The Book of Brian

Now this is just sad. /b/ users from the popular picture board site 4Chan have a long history of setting up attacks against various individuals, groups, and corporations, but many are arguing that they’ve gone too far in their recent attack – not only by targeting an 11-year-old girl who clearly has some sort of developmental issue (or so it would appear – the kid, some would say, “had it coming” in this sense, but really you can’t get past the fact that she’s 11), but also by spreading private information regarding a minor as well as sexually explicit photos. Essentially, once your trolling reaches the point of spreading child pornography, you’ve gone too far.

Of course this isn’t enough for our fellow /b/tards, deciding that hell needs to be put on Gawker Media for revealing this story and posting information about it to the general public. The site’s been repeatedly attacked due to this story they’ve posted on the matter.

My opinion? Leave out the eleven year old girl, but the father’s managed to make quite a spectacle of himself. I support this meme!

Is awesome.

I don’t really see a difference, but here we go.

I know this has been all over the internet lately, but gosh darn it I just had to share if there’s anyone out there reading this who hasn’t heard of Merton’s Chat Roulette Piano Improv. This is the original, unedited copy.

Check out the full screenshot gallery here.

Computing has taken an odd turn lately. These days it seems like you can’t browse a technology related site without being overwhelmed by mobile platforms, such as the iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile, but you’ll be damned to find anything of interest about traditional PC platforms. With products such as these latest Android tablets and Apple’s iPad, it’s not hard to figure out where manufacturers and developers know where the money is going forward. That’s why Microsoft recently took the time to develop and create a brand spanking new mobile operating system from scratch, replacing the archaic Windows Mobile brand. Microsoft, which had apparently forgotten about it’s mobile platform, had up to now been getting absolutely crushed by Apple and Google’s efforts, and Windows Phone 7 is their chance for vindication.

In this first of my two-part series of articles, I’m going to review, product wise, the build of Windows Phone 7 that Microsoft gave away to developers at their recent MIX conference. In the second part, I’m going to give you my semi-educated predictions about how it fits into the future of mobile computing. It’s important to note that this review is covering a product that is still in development, and should be taken as such. Features covered here may (or may not) be included in the final release of Windows Phone 7, or may be included in an entirely different way.

First, the facts. The build of Windows Phone 7 presented here identifies itself as Windows Mobile 7.0.6077.WM7_MixDevTools(buildlab).20100304-1530. Which means that it was compiled on March 4th, 2010 – so pretty recently. Let me start off by saying that when I first saw how Windows Phone 7 was operated, I went around claiming that it looked confusing and hard to use. The swiping left and right simply wasn’t natural, I said. After having used it myself, I can officially say that I was 100% wrong on this one. As a matter of fact, it feels very natural. The home screen while different than what’s included on systems like the iPhone and Android is actually pretty nice, and works pretty well. You can press down on any one tile and then rearrange the screen as you deem fit, or you could delete the tiles completely. To get to the list of your application, you simply swipe your finger to the left and you’ve reached the Start Menu.

This build of Windows Phone 7 has all of the niceties and features that you’d expect from any modern day phone – Camera, Calculator, Games, Alarms, Calendar are all good examples. However this build also comes with an early version of the complete Office suite, a pretty nice touch and a good nod to the power users that Apple has, up to this point, ignored. While incredibly basic, the software does what it’s supposed to and works well. You can format text to the basic levels – color, bold, italicize, and bold. Simple.

Another place where Windows Phone 7 really shines once put into perspective is the built in internet experience. Again powered by Internet Explorer, Microsoft has pulled no shortage of punches this time around, powering it with their Internet Explorer 7 browser technology. What that means is full, desktop level browsing with compatibility to plenty of sites. Compared to the absolute piece of trash that was included in Windows Mobile 6, this is the greatest improvement found in Windows Phone 7. Absolutely. However, compared to Mobile Safari, it’s fairly basic and lackluster. It’s also fairly buggy, but I attribute that more to the early status of this build and I fully expect the final product to be stable in all fashions. They have plenty of time to improve.

Another nice touch is the inclusion of the full featured Zune experience. Any Windows Phone 7 owner has access to the same great UI and feature set of the Zune HD, and while it wasn’t completely functional in this build, what is there works well. The Marketplace looks simply beautiful, visually outshining Apple’s Store in every way. Also there is the wifi sync feature, something Apple desperately needs to include in the iPhone.

There are a couple of other niceties thrown about. While on the home screen, click the physical search button on your phone and get greeted by a nice Bing app that does an awesome job replicating the real thing. The daily picture, the fun facts, it’s all there. It also integrates local searches with a Bing map – so if you type in “Sal’s Pizza” and swipe over to the “Local” side, you’ll get the locations and information of all the Sal’s Pizza’s around you. It’s a much better way of finding that information than the iPhone’s. There is also a couple of apps that probably won’t make it in the final product, given Microsoft’s new vision for the operating system – there’s a task manager application, and a file manager application both which are pretty ugly and barebones.

Here’s where the problems lie. Microsoft, in it’s mostly successful attempts at going forward and gaining lost ground, have taken 10 steps forward and 2 steps back. Every single time I use the operating system, I keep coming back to the same limiting factors – much like the iPhone, Windows Phone 7 is artificially limited to one third-party application at a time. No multitasking. So yeah, while you can listen to MP3s while surfing the web, you won’t be able to listen to that Pandora station you love so much while playing Solitaire. This is something that everybody, even the most diehard Apple fan, has been screaming at Apple to include and the one advantage that Windows Mobile 6 had in the end is no more. That’s not to say that Microsoft doesn’t hold other cards over Apple now – they certainly do – but it’s still a disappointment in a product that needs to be as close to perfect as possible to be able to compete with what’s out there today. Secondly, there’s no copy and paste. Again, such a ridiculously basic feature that Apple was missing all along and had everybody in a hissy fit. Why Microsoft hasn’t learned from Apple’s mistakes, I’ll never know. But it’s really a bad move. And finally, third-party application support. Microsoft has a HUGE infrastructure of sometimes-okay third party applications already existing going into the war, so why not leverage it? Instead, Windows Phone 7 drops all compatibility with existing code in favor for a complete reboot. There’s not an emulator in sight. Any Windows Mobile applications you’ve bought if you’re a consumer, or designed if you’re a developer will simply stop working if you upgrade. And that’s really sad.

Windows Phone 7, even at this early stage, is pretty damn good. In fact, it’s more than “pretty good”, and more than even “above average”. It’s just plain great. Microsoft is finally putting out a worthy competitor to the iPhone and Android, they’re finally realizing what a goldmine the whole mobile sector is and they’re finally chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If you have any desire for a Windows branded phone, wait. Don’t get suckered in by the allure of HTC-based Windows Mobile 6.5 devices, not even the HD2. By year’s end you’ll have something vastly better. I promise.

So this week had promised to be one of the biggest weeks in the mobile phone industry, and while I originally had doubts that Microsoft would be able to deliver on everybody’s hopes of creating a product worthy of major attention in an attempt to get back into the smartphone game, I was happily surprised. Windows Mobile 7, forever to be known as Windows Phone 7 Series, really is a radical departure from their previous attempt, Windows Mobile 6. And when you first look at it, it really does look like it’s mainly sunshine and roses from this point on. We asked for a change, and boy did we get it. But is the grass really greener on the other side?

Microsoft is a company that, as a whole, has little experience truly innovating in any field. Two notable exceptions in my eyes has been the XBox line, specifically the XBox 360, which invented the concept of a next generation gaming platform should be. The second exception was the Zune HD. As a matter of fact, when the Zune HD was first released, I went around telling everybody who would listen that what Microsoft really needed to do was just completely trash Windows Mobile 6 and replace it with an enhanced version of the Zune HD operating system. And I was thrilled at first glance to realize that this is exactly what they did. Make no mistake, Windows Phone 7 is an enhanced version of the Zune HD OS. So what’s the problem? Isn’t this exactly what I wanted?

Well, not exactly. My vision of Windows Phone 7 was an operating system that took all of the good parts of the Zune HD experience – the amazingly innovative (albeit slightly overwhelming) UI, the much more enhanced version of Internet Explorer than their last mobile version that’s actually sort of comparable to Mobile Safari, an actual finger friendly interface, capacitive touch screen support, and multitouch support – and mixing it with the features that Windows Mobile 6 “traditionally” held over the competition – such as multitasking, and copy and paste. The issue is, Microsoft takes all of the cards that they had held and often mocked Apple about, and just completely threw them down the drain.

Windows Phone 7 has no multitasking. That’s right, Windows Phone 7 has no multitasking. Basically the single card that Microsoft has consistently held over Apple, they just shredded it. When asked about multitasking, a Microsoft representative had this to say:

Yeah, so the core operating system in Windows Phone 7 Series phones is a modern multitasking operating system which we use for a lots of things. If you play music, for example, the music will play back as you navigate around the experience and be smooth and glitch-free and all those sorts of things. If you’re using email, we have great support for push email, and that happens in the background.

For third party applications, we’ll get into a lot more detail on this in MIX, but we have a few ways we going to make sure that 3rd parties can bring their value to the user even when the app is not running. Live tiles are an example. Data feeds in the hubs are another example. (http://gizmodo.com/5472235/windows-phone-7-apps-what-we-know-what-we-dont)

But wait! That’s not describing multitasking… why… that’s describing Apple’s implementation of “multitasking” as it exists in iPhone 3.x… push notifications! That’s right, Windows Phone 7 forgoes proper multitasking for push notifications. Live tiles and data feeds are fine and dandy for your average instant messaging application, but it won’t cut it for Pandora.

Oh, wait, that’s another issue I have with Windows Phone 7. Absolutely, positively, no compatibility with WM6.x apps. None. Nothing. Not an emulation layer in sight. So if you’re a big corporation who not too long ago spent tons of resources building an application for the still relatively large Windows Mobile 6 install base, you’re basically stuck with what you have now with little room to grow in the future. If you want to continue to grow, you’ll need to completely rebuild your application for WP7. So for the end user, too, expect absolutely nothing out of the box, similar to how Apple started from scratch in 2007. You’d think Microsoft would want to utilize their large install base to get the upper hand on their competition… but no. They’re confident enough to feel as though they can pull an Apple here. I really hope that they can, because Palm thought they could, too, with the WebOS… and we know how well that’s taken off. And they have an emulator which allows people to run apps designed for their old OS.

Thirdly, no copy and paste support. This one literally made me laugh out loud. Absolutely no copy and paste support! None! It’s truly hysterical to me that Microsoft, not too long ago, was harassing Apple up and down for this very issue. Microsoft fanboys were joining on the fun at the time, too – but now that the tables are turned, I don’t see those same people talking about copy and paste now. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/02/15/first-impressions-windows-mobile-7-now-known-as-windows-phone/)

These are just my first impressions, and besides everything I posted here, it’s important for me to note that for the first time in years, Windows Mobile looks promising. These are all issues – and very real issues – but none of this can’t be overcome, in time. Microsoft could very well implement copy and paste before release. They could release an emulation layer that allows for classic Windows Mobile apps to run on Windows Phone. They could allow multitasking. And I’m really hoping they do. I’m not rooting against them. By criticizing, I’m rooting for them.

So this is a warning to everybody out there: this is not a diet based on any sort of super-scientific research, nor is this guaranteed to wield any sort of weight loss. It’s just some tricks and tips that I’ve picked up that I feel are important enough that everybody should at least attempt.

Stop drinking sodas. Drink water instead. This is the very first step I took before I was even trying to figure out what’s healthy and what’s not. Soda contains large amounts of sugar (or high fructose corn syrup), as well as tons of other little chemicals such as preservatives which just aren’t natural. The common trend in this list is this: if it’s made in a laboratory, don’t eat it. Diet Sodas are included in this, seeing as 99.9% of diet sodas contain Splenda/Aspartame instead of sugar, which some studies have shown has the potential to increase your risk of cancer. Trust me, you’ll feel so much better by the first week of doing this. Also water isn’t the only thing you can drink – some juices, such as blueberry juice, is absolutely amazing for you in moderation.

Switch to whole grain. This one’s also a little bit of a no brainer – switch to whole grain, if you can. In my opinion whole grain has a much better texture, and has tons of health benefits for you as well. You’ll also find that you can get whole grain in products you already love. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Poptarts, and those little fish crackers all are great examples of products that have the same taste that you know and love, but with the added health benefits of whole grain.

Stop eating traditional chips/”crisps”. There are a whole bunch of alternatives to the average “Lays” potato chips that everybody seems to buy lately. Lays themselves makes a baked alternative which you can find at basically any market. Some of my favorite chips are the famous Cape Cod Reduced Fat Potato Chips, which really cut out a ton of the fat content in their originals and compared to Lays, and they taste better, too. There are alternatives to your standard Market Basket branch corn chips  as well. Instead of the regular corn chips, try finding “Good Food Should Taste Good” brand multigrain chips – they’re absolutely delicious, and much healthier than your average corn chip.

Change the way you consume dairy. Another good one. Today we see all too many people drinking whole milk, or eating american cheese with their meals. Switch to 1% of even fat-free milk, and maybe to provolone cheese instead of american. If you’re a cheese and crackers sort of guy, may I recommend that you switch your regular cheese with Cabot 50% or 75% Reduced Fat Sharp Cheddar. It’s amazing.

Switch to organic products wherever and whenever possible. Apple juice. Grapes. Milk. Cereal. Almost everything you can possibly think of has an organic version of it that isn’t riddled with chemicals made in a laboratory, and other things that you and I don’t even want to know about. I recommend just switching to organic wherever and whenever possible, if your budget will allow. It’s just better for you.

There are a whole bunch of little things you can do along with all of these as well, of course. Try exercising a bit more. Portion control is also very important.

Unsurprisingly, Apple unveiled an exciting new product on Tuesday. Equally surprisingly, it was Apple’s vision of a tablet. And even more unsurprisingly, there’s quite a bit of debate concerning the device – it’s not impressive, it’s a step backwards, it doesn’t even support web standards, it can’t multi-task, etcetera and so forth. I’ve read and considered quite a few of them, but I’ve also got quite a few opinions of my own on the matter.

Firstly, there’s the big one. Flash support. Many people are citing the iPad’s lack of Flash support as the major irritating factor of the device. Without Flash support, they say, we’ll never be getting the full web experience. The issue is that these people are very short-sighted, and aren’t looking for the long term. In the future, Apple’s hoping (and pushing) for HTML5 to overcome Adobe Flash as the dominant multimedia method on the web. Apple’s also got a stake in this – as a major contributor to the WebKit project, which may I remind you is one of two browser cores that supports HTML5 (WebKit, and Gecko – found in Mozilla products). So Apple’s already spent some time and money working on this big new standard, do you really think they’d undercut all of that just to support a competitor’s product which only happens to be more widely used at the current moment? Apple’s not stupid. They know that the iPad will be flawed the moment it comes into the market, but it’s by design. Apple’s hoping, and perhaps correctly, that this flaw will become less and less noticeable and relevant as time goes on.

Secondly, there’s the multitasking issue. This one cites that while multitasking is at least marginally understandable on the iPhone, it’s nowhere near acceptable on a device that’s more PC than toy. To these people: what major new product will be released in June? What will this major new product do to differentiate itself between past versions of said product? The point I’m getting at here, of course, is that there’s going to be a new version of iPhone OS coming out soon, and there’s going to be a big keynote coming along with it. If they give away all of the iPhone OS4’s secrets before they’re ready to even officially unveil it (iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2), they’ll have nothing to talk about come June, now would they?

Thirdly, the lack of ports is one issue that I’ve been hearing a lot about lately. The iPad, if you haven’t noticed, has only three points of interest on the frame of the device. The power button, the headphone jack, and the iPhone/iPod port that makes it compatible with all accessories in the iPod ecosystem. This is, I believe, another instance of Apple looking forward. Apple only gets rid of ports when they believe they’re on their way out – the firewire port from all consumer products, modem jacks, DVI, etc.. Apple’s replacement for firewire was USB, their replacement for modem jacks was ethernet, and their replacement for DVI was DisplayPort. Their replacement for USB now? Bluetooth. Apple’s obviously including support for Bluetooth accessories, as evidenced by the fact that the device works with existing Bluetooth keyboards. Other devices are sure to follow, and Apple’s done nothing to rule that out. They are, however, making it painfully obvious to everyone that the optional USB port add-on only works, and will ever only work, on cameras. A world where Bluetooth hasn’t exactly caught on yet and where Apple has little push or pull.

There are a whole bunch of other complaints as well. It’s DRM riddled and therefor a closed device, there’s no built-in iSight, non-removable battery, etc. and so forth. Some of these I agree with, and others I don’t. However as long as we can jailbreak to make my device more usable, I will. There are a couple of issues that I DO have, however. The disgusting 4:3 resolution, a giant step backwards that makes doing basic, everyday tasks – like watching high definition movies – much less appealing. And… actually, that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Maybe the marginally ugly bezel? I don’t know. All I do know is that I’m enjoying what I’m hearing about the device, for the most part. I want it. I believe that this represents the future of computing.

So I’ve been following this story with particular interest, not because I had a huge affiliation with one late night host over another (as long as that host wasn’t Letterman, traditionally) before this whole ordeal, and not even because I particularly liked late night television, but because the entertainment industry has been so bone dry of any interesting story recently that anything’s better than nothing.

Howeeeevveeer, over the past couple of months I have grown to like Conan much more than I ever did Leno. He’s more raw, he’s funnier, he’s got a more unique (i.e. – better) sense of humor, and he just seems a little bit less mean spirited. Not to mention I was always pretty upset at Leno for accepting a show at 10 PM, effectively tearing apart half of the late night show’s audience.

This whole Leno/Conan battle, however, pushed it too far. Leno is absolutely out of his rocker if he’s even considering accepting NBC’s offer to replace Conan. Leno got the benefit of the doubt in the early 90s even though his ratings were even poorer than Conan’s are now – he was allowed to keep the show with the promise that his audience would grow and develop. Which it did. This is the same exact thing that will happen to Conan’s show, if NBC only gives it a chance. Let’s be honest here, it was the chin’s Leno’s show that truly failed, not Conan’s. And it was Leno who accepted early retirement, nobody forced him to do this. NBC offered to renegotiate his contract with an early release and he accepted. That’s all. It’s sad that a good entertainer’s getting the shaft. I’m #TeamConan.

…because he hit the nail on the head. And yes, I realize how sensual that sounds. Recently wrote a pretty great post about why doing business with Google might not be the smartest move for somebody looking to make a profit in the lucrative smartphone market, from a business point of view. This is my favorite part:

Google isn’t just trying to screw us, they’re also screwing every company that has licensed Android. Think about Motorola. They’ve hardly got the Droid out the door and now, bam! You guys come along and blow it out of the water. Yes, Motorola sent a guy to the Nexus One press conference. You know why? Because Motorola expected to get hit with questions, and they needed to put someone up there to put a brave face on it. It’s called jumping on a grenade. You may have noticed that the Motorola guy was “delayed in traffic.” Right. Secretly, or actually not so secretly, the guys at Motorola are apeshit crazy pissed off at Google right now. They’re also plenty mad at themselves, or they should be. Because it’s just now dawning on them what a huge mistake they’ve made. They’ve bet their future on a company that they can’t trust. A company that will gladly stab them in the back.

And it does suck, because two weeks ago I would have reccomended a DROID to anybody. With the release of the Nexus One on T-Mobile now and on Verizon in a few month’s time, I’m not sure I’d reccomend it to anybody.

…then again, look at the usability of that screen of that thing when used outdoors. I’m sure Apple’s just shaking in their pillowy boots. Full of money.