*michael parekh on IT*

ON FLYING SUB 2.0

REALITY AT LAST
This Gizmodo story on Lockheed Martin's project "Cormorant", from it's legendary, Skunk Works unit, has to be a thrill for every fan of the 1960s "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"TV series.  Here's the crux of the story:

"After the START II—the second strategic weapons reduction treaty with the former URSS—was signed, the US Navy had to reconvert many of their Ohio-class nuclear submarines, giving new uses to their missile bays.
They talked with Lockheed Martin about it, who came with the idea of the Cormorant: a Halo-looking plane that launches from a submerged submarine, does its mission stealthy and then returns to the water, where it's retrieved by a robot. As the video shows, the idea looks out of a sci-fi movie".

There are a couple of must-see videos in the story that are about 4 minutes long, that vividly illustrate the concept from start to finish. 

Especially cool after the computer graphics-generated (CGI) video of the concept, are the actual scale models being flown and recovered by the Lockheed Martin team in real, outdoor conditions.

The weakest part of the Cormorant concept seems to be the recovery method for the vehicle, as the Gizmodo story explains:

"When it reaches the programmed rendezvous point, the engine stops, a parachute deploys, and it falls into the water to wait for the submarine to retrieve it. The submarine, however, doesn't have to come to the surface at any time.

Instead, it would launch another robot, which will hook the Cormorant to the sub using a cable. The submarine will then two the plane down and put it back in its bay."

But it still looks like a cool and useful concept, especially near mission areas where the armed services cannot fly drones in and out of from land or via very visible aircraft carrier groups.

The whole thing of course brings to mind the famous "Flying Sub", aka FS-1 from the popular "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" TV series in the mid-60s.

The difference between that vehicle and the Cormorant is of course, that the FS-1 was a manned vehicle, and didn't need a cumbersome recovery process when the plane returned to the water. 

It was just piloted back into the Seaview's docking bay under water.

Another example of how much more advanced our technology was back in the latter part of the 20th century, as compared to the early 21st century.

ON BROADBAND AND OIL

OUT OF THE BOX

This op-ed in the New York Times emphasizes a point long covered in posts here, that regulatory policies in the U.S. have long hampered the entrepreneurial growth of wired and wireless broadband, especially relative to other countries.  Here's the observation in particular that got my attention:

"AMERICANS today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil."

What's interesting is the way the piece tries to make the point, by characterizing the current situation of oligopolistic broadband providers as "OPEC 2.0":

"Like energy, bandwidth is an essential economic input. You can’t run an engine without gas, or a cellphone without bandwidth. Both are also resources controlled by a tight group of producers, whether oil companies and Middle Eastern nations or communications companies like AT&T, Comcast and Vodafone. That’s why, as with energy, we need to develop alternative sources of bandwidth.

Wired connections to the home — cable and telephone lines — are the major way that Americans move information. In the United States and in most of the world, a monopoly or duopoly controls the pipes that supply homes with information. These companies, primarily phone and cable companies, have a natural interest in controlling supply to maintain price levels and extract maximum profit from their investments — similar to how OPEC sets production quotas to guarantee high prices..."

The piece goes on to make a similar point when it comes to wireless broadband, again a subject close to my heart:

"After physical wires, the other major way to move information is through the airwaves, a natural resource with enormous potential. But that potential is untapped because of a false scarcity created by bad government policy.

Our current approach is a command and control system dating from the 1920s. The federal government dictates exactly what licensees of the airwaves may do with their part of the spectrum. These Soviet-style rules create waste that is worthy of Brezhnev.

Many “owners” of spectrum either hardly use the stuff or use it in highly inefficient ways. At any given moment, more than 90 percent of the nation’s airwaves are empty.

The solution is to relax the over-regulation of the airwaves and allow   use of the wasted spaces."

There are of course key differences between oil and bandwidth, and in many ways we're comparing apples and oranges.  But the piece does have a beat, and you can dance to it.

ON A NEW MACBOOK AIR COMPETITOR

IN THIS CORNER...

