dried up as well (not complaining; while working on the shot below, I was serenaded at length by a singing california thrasher, and visited by a greater roadrunner. Both nice additions to this year’s list). That made some of the day more of a scouting trip, but I still found places where I could get some nice shots.

I ended up driving fairly far up New Idria, mostly to see what was there, and then backtracking and going out through Little Panoche. Once I popped out the other side, it was off to Santa Nella for a late lunch (the in-n-out is open!). And once I was there, I convinced myself to head off to Merced to look around and try for a nice sunset. Merced was really quiet, though, the Geese had headed to an evening roost nearby but off the refuge, and the Cranes were in small numbers and not particularly close to the tour route. The sunset I’d had hopes for turned into more or less a dud, enough so that I cleared out early.

Still, though, a nice and productive trip, although this is likely my last visit to Merced until fall. Some decent birding, some nice intense work with the cameras, and a nice day out where even the cell phone can’t interrupt. I’m just starting to work through the images, but some of them seem pretty nice. I’m really liking these new lenses and the quality of the images they generate, and the T3i is living up to my expectations and beyond as a second body. It looks to be a nice combo with the 24-105 for general shooting. More on that when I have a chance to do some more experimentation…

This shot is of a barn on a ranch on the early part the drive through Panoche. I loved its look, and how it was well-lit while framed in shadows. I ended up deciding to use two different shots of it, and then realized it would make a nice black and white as well, so I went and did conversions. I like all of these (but I think the first image in monochrome is my favorite). What’s your thought?

Farm Building on a Hill
Farm Building on a Hill

In the first, the sky was a bit too blown out, so I ended up cropping it out, but I like how I ended up with that composition.  These are all processed with dFine and Viveza 2, and the monochromes through silver efex pro (which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to upgrade…). That’s a much more complex workflow than “just” Lightroom, and that’s part of the set of decisions I’ve been chewing on the last few weeks (or longer) as well. More on that in a future blog post…

There’s a lot of interesting subject matter in Panoche Valley, and I’m just scratching the surface, but now that I’ve taken some extended time there with an eye to the environment and not just the birds, I’m starting to see places to shoot and seeing the times and weather where it can make them sing. It’s an area that’s going to be a long term project, though, that’s for sure…

Not that I’m complaining..

 

 

Posted in Photography - Landscapes, Road Trips

Fix The Sandbox

February 20, 2012 by chuq | 1 Comment

When I first saw what Apple was doing with the sandbox and the restrictions it causes, my guess was that they’re setting these restrictions up for something else — and it seems to me the most likely thing is there’s some new product line coming (next gen apple TV box, perhaps?) and if your app is compliant with the sandbox restrictions, it’ll work on this new device, day one.

So what they’re really doing is getting app developers writing for this new product line, without telling them that’s what’s going on. IF you fit within this box, you’ll fit on this new thing, whatever it is.

Just thinking out loud. But that seems very much like Apple.

 

Red Sweater Blog – Fix The Sandbox:

At its best sandboxing is a means for app developers to faithfully state their intentions in a manner that can be evaluated by users, and also be reliably enforced by the operating system. So if your new “Fun on Facebook” app declares its intention is to connect to the web, you might judiciously allow it. If it says it needs to write files to the root of the filesystem, you’d be wise to search for another app.

 

Sandboxing on the Mac works by providing developers with a standardized list of “entitlements” which are clear descriptions of things it would like to do on your Mac. Examples include: access the internet, read files from your Pictures folder, print things on your printer.

The number one broken thing about sandboxing as it stands today, is the list of entitlements is simply too limited. Many apps on the App Store, including my own, will need to have their functionality considerably diminished, or in some cases made outright useless, in order to accommodate the available list of entitlements that sandboxing offers.

 

 

Posted in Computers and Technology

Your Address Book Isn’t Yours

February 15, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

Your Address Book Isn’t Yours | PandoDaily:

When you agree to upload an address book en masse, you ignore this mish-mosh collection of agreements and are treating that data as if it’s yours, when it absolutely isn’t.

So, what do we do? We’re not going to come up with some magical replacement for good ol’ contact cards — it’s been tried before, and always falls to simplicity.

 

And if you stop to think about it, the company that understood this was Facebook, and it got roundly criticized by many in the tech elite for trying to limit people’s ability to slog this data around from service to service.

This was also something we tried to manage in Synergy in webOS, and we got roundly criticized for it, as well, because the mental model most people has is “my address book”, and it was a point of — discussion — I had with users and developers on a regular basis, because our decision to tie records to the service they came from made sense in some ways, but made it difficult to build the kind of PIM services people wanted. And part of the reason they wanted them was because those services existed long ago on Treos running webOS, and they couldn’t understand why they didn’t exist on webOS.

I’m not pretending that we got it 100% right (I don’t think we did, not close), but this is a problem that didn’t exist in the days of the Treo, where data didn’t live on 30 different services with 30 different terms and conditions.

This is a cat that needs to be belled, but I haven’t seen a mouse able to get close yet. Plaxo dealt with some of the micro issues, but not the macro challenges. The fact is, this is all brand new, and the rules of engagement (and disengagement) in a world where data is hyper distributed and not easily controlled by the owner.

And that’s my view of this — it doesn’t matter that the data lives in your address book, or on google, or iCloud or yahoo or wherever. It’s still MY data, even if I gave you permission to store a copy for your use. I should have the right to say how that’s to be used, and how it can be shared. Or whether.

Which means there needs to be some way to infinitely distribute that data while still having that data check with some authoritative point for both updates and access authorization.

You really want to be the service that controls (and monetizes) someone’s online identity? Solve that problem, and we’ll all use your service to manage how people access our personal information.

And until that happens, these fights and challenges will continue…

 

 

Posted in Computers and Technology

iPhone Address Book Fiasco Should Be Apple’s Cue to Build Its Own Social Network

February 15, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

iPhone Address Book Fiasco Should Be Apple’s Cue to Build Its Own Social Network:

Apple can take all that address book data and make a real social platform out of it, adding features like two-way friend confirmation, blocking users, public profiles, photo sharing, activity streams, whatever. Then, one click could let you import all that stuff, especially all those existing friend relationships, into apps. Eventually, this could even become a standalone social network service, like Facebook. Maybe call it “Friend Center”.

Why bother?

It’s hard to overstate the importance of social apps for Apple’s iOS platform. Many of its most popular apps are owned by social networks, including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. And many of its top games are social, too, ranging from “Words With Friends” to multi-player card games.

 

I think this is a great idea. I don’t see it happening.

There’s a problem here. You can’t build social networking systems if you don’t understand social networking. If you try, you get — Ping. You get Google Wave. You get Google Buzz.

Google finally figured that out, and put work into changing the corporate DNA and getting people in who saw these things as social systems and not engineering systems, and I think Google+ is a good system that’s getting better (it’s interesting to live in two worlds and hear both sides of the Google+ story — the geeky elite seem to put it down a lot, and the photographers caught on to it early and love it (I lean towards the Photographer opinion, for what it’s worth).

Google, though, is further down the social path than Apple. They at least grok the need to converse with users and be part of the social space, and they have done a fair amount of blogging (corporate and personal) and while Google Groups needs a massive makeover, well, Apple Groups are, um… And where is Apple’s presence in their own support forums?

Steve was simple not interested or supportive of the core of the social phenomenon, which was talking to customers. You can’t control a conversation, and Apple was about control. You can join into a conversation, you can influence it, you can do a lot of things, but you can’t control it. And so, Apple was never IN the conversation.

I expect this will change under Tim Cook, but the DNA to be successful in this is missing from Apple even more than it was missing from Google when they thought Buzz was the answer. There are people at Apple who would love to do these things, but I think it’s going to require big attitude shifts within the company, and an influx of people who can both understand the Apple way of things and mindset AND social systems before you have a hope of something like this happening. Which to me means it’s easily a few years off. And people who can translate social systems into something that won’t give Apple hives (and work to transform Apple into a mindset that will work in a social universe, too). I think this shift is necessary; this “snow blind” issue of Apple and social systems is a place where I think Apple’s success is at risk; it’s a way for a competitor to shift the market away from Apple in a way that Apple can’t compete with, similar to the way Apple used the iMac and design esthetics to do that to Microsoft in a way Microsoft couldn’t understand how to react to. Not an easy task, but it’s where I see a big vulnerability to a market disruption that Apple can’t fight.

This isn’t new. It was one of the things I was pushing to people who would listen, way back before I left Apple.

Jobs I wish I could have taken at Apple (Apple Post-mortem, part 2 of some number….) @ Chuqui 3.0:

 

2) Community architect for iTunes. This is one I actually had some discussions about. Maybe you’re familiar with Pandora or last.fm? One of the questions I’ve had since the start of iTunes (and the Clear-Channel-ification of broadcast radio) was how people found out about new and interesting music. It’s sure not on broadcast radio any more, especially here in Silicon Valley. Pandora and last.fm are heading in that area — but what if you could turn the iTunes community into a real recommendation service? And how would you do it? there are some very simplistic tools in iTunes today that are “very Amazon” and not “very community” — and they’re nice, as far as they go. I felt that there was a lot of opportunity to build something really sharp and best of show. There was definitely interest among some folks inside iTunes, too. It may well happen — it just won’t be something I did. ohwell. Here’s hoping, though. There’s such opportunity here.

3) Community architect for .Mac. Although honestly, .Mac needs a lot more than community building. Allow me to defer detailed discussion of .Mac for later (remind me if I forget….), but while I think it’s good for many things, there are lots of things Apple really ought to do with .Mac (they should have bought Flickr, dammit, to name just one), and Mac Groups are barely adequate for organizing a church picnic. But there are some decent bones here to build from, if they’d just commit to doing so. Unfortunately, I just never got the feeling they would.

 

And now, six years later, we have — Ping — and iCloud, and Apple’s emergence into the social fabric of the net is still, well, completely missing. Well, Phil Schiller now tweets once or twice a month…

Apple should be going in this direction. I see no indication they are. Apple needs to bring people in who can help them, people who both understand these technologies and understand Apple and its culture. Good luck finding them. And it’s going to take Tim Cook and Eddy and Phil and the top execs committing to not just integrating twitter into IOS in some superficial way, but bringing this stuff into Apple and the Apple mindset and corporate DNA.

The one thing I do know is that Tim Cook understands how Steve made Apple successful, but he’s not Steve, and he has his own ideas and vision. He’s started shifting Apple down different paths already; he’s much more likely to have his own blog than steve ever would have, for instance, and he’s a lot less controlling, but not less demanding. So I think the possibilities are there in ways not possible as long as Steve was in charge.

But still, I’m not holding my breath.

 

 

Posted in Computers and Technology, Social Media

I got a rock.

February 3, 2012 by chuq | 2 Comments

HP proxy: Ray Lane’s $10 million plus comp and other fun facts — Tech News and Analysis:

Lane, who became executive chairman of HP on September 22, 2011 (he had been non-executive chairman since November 1, 2010, the start of HP’s FY 2011)  logged more than $10 million in total compensation — the bulk of it in stock and options — for the fiscal year, according to the HP proxy.

Other highlights from the proxy:

 

 

 

Meg Whitman who famously took the HP CEO position in September for $1 in salary, gets $16 million in stock and options. Former CEO Leo Apotheker walked away with $30.4 million when he was fired by HP last September.

 

Igotarock

Except for my first year tenure, when they couldn’t even afford that. (but don’t feel bad for me, according to them, I was very well compensated).

 

 

Posted in About Chuq

A quick look at January….

February 1, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

1/12th of the year is gone already. How time flies when you’re having fun…

I apologize for the quiet on the blog the last week. Blame it on a rhino-virus, which took just enough out of me to make sitting on the couch a lot more attractive than other options. Tonight I’m back off sedated, off the Aftrin, energy levels almost back to normal, so I thought I’d check in and remind folks I’m alive.

I’m into my sixth week at the new gig, and things seem to be progressing well. It’s been this whirlwind of meeting folks, listening to them, offering them our views, and trying to figure out what exactly we need to do (as opposed to what we were hired to do). We’ve made lots of progress, we’ve gotten the contract with the developers approved, I’ve gotten the first round of wireframes making the rounds and the various teams looking at them haven’t laughed or cried yet. But we’re just scratching the surface; I’m already mentally planning a year out, and trying to make sure when we get there, we have what we need. Good stuff so far. My new cohort in crime and I seem to sync up well in complementary ways, and it’s nice being in an environment of yes.

January was a positive month for my online stuff and a good start to the year, despite my being pretty quiet the last week or so. Overall visits were up 60% over December with page views up 50% — and up 110% over January 2011. Traffic to my photos on smugmug rocketed to almost double my previous highest page view month. I got my first video experiment up, and it got 125+ views and good feedback and some very useful critiques. I only got out with the camera twice, but both were very intensive trips and both generated some really nice images — but I also got the trees pruned before the apricot budded and I’m making good progress on some neglected work in the yard and the house — much as I wish I could spend all my spare time out with the camera, there are other things I like doing as well. I also filed 13 reports with eBird for a good start to the year — one lifer and 114 species to the year list, my best january since 2009, which beat it by about 8 species, and if I hadn’t caught this stupid cold, I’d probably have gotten out one more sunday and caught it.

And I’ve started the redesign of this site and my online stuff, although you probably won’t see it for a while. it’s not just swapping in a new theme, from the looks of it. But that’s where my evening focus is right now (that, and skyrim and the sharks). I am working to shift to a more active creation attitude from a content consumption mentality, and so far, I think things are headed in the right direction.

Most popular pieces in the month?

Although I have decided, for the short term, to focus on blog writing and the blog redesign as the primary tasks, and photography as the third wheel. Other stuff will wait to later in the year, just so I can keep focus on things I want finished sooner.

So I’m hoping to carry this forward into February, and see what happens. It’s both nice and scary to be through January, because I feel like i’ve accomplished a lot and set things up to accomplish even more — but I’m not sure where the month went. Been good, and busy. Better than the alternatives, I guess.

 

Posted in About Chuq

Does my favorite author now have to spend a couple hours a day on Facebook?

January 25, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

January 24, 2012 | Trent Nelson | Photojournalist:

Tech people keep saying that artists can make it without the distribution systems, and they all trot out Jonathan Coulton as the example of someone who has made it on his own (by the way, he’s amazing). He offers his music for free, or you can buy it, and he does great. Hooray, there’s one guy making it. One guy.

Okay, you can add Radiohead and Louis CK, but both made their reputations over years in the old media system and only now have the power to make independent new media work. That’s three, so I’m still seeing a lot of artists left out in the cold.

Here’s a question to think about as a new artist-friendly distribution model evolves…

The employees of the old media distribution system did a lot of work, like promotion, financing, and obviously distribution. Who is going to do that in the new model? The artists? Does my favorite author now have to spend a couple hours a day on Facebook? Because I really want my favorite author working on the next book, not tweeting or other garbage that could be handled by someone else.

The problem with the old model was that the distribution system forgot who they worked for and started to think they were the important part. The new system will turn it around and put the creatives in charge. Maybe the band of the future will sign a record company to a deal instead of the other way around.

 

There are actually a bunch of people making it. But they tend to be smaller, they tend not to have a big PR machine pumping them onto the networks. The old system tended to push massive success towards a very few, whether it was Stephen King or Michael Jackson. There was a middle ground where you could grind out a living (and occasionally someone would turn that into a very lucrative business, like the Grateful Dead did). And there was a huge mass that the old systems didn’t want anything to do with at all that never got a break. And in most cases, they old system was right (ever sit down and read a slush pile in a publisher’s office? Seriously, most of it, be glad they filtered the worst of it away).

But yeah, that also limited access to some good talent as well. And as this new model evolves and matures, eventually the old system will figure out how to find and pull talent out of the pool and turn them into the next Stephen King or Michael Jackson and they’ll continue to be the promoters and publicity pushers for the elite super-earners. But their role as gatekeepers is diminishing, and will die off.

thank god (but that also means that we need to find other ways to protect ourselves from that slush pile, folks; in whatever form it takes).

Does this mean your favorite author will have to spend time pushing themselves on Facebook? When starting out, yes. But look at someone like Trey Ratcliff. He’s just hired something like his tenth employee. As his business grew and his revenues went up, he brought people in to take on parts of it. That’s always been the case with small businesses. That is the model we’ll see moving forward. The talent (whether singer, video maker, photographer, app developer or author) will continue to do the parts they’re good at and enjoy doing; as their income grows, they can farm out other parts — bring in someone to help with marketing and publicity, or proofreading, or formatting their ebooks, or handling Facebook. Whatever is not economic to do themselves, but needs doing.

This is nothing new. But it does mean you can’t succeed JUST by being a good talent; you need to be able to run your business, too (or get successful enough to hire someone to run it for you); in fiction, agents sometimes took that on. For that matter, that’s a common case for pro sports, too. I expect you’ll see the agent role mutate into more of a business manager instead of a submission broker.

The model for this is well known; it’s not new, and it’s been used successfully for a long time. What’s really happening is that all of these talent-centric industries are moving to that model with increasing speed, and the transition is at best unsettling for those caught in the middle. And it’s going to create problems and failure for some, and opportunities and success for others.

Which, honestly, sounds a lot like what talking movies did to silents, and what television did to radio, back in the day. And in both of those cases, some people woke up without a future, some people moved from one to the other just fine, and some found opportunities created where none existed before. But now, just being a good writer (or singer, of photographer, or…) isn’t enough to be a successful one.

If it ever really was. (I have my doubts).

(hat tip: BW Jones)

Posted in Social Media, The Writing Life

The Day the Internet Grew Up

January 22, 2012 by chuq | 1 Comment

A VC: A Post PIPA Post:

these two bills were drafted by the MPAA and the RIAA and walked into Washington without an iota of conversation with the technology industry. I can’t tell you how many Senators and Representatives have told me that they were told by the MPAA and the RIAA that the technology industry was on board and that these issues would not impact the Internet and tech community adversely. This is no way for one industry to propose that Congress regulate another industry. I think it is absurd that one industry would have the arrogance to think it is appropriate to ask Congress to regulate another industry for them. And yet that is what went down on these bills.

Back in 1988 (before many of you were potty trained…), I wrote this April Fools joke for the net. the in-jokes are a bit dated, but this part sums up the attitude of the internet then, and through the years:

Note: This conference is a rescheduling of the conference originally
scheduled for October, 1988 but cancelled after the United States Department
of Commerce decided that the material was too sensitive to allow
non-American citizens to read (including the material written by the
Canadians on the committee). Because of this, the conference has been moved
to Canada, which doesn’t have a complete Freedom of Speech written into it’s
constitution, but has better things to do than worry about ways of
circumventing civil rights. Americans having trouble getting their papers
cleared for distribution at the conference should contact Professor Shikele
about setting up a direct uucp link for the troff source.

For many years, the net was too small for the authorities to worry about, and this “wild west” mentality ruled, that the rules didn’t apply. And in many cases, they didn’t. As the net has grown and gone mainstream, this attitude has continued, although increasingly, whether it’s been the companies stomped in court when they became too annoying (like Napster) or countries like China implementing massive censorship firewalls (and the accompanying controversies as companies have to decide whether to go along with them or not).

The day the net went dark over Sopa is, to me, the day the Internet grew up and became an adult. Instead of thinking we can just sneak around doing what we want in the alleys and not get caught — we now realize we need to sit at the table with the adults and talk (and argue) with them as adults. The net mobilized and forced some major and entrenched powers to back down. They won’t get caught by surprise next time, and don’t for a minute believe they’re done with this.

But, and it’s a big but — neither will we, both collectively as “the internet” and the big companies that drive the net like Google and Apple and Facebook. They clearly realize they can’t let others drive the agenda and sit on the sideline, so you can expect everyone to get more involved in the process in Washington — because like that game or not, we can no longer pretend we’re immune to it or can ignore it.

I think the entertainment industry badly misplayed their hand through arrogance, and I think they’re going to regret it.

Because I think they woke the sleeping dragon, and the dragon now has their eye on them. They won’t be able to sneak their way through Congress without a fight, and many of their allies in Congress now realize that the fight is going to require them to take sides. And I bet a bunch of them will realize the tech industry is a better side to be on.

But now is the time for those companies that represent the industry and the net to make it clear to Congress that they expect a seat at the table in future discussions. And you can bet, the entertainment industry won’t like that. Not that I care what they think…

 

Posted in The Internet

Why I walked away from my fiction. and why I’m back…

January 21, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

Dan’s Blog:

I have a confession to make, it’s been three weeks since I did any serious writing.  I’m supposed to be finished with my next book right now.  Fact is I’m a little less than halfway through.  I’d like to blame it on the holidays or the fact that I’m juggling writing, being Mr. Mom, and taking a class in programing.  Heck I’d settle for blaming it on my rampant ADD, I’m easy that way.

Truth is, however, that I’m not writing because I’m just not seeing any future in it.  The writing industry is changing rapidly right now and even if I got a contract on my last book, who knows if the market will be there when it comes out?  Then there’s the whole e-self-publishing route where no one really knows what’s going on but we know that some people are selling millions of books.  Quite frankly it sounds like there are better odds playing the lottery.  (For the mathematically challenged, playing the lottery is only slightly less risky than throwing your money down the garbage disposer.)

So, for the last three weeks or so, I’ve been kicking an idea around in the back of my head.

What if I just quit?

I mean lets face it, while I have been published four times, I haven’t cracked the level of success where I can actually make a living.  I used to be a hotshot computer programmer and, while my skills are very rusty, I can whip them back into shape.  Programmers make good money (provided you move out of Utah, which I could do).  Heck, I’ve worked in the game industry and have contacts there, maybe it’s time to resurrect that dream.

So what if I quit?

If we can set the wayback machine back to about 1995 for a minute….

I had hit that point where I had published enough stories to qualify for active membership in SFWA. I was starting to get solicited for stories for anthologies, and was right at that cusp where I seemed to be getting the acceptance knod on a regular basis. I had a novel in progress, a second in planning.

And I had to make a decision. Geeking computers paid well, and I enjoyed it. Writing SF/F didn’t pay well and I enjoyed it. I was convinced I couldn’t do both well at the same time and have a real life, too. I chose computers, and retired from writing. Why?

Because I looked at what I wrote, and where I slotted into the industry, and I saw the squeeze coming. I was a midlist novelist; I read for entertainment, my favorite books were the kind of things you picked up when you were tired after a long day at work to relax and enjoy. That was the kind of fiction I wrote, and wanted to write. If I were to name a single name, I’d say I wanted to be James White when I grew up. (those of you now going “what? who?”, well, my point. but click through and grab that volume and have a fun evening or three).

The problem was that even back then, almost 20 years ago, you could see the midlist part of the publishing world shrinking and the collapse starting. Chain bookstore buying practices was increasingly pushing the buttons on who got published; chain bookstore return practices was continuing to shred the time a published paperback was actually on a shelf where it could be bought. The first author I knew had found out their first novel sales were weak enough that the chains wouldn’t buy their next book, even though the editors loved it (he ended up going behind a pseudonym and breaking out pretty well — the pseudonym is now a pretty successful author). Advances were flat to down. The short fiction market was already shrinking. Sharecrop universes (star wars, star trek, etc) were growing and taking shelf space from the midlist, too. In talking to other authors, the midlist grind was getting tougher and tougher.

So that was the publishing universe I was contemplating. It’s possible I could have written something that broke out, but if I didn’t, I might be a book or three into it, and without a publisher because some algorithm at Barnes and Noble didn’t like my trend line. I was never a fast writer like Dean or Kris or Mike, so the multi-genre, multi-name publishing empire wasn’t an option, and I didn’t have the many years of backlist to fall back on Mike has. I had sharecrop opportunities — but I wanted to write my stories, not someone else’s.

So I shut it down and walked away from my fiction, knowing some day I’d probably fire it up again. As it turns out, my worries about the midlist getting squeezed came true, and the market got increasingly tough. And I haven’t done badly in the computer industry, so I made the right choices.

I was at Apple when they shipped iTunes, and I watched as it transformed and disrupted the music industry, I’ve watched the video side of entertainment slowly disrupt (primarily because the studios were determined not to let Apple do to them what happened to the music industry, even if it killed them. Which it still might). I’ve seen the online universe disrupt my dad’s world, newspapers, and seen this tsunami washing through all of the traditional media universes.

Smartphones came along, and with them, apps, and I saw in that the path to the book reader. When I got the opportunity to go to Palm, I grabbed it, because I wanted a chance to influence this if I could. Then came the the iPad and the Kindle, and my muse rang the servants bell from her tower, and when I unlocked the door, she looked at me and said “it’s time”.

And it is. And one reason I didn’t go to work for Nokia (or Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or… — all of which I talked to in some way, shape or form along the way) was I didn’t want my “real” job to create conflicts with my ability to figure out how I and my writing fit into all of this, the way the rules at HP did. Even if I end up never doing anything significant down this path, it was a path I wanted the freedom to explore.)

That’s why Dan’s blog post struck me as it did. He published into the market I walked away from, because I saw it as — on balance — a success path with too many risks given the benefits and effort. Especially compared to geeking computers. He’s now seeing what I see as that chance I’ve been waiting to happen for almost 20 years as the end of his opportunity. And if you only see traditional publishing as your future, you’re correct.

But what is happening here is the rebirth of the midlist, which since that seems to be where Dan’s work lives, should be cause for celebration. No more “that book you spent a year writing has three weeks on the shelf to find an audience”. Instead, the shelfs are now almost literally infinitely large, and your work has an almost infinite time to find its audience. It’s ability to find an audience is now very much up to the author; that may be scary, but if you’re a midlist writer, the push you got from your publisher was little more than “here’s a pretty cover and we’ll pray” anyway, and heck, find a good artist to do covers for you…

So my advice to Dan is this — you beat the odds in a big way by getting published in the old markets; this isn’t the end of times, but the beginning of a better time where you can succeed, and better yet, have a big say in that success. Read Dean and Kris. Read Mike Stackpole. Read Passive Voice, and start understanding how you can take advantage of these new opportunities. Go see what Lawrence Block is doing.

There are a lot of unknowns in this, but out of that, a lot of opportunity. A much better opportunity than existed back when I walked away. And 2012 is where it looks like it’s all going to come together.

 

 

 

 

 

(via Passive Voice)

Posted in The Writing Life

Apple’s publishing announcement, and the usual commentary

January 20, 2012 by chuq | 2 Comments

Tell me if this sounds vaguely familiar. Apple announces they’re going to announce something. A few details leak. The speculation goes crazy, and the usual suspects end up deciding that what Apple needs to do includes a couple of puppies, a unicorn, three rainbows and free coffee for life.

Apple makes their announcement. It merely includes one puppy, a pony and a rainbow. No free coffee.

And the usual suspects jump on Apple because the product isn’t what they decided they wanted, even though that was clearly not what Apple ever intended it to be. This is somehow Apple’s fault.

The big criticisms coming back at the announcement seem to boil down to:

It’s for the iPad only, and it isn’t a publishing environment that can be used for other devices or platforms (like the Kindle).

And the licensing says if you sell it, you have to sell it via Apple’s iBook store.

Horrors.  And, evidently, that kind of licensing is unprecedented.

Well, no, it’s not. If you view the iBook store as a platform, which many pundits have already declared it to be, than the new Apple book publisher tool is the equivalent of its SDK. And it’s not unprecedented for a company to limit use of it’s developer tools to its platform. We did that with webOS, where if you wanted to build webOS applications and sell them, you had to sell them through our store.

Matthew Ingram @ GigaOM worries this puts this content deep into Apple’s walled garden, and I sympathize, but there’s no licensing restriction that keeps you from publishing your content on other platforms using other tools; merely not using this tool to publish on those platforms. That’s a standard business decision about going cross-platform. If the market warrants it, you take your source code and build it for two platforms, only in this case, those platforms are iBook and Kindle instead of IOS and Android. In my mind, it’s a non-issue, just like it’s a non-issue to worry that publishing Angry Birds on the iPad might keep it off of other platforms. It won’t — if there’s a market for it. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Apple to “not make it easy” to publish on competitive platforms, that’s not in their self-interest.

Much as I want a multi-platform, one-button, publish my stuff everywhere tool — I fully understand why Apple wants to see some return on the investment it made in its tools, and I never expected Apple to create that. Ultimately, Apple is about selling hardware, so the way you do that is target the results of the tools to the platform that runs on that hardware. That’s what Apple did.

The alternative is to charge for the tools up front. If they did that, we’d simply be having a different argument, and the chance of adoption would go down dramatically. Now, if you want to do content to give away, you have many more options then if Apple charged $99 for this too. And if you plan on charging for it, well, don’t complain about Apple wanting a piece. That’s business.

Thinking that Apple should build a tool and give it away for free that enables you to put your content on the Kindle store and sell it? Incredibly naive, if you really think they should do that.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the publishing tool I was hoping to see, primarily because of these licensing restrictions. On the other hand, what I wanted it to be was never what Apple intended to build, and I didn’t really think they would.

I do think, however, that now that we’ve seen how Apple built this, it’s only a matter of time before some third party does build a tool very like it that does spit out a PDF and a Kindle doc and an iBook doc from the same tool. Apple has defined the direction, and (not surprisingly), targeted it to benefit Apple. I know this upsets some of the geeks, but hey, ultimately they have to pay the bills somehow. In this case, by convincing folks to put content on iPads instead of Kindles and Fires and TouchPads (hah. just kidding) through building really good tools to build it with. (and that’ll work. Just watch).

These tools will arrive for the other platforms, now that Apple has (again) set the bar. It’s not like Apple built a closed platform; others can build tools to publish to iBook as well, without the licensing restrictions. And they will (it should be Adobe, but it won’t be, I bet).

And this is a 1.0 product, in a new market they’ve been involved in for less than 24 hours. Free Coffee takes time to brew. And it’s far from unprecedented for Apple to build the basic product, stick the flag in the ground, and say “we don’t really know where it goes from here, so we’ll ship it and innovate as we find out where we need to go” — they did that with iTunes, and it didn’t turn out badly (and with iAds, where it didn’t turn out so well). You have to start somewhere, and if you wait until all of the features are thought out and implemented, you lose, because someone else will have shipped something first and pushed the market away from you.

The only problem I see here is the common one with Apple announcements: it’s not the product people fantasized it would be. And my guess is that like other times when the tech echo chamber roundly raised up in horror over not getting enough free coffee and rainbows, the criticisms will be ignored by those the product was really intended for, and it’ll be a nice success. Which will only annoy the pundits even more….

I really like what I saw today. I’m admittedly disappointed that it doesn’t serve my personal goals — in other words, I’m going to experiment with it, but probably not publish through it — but I’m not the intended audience. Fortunately, I actually recognize that, so I don’t take it personally. And I see how this can be extended later, and how third parties can compete against it and build on its foundations, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be too long before I do start getting the tools I want, driven out by what Apple set in motion today.

And I think this will impact the education system in a number of good ways, too. Which is bigger and more important than getting me what I want, anyway…

(hat tip, Daring Fireball and ReadWriteWeb)

 

Posted in Computers and Technology

Gary’s Guaranteed Rooter

January 19, 2012 by chuq | Comments Off

Friday night started “one of those” weekends. Laurie called me in from the other room, because water is flowing from under the toilet. The wax seal has failed. hint: this is not good.

Worse, our other one has been, well, offline for a few weeks because we dropped a shampoo bottle in it and it’s been on the “we can’t fix it ourselves, so we need to get someone out here to take care of this” list.

So we got everything under control, got towels down, etc. and since it was late, got to bed. In the morning, I called the plumber, Gary, at Gary’s Guaranteed Rooter. We’d used him before when we got that slab leak that needed some major surgery. He agreed to get out here as soon as he could.

And literally, as soon as I got off the phone with him, we started getting sewage back out of the bathtubs, and up around the toilets. So it wasn’t (just) a bad wax seal, but a full sewage blockage.

And hilarity ensued. And Gary got a second phone call, and re-arranged his other appointments, and generally got his butt out here as fast as he could, pulled off a miracle or two, got everything cleared up, the toilets fixed, and just because he could, fixed a dripping sink while he was here.

I know enough about plumbing (thank you, This Old House) to know when I shouldn’t be mucking with it, and enough to have some idea what needs to be done. Gary’s now pulled out butt’s out of the fire twice, and he’s not only a good plumber who knows his stuff, he gives a damn. If you need a plumber, from San Jose up the peninsula, he’s a good option to have, especially when the, um, stuff is hitting the fan. In this case, literally.

And despite short notice turning into this oh-my-god emergency, his prices are fair. His number is (650) 766-7821; it’s one you probably want to stick in your address book for that day when you really need it, because when you really need it, you don’t want to go thrashing around trying to figure out who to call…

(And now life is back to normal, although one of the bathroom rugs is a goner; all of the towels have gone through the “sanitize” cycle, and hopefully, we won’t have to worry about this for a while. We’ve been in this house since the mid 90′s, and this is the first time we’ve had this problem. Hopefully, with a bit of scheduled maintenance, we can keep it from happening again…)

 

 

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