PC Magazine thinks the new Voodoo Envy laptop, sporting Microsoft Windows, could finally go toe to toe with Apple MacBook Air:

"I wouldn't say that Voodoo PC has been hibernating. But ever since this former boutique company, known for its gaming rigs and luxurious laptops, was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in late 2006, it hasn't launched much of anything (apart from the Blackbird 002 desktop) worth writing home about—until now.

Maybe it was just waiting for a worthy opponent. With its sights squarely set on the Apple MacBook Air and the Lenovo ThinkPad X300, the Voodoo Envy 133 ($2,449 direct) is easily the tiniest and prettiest laptop to ever emerge from HP's research and development labs.

It's as thin and speedy as the Air, and it even improves on some of the Air's shortcomings, like having a user-upgradable battery and better connectivity ports. The Envy 133 isn't without its problems, though. Its price tag, among other things, makes the MacBook Air look like a bargain."

And of course, it fits into the now obligatory manila envelope.  Now if one could only install Mac OS Leopard and iLife on it. 

Of course, since it doesn't, Voodoo does try to do something about it, as the review goes on to explain:

"The Envy 133 is essentially a dual-boot system. It doesn't actually have a full-blown second operating system, but it does have a stripped-down Linux environment that you can get into within seconds.

If you don't want to boot into Windows Vista Business, the Voodoo IOS (Instant Operating System) puts you into a pre-boot environment, complete with a Web browser, a file manager, a photo editor, and an SMS client. You also have access to your Wi-Fi and hard drive from this mini-operating system."

Not Leopard, but at least one doesn't have to wait for the long boot into and out of Windows Vista just to do a little email and web browsing.  Very interesting.

ON A THOUGHTFUL VIEW OF THE MARKETS

LAY OF THE LAND

Normally, I don't spend a lot of time blogging on financial matters, even though I spend a large chunk of my cycles on that front.  But Barron's this weekend had an interview with two veteran money managers I have a lot of respect for, by virtue of having worked with them for a good portion of my professional life.  I thought I'd highlight it in case you missed it.  The article starts off with a good introduction on the two:

"LEON COOPERMAN AND STEVEN EINHORN HAVE BEEN WORKING TOGETHER, off and on, since the 1970s, initially at Goldman Sachs. Cooperman, formerly Goldman's chief investment strategist, started his own firm, Omega Advisors, in 1991.

Since its inception, Omega, which uses a long-short strategy and has about $5 billion in assets, has returned 16% annually, net of fees, besting the S&P 500 by 5.50 percentage points. During the first half of the year, it was down 4%, compared with a loss around 13% for the S&P. Cooperman, the firm's chairman and chief executive, has a reputation as a savvy, rigorous and hard-driving stockpicker. He spends a lot of time "trying to make sure we are backing the right horses." Einhorn, the vice chairman, focuses more on the macro picture, the Federal Reserve, market valuation and outlook, and structuring the portfolio."

And here's a bit of their thoughtful outlook on the markets:

"We are buying plenty of attractively valued securities, but this is not an environment to be complacent," says Cooperman, pointing to high oil prices and the battered housing market. Although he thinks the makings of a market bottom are apparent, Einhorn still sees plenty of head winds, including what he considers to be global money policy that's out of sync, depleted balance sheets in the financial sector and inflation worries. Other factors to consider, he says, are extreme volatility and a lack of leadership in the U.S. equity market.

Still, Einhorn and Cooperman view plenty of stocks as attractive, as Barron's learned on a recent visit to their office near Wall Street."

The whole piece is worth reading, if financial markets and stock picks are your cup of tea.  Recommended.

ON ANOTHER CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

HERE WE GO AGAIN?

If one needs reminding that history does repeat itself, one needs to go no further than this Guardian story suggesting a possible Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0:

"Russia is considering the use of bases in Cuba for its nuclear bombers, in a move that revives memories of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, according to reports in a Russian newspaper.

Russian military sources said that Moscow is contemplating using Cuba as a refuelling base for its nuclear-bomb carrying aircraft. The move would be in retaliation for the Bush administration's plan to site a missile defence shield in Europe.

Russia objects vehemently to the Pentagon's plan. It says the US's proposed system in Poland and the Czech republic – which formally agreed a deal with Washington last week – poses a direct threat to Russia and its security.

According to a report in Monday's Izvestiya newspaper - which closely reflects Kremlin thinking - Russia now wants to use Cuba as a base for its long-range Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic nuclear bombers. Citing a "highly-placed military source", the paper said discussions had taken place."

Like the last one, this one is starting too with some fairly logical, tactical and strategic horse-trading in mind by the power concerned, trying to effect a tit-for-tat type of presumably equivalent escalation.  And unlike the last one, this one should have a fairly long lead time that hopefully entails a much greater awareness by the public via the media, that could perhaps nip it in the bud.  One can but hope.

ON OVER THE TOP PRODUCTS

WHAT NEXT?

Every once in a while one runs into a product that makes you shake your head at the height of our consumerism. 

This item, called the "Slipper Genie", that I saw at the local Bed, Bath and Beyond, is one such product.  Solutions Inc. describes it as follows:

"As seen in "O" Magazine!

Dust your floors by simply walking across them!

Wood, tile, and vinyl—virtually any floor is easier to dust when all you do is walk across it. Just think how much easier it to maneuver your foot around than a cumbersome mop."

I guess we'll try anything to avoid a little extra physical activity. 

Oh well, at least it requires a bit more physical exertion than a Roomba.  And at $ 9.99, it's hundreds of dollars less expensive.

ON APPLE'S MOBILEME MESS

BUMPS IN THE ROAD

Update Below

Well, the critical reviews are coming in on Apple's MobileMe, the next version of it's long inadequate .Mac service (aka dotMac), and they're almost all negative.  Here's Walt Mossberg's review if you missed it, and here's the one by David Pogue. This PC Magazine review does a good job on the ins and outs of the service.

Think Pogue hits it on the head with this observation:

"Maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea for Apple to launch four enormously complex initiatives — the iPhone 3G, the App Store, the iPhone 2.0 software update and MobileMe — all on the same day."

And then ends ups the ante with this observation on Apple's inadequate reaction to a problem that potentially affects over 2 million subscribers:

"But the real problem is how Apple is responding. For a company that’s so brilliant at marketing, it seems to have absolutely no clue about crisis management..."

It’s amazing that Apple doesn’t recognize this situation. This is an airplane that’s stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom.

And the pilot doesn’t come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what’s being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: “We apologize for the inconvenience.”

MobileMess, indeed."

Can't praise all things Apple, every day.

Update:  Apple has an official response to the state and status of MobileMe.  Full discussion on Techmeme here.

ON THE JOYS OF MUSIC ONLINE

REPEAT

As usual, Bob Lefsetz nails it about the state and fate of the music business, and the video business over time, as it relates to online:

"I'm not saying music SHOULD be free, just that it is. 
Record label saber-rattling has only resulted in driving music acquisition further underground, to the point where it's impossible to eradicate the free consumption of tunes.  Are you going to eliminate AIM transfers? RapidShare? 
How about outlawing P2P?  Well, now movies are being distributed legitimately via P2P, so that's no solution... 
The ONLY hope is to create a solution so enticing that people would rather pay than steal.  It's possible, after all, bottled water is being sold by the truckload even though water is essentially free from the tap and discarded empty bottles are anything but green.  But the public has been convinced they need their Fiji.  And the purveyor has even managed to mount a PR campaign saying THEY ARE green."

He and others have been making this point for a long time, but sometimes it just bears repeating.

Bob goes one better and describes the new way music geeks, and many ordinary mortals find joy in managing music got online:

"Turns out you can now buy a compilation on iTunes.  But I wasn't looking for it.  I haven't played my Fat Mattress album for nigh on forty years.  But today I saw it listed in this blog and I remembered, I had to download it.
Along with Thunderclap Newman's "Hollywood Dream", Ry Cooder's debut, a couple of Spirit albums...  Shit I didn't need, most of which I own on vinyl, but stuff that was worth adding to my digital collection.
And it used to be that you spent all afternoon alphabetizing your albums.  Now, it's aligning your iTunes library.  Are the titles correct?  I need to eliminate duplicates.  Let me check the timings... This is record collector fun.
And after deleting the 56k versions of Al Kooper's "You Never Know Who Your Friends Are" for their new, shiny 192k replacements, I started working on the Fat Mattress album.  There was one track that I absolutely loved...  What was it?  "Mr. Moonshine"?

And ends with this punchline:

"Music, when done right, cannot be described."

Amen, Brother.

ON OUR INTERESTS IN IRAQ

REAL IRAQI POLITICS

This passage from Thomas Friedman's latest op-ed on Iraq, McCain, and Obama resonated with me, in the wake of the clever Der Spiegel interview  by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, timed around Obama's visit to Iraq:

"“Americans are looking forward to the post-Iraq phase of U.S. politics, and Iraqis are now looking forward to the post-American phase of Iraqi politics,” said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy expert at Johns Hopkins University. That is the reality of post-surge Iraq and post-subprime America — and any leader in either country who ignores that reality does so at his or her peril.

Forget about our narrative on this war — how we “liberated Iraq.” Think about the Iraqi narrative. No one likes to be liberated or occupied by someone else. It is humiliating. France still hasn’t gotten over the fact that it had to be liberated by the Allies. What is important is how, with the help of the surge, Iraqis have finally started to liberate themselves — the Sunnis from their extremists and the Shiites from their extremists."

The last bit about France not liking being liberated by the Allies reminded me of how DeGaulle swooped in to the front of the line as the Allies finally liberated Paris from the Nazis.  This Wikipedia entry reminds us (image source):

"At the liberation of France following Operation Overlord, he quickly established the authority of the Free French Forces in France, avoiding an Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories.
He flew into France from the French colony of Algeria a few days before the liberation of Paris, and drove near the front of the liberating forces into the city alongside Allied officials. De Gaulle made a famous speech emphasizing the role of France's people in her liberation.  After his return to Paris, he moved back into his office at the War Ministry, thus proclaiming continuity of the Third Republic and denying the legitimacy of the Vichy regime."

The Iraqis are going through their own set of internal politics trying to figure out their political dynamics post the American presence in Iraq.  The recent Obama/McCain romp through the region is but a convenient prop to be cannily used by Iraqi politicians for their own domestic advantage.  DeGaulle is famous for his pithy observation once that:

"France has no friends, only interests."

We need to remember Iraq, along with Prime Minister Maliki's key Shia supporting partner Iran, has no friends as well...only interests.  And they've been focused on these interests for a long time, even as the U.S. public's interest in all things Iraq wanes going into the election.

We too need to be coldly focused on our long-term interests in the region, and not let the current, short-term Presidential campaign rhetoric on either side drive those interests.

ON ART LIKE TWITTER

HISTORY REPEATING

Thanks to some friends, I had a chance to attend an unusual art event in Laguna Beach California called the "Pageant of the Masters".  Understanding the concept behind this event at first was kind of like first encountering Twitter, the communication service that has enthralled most geeks everywhere.  It initially takes a little experiencing to get at the heart of what it's really about.

This Wikipedia entry explains the Pageant as follows (image source):

"The Pageant of the Masters is an annual festival held by the Festival of Arts in Laguna Beach, California. The event is known for its tableaux vivant or "living pictures" in which classical and contemporary works of art are recreated by real people who are made to look nearly identical to the originals through the clever application of costumes, makeup, headdresses, lighting, props, and backdrops.

The first Festival of Arts occurred in 1932, and the first presentation of the Pageant occurred in 1993. Since then, the two events have been held each summer, apart from a four year interruption caused by World War II. "

This year represents the 75th Anniversary of this unusual Art Festival.  Each staged piece is accompanied with live orchestral music from the period, and a narrator explaining the context of the piece for about 90 seconds.  It reminded me of the 140-character limit on putting up a message on Twitter.  You either get the piece in that short period or not.

It may help to view this 3:40 minute behind-the-scenes video of the Festival to get a better sense of what's special about the experience (embedded link not available unfortunately).

The whole thing is experienced in an outdoor amphitheater, with a live orchestra playing under the stars as various famous works of art through the ages are cleverly staged on the various outdoor stages (image source). 

The whole thing is about reliving something called the "tableaux vivant" experience, which as this other Wikpedia entry explains, was really how people got entertained for centuries, long before we were spoiled by radio, TV, and the internet.

"Before radio, film and television, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment. Before the age of colour reproduction of images the tableau vivant (often abbreviated simply to tableau) was sometimes used to recreate paintings "on stage", based on an etching or sketch of the painting.

This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room, or as a more professionally produced series of tableaux presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings of a "live" theatre performance. They thus 'educated' their audience to understand the form taken by later Victorian and Edwardian eramagic lantern shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative comic strips (which first appeared in modern form in the late 1890s)."

An amusing part of the history of this type of art involves Victorian censorship:

"Since English stage censorship often strictly forbade actresses to move when nude or semi-nude on stage, tableaux vivants also had a place in presenting risqué entertainment at special shows.

In the nineteenth century they took such titles as "Nymphs Bathing" and "Diana the Huntress" and were to be found at such places as The Hall of Rome in Great Windmill Street, London. Other notorious venues were the Coal Hole in the Strand and The Cyder Cellar in Maiden Lane. In the twentieth century London the Windmill Theatre (1932-64) provided erotic entertainment in the form of nude tableaux vivants on stage."

As long as the performers were perfectly still, but nude, the work was considered "Art", and was OK to be shown in public.  But the slightest physical twitch by a performer could get the actor and the producers thrown in jail for breaking the public decency laws.

And we thought our rules and rulings around "wardrobe malfunctions" were draconian.  History just keeps repeating itself.

ON WEB VIDEO'S ROAD TO THE BIG TIME

EVOLUTION

Interesting news on the mainstream media front, as NBC gets ready for transitioning it's venerable late-night "Tonight Show" from Jay Leno to Conan O'Brien next year.  More details from the New York Times:

"With a new round of shake-ups in late-night television set to begin next year, Lorne Michaels   has decided to try to get a jump on things by starting NBC’s next edition of “Late Night,” with its new host Jimmy Fallon, as a nightly entry on the Internet.

Mr. Fallon has been named as the replacement for Conan O’Brien when Mr. O’Brien takes over the “Tonight” show from Jay Leno next year, and Mr. Michaels, the long-time boss of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” who also serves as executive producer of “Late Night,” told television reporters here Sunday that he wants Mr. Fallon to work out as many of the rough spots in his presentation as possible in performances on a website.

Mr. Michaels said he did not know yet which site he will use to post the shows with Mr. Fallon, but he was sure of several of the plans:

The web performances will likely begin in the fall, long before the transition from Mr. Leno for Mr. O’Brien is set to take place. The entries will not constitute anything like an entire hour-long show. “I expect that we’ll do something like five or 10 minutes,” Mr. Michaels said.

But he said they most likely will be on every night, to try to establish the rhythm of a nightly show. And he said, “I’m going to post them at 12:30 every night, so people will begin to look for Jimmy at that time.”

So far, the news has been fairly well-received by web media, with this reaction from SIA being an example:

"This is the equivalent of a Broadway show opening out of town to work out the kinks, and it sounds like a great idea to us."

And this from VentureBeat:

"Plenty of other television shows have “webisodes,” short clips of original footage from a television series that play on the web, but this is the first time the web will be used as a minor leagues of sort for the big leagues of traditional television."

I agree it's a natural evolution of the video content on the web, from the chaotic, bubbling, organic soup of "user-generated content" (aka UGC), to more traditional media content, on web properties like YouTube.

But I can't help but ask the question in my mind...how long before a major "TV show" debuts on traditional media to "work the kinks out", before being released on the web, to the real global audience?

ON A BOTTOM IN BANKS?

FEAR AND GREED

Barron's continues to make contrary calls on it's cover this weekend, following last Saturday's cover story suggesting a bottom in Housing market woes.  This Saturday's cover focuses on the Banks, with a story titled:  "What to Bank On".  Here's an excerpt:

"AFTER A RECORD-SETTING RALLY LAST Wednesday, the brutal selloff in financial stocks -- the worst for any major industry group since the technology bubble burst in 2000 -- could be over.

Many financial companies face additional loan losses and credit-related write-downs in the coming quarters, particularly if the economy stays weak into 2009. Yet a slew of earnings reports last week from marquee banks like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase suggests that most financial companies have sufficient earning power to offset a rising tide of bad loans and should be able to absorb further write-downs without having to seek significant amounts of additional capital.

Financial stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 index are down 29% this year and off 43% in the past 12 months, even after a record-setting 13% gain Wednesday and a 6% rise Thursday. The group was up slightly Friday. Financials are the worst-performing group this year in the S&P, which is off 14%. And they've risen just 10% since the most recent bull market began in October 2002, against a 62% advance by the index. Financials are down to 14% of the S&P 500 from a high of 23% in late 2006 as more than $1 trillion of market value has vaporized, in part because of huge declines in such former mega-stocks as Citigroup (ticker: C) and American International Group (AIG).

U.S. financial stocks beckon because nearly every major company now trades for under 10 times projected 2009 profits. Though there is considerable uncertainty about '09 profits, considering the tough economic outlook, what is comforting is that many financials combine low forward P/Es with and low ratios of price-to-book value, derived by subtracting liabilities from assets and dividing by the company's outstanding shares. It historically has proven profitable to snap up major financials around book value because purchasers effectively are getting the ongoing businesses for nothing."

It's always tough to make a bullish case on anything in the throes of a raging bear market.  Fear gets overdone just as fiercely as greed does, especially where markets are concerned.  The Barron's article, regardless of one's view on this issue on going forward, is a solid, college try.

ON THE BLACKBERRY/iPHONE BATTLE

TRENCH WARFARE

Maybe it's the fickle gadget junkie in me, or maybe it's just me being jaded about my 3G iPhone after my problems with it the last few days.  But when I saw this picture of the coming new Blackberry Bold from RIMM in "bedside mode", my gadget gaze has now shifted to getting one on first opportunity (not that I haven't been focused on the upcoming Blackberry models). 

The picture is part of a post on Blackberry's recent annual shareholders meeting, by Jim Courtney of Skype Journal.  This application, though simple, is as cool as anything I've seen on the new iPhone.

Here's another tidbit from that post that I found interesting, especially for those with extensive music collections in iTunes:

"Blackberry's new Media Sync creates a direct connection between your iTunes music collection and the Blackberry. (and will also be made available to all Blackberry devices with a media card - Pearl, Curve, 88xx - through both a firmware and desktop software upgrade)."

For a long time now, I've carried both a Blackberry and an iPhone, with the former being my primary business phone and email device, and the latter being my primary web browsing and media device.

Being a primary device, I find that I still use my Blackberry more than the iPhone to take pictures, given that it has a better camera with flash, something even the new 3G iPhone still lacks.  But I have NO music on my Blackberry, something I turn to the iPhone for on a long flight.

There are many users like me, who compartmentalize their professional and personal lives in a similar fashion, and use separate devices for each life.  Or as Jim Courtney puts it in starker terms:

"The iPhone is left with two markets: younger generation consumers who want an expensive toy and Mac aficionados who can use the iPhone as an extension of their Mac experience."

Both RIMM and Apple have long-realized this and are increasingly beefing up their products and services, so that RIMM has more media, personal fun oriented features, and Apple has more business and professionally oriented features like "push" wireless syncing.

But it looks like for the next 12 to 18 months anyway, it's going to be a bit of a stalemate.  And both sides will have interesting enough features to keep their core users hooked on their upcoming offerings.  But neither will just yet have enough to make broad and deep inroads into the other camp's core functionality.

In the meantime, many of us gadget geeks will have to continue to carry around both devices.

ON SOFTWARE BUGS AND THE 3G iPHONE

BUMPY ROAD

(Updated below)

All things are not rosy with my new 3G iPhone, as I've expressed in some posts on Twitter already.  Having eagerly anticipated the App Store now available with the iPhone 2.0 software on new and existing iPhones and iTouch iPods, I'd downloaded and installed over 60 third-paid and free applications (aka Apps), onto the new device in the last week (image source).

And I've paid a price in device instability ever since.  My brand new 3G iPhone has crashed and hung up on the boot screen, about five times now.  Each time it happened while I was playing or trying to wirelessly update an application installed on the device. 

Each time, after turning off the device and turning it on, I faced the famous shiny Apple screen, with no further response from the device.  I even took it in to the Genius Bar at the Apple store on the first crash, and they couldn't revive the device other than a full reset.

That involves taking the device back to the factory installed settings, wiping out all the customized settings and newly installed applications.  A full restore takes about two hours, even though all the applications and iTunes content are stored locally on my iMac.  It's just a slow, slow process.

Well, I've had to go through five of these now, and have just finished and customizing the iPhone with all my favorite settings, bookmarks, mail accounts, and applications for the sixth time.  And I'm planning to be much more careful in how I use the third party Apps, and how I go about updating them wirelessly (NOT).

Now, this post is not to complain about Apple, the new iPhone or the App Store.  It's just to highlight one user's experience with brand new, version 1.0 software, whether it's on a device or in the cloud. 

MacWorld makes this point particularly well in a recent article:

"With the release of the updated iPhone software, Apple flung open the doors of its new App Store. On its first day, the App store was populated with more than 500 programs, and that number is growing rapidly.

Think about that: 500 programs, all of them at version 1.0. On a device that had never before supported software written outside of Apple. It’s exciting, seeing the birth of a brand new software ecosystem. But it’s also scary. If people were worried about the first-generation iPhone hardware and software (many vowed they wouldn’t buy an iPhone until the second version arrived, for fear of buying a buggy 1.0 product), how should they feel about more than 500 programs on a brand-new platform, all at version 1.0?"

They go on to make the broader point of how the unique circumstances around the 3G iPhone introduction complicated the normal quality-testing process for third-party App developers:

"Unfortunately, there was no way for iPhone programmers to beta-test their products before the App Store launched. The software used to create iPhone programs was a secret. And only a select group of programmers were able to run their programs on real hardware, rather than in a Mac-based simulator. Developers in countries without iPhones could only test their programs on the iPod touch.

Even worse, Apple’s cloak of secrecy around the iPhone software programming tools prevented programmers from sharing tricks they had picked up during their work. The programming community, especially on the Mac, is remarkably collegial—programmers post blog entries detailing things they’ve learned all the time, and the quality of all the programs in the Mac ecosystem benefit as a result. Without blogging and Google searches, the only way iPhone programmers could share what they’d learned was through the old, inefficient medium of one-on-one conversations."

So, the reality is that early buyers of Apps on the Apple store on the new iPhone 2.0 software, are in for some continued instability.  It doesn't mean we have to like it, but at least we may be prepared to grin and bear it...for now.  It's Apple after all.

Update:  After experiencing a 7th crash and hang yesterday, I decided to do a full restore of the iPhone WITH all the Applications, but WITHOUT turning on syncing with MobileMe, the upgraded version of Apple's old .Mac (aka dotMac) service.  I especially didn't turn on the wireless, over-the-air "push" upgrading of my contacts, calendar, and email data via MobileMe, to see if this would stop the crashes.

It's been 12 hours since that restore, and so far so good.  The iPhone seems fairly stable, and am able to run any of the 65 or so Apps without any problems.  I still haven't tried to wirelessly update any of the Apps.  For now, will hold off any wireless data syncing and/or updates.  At least until the next firmware release from Apple.

ON THE NEW BLACKBERRY LINE-UP

WHAT'S NEXT?

Now that many of us gadget junkies have gotten our 3G iPhone fix, the next big wait is for the two major releases from RIMM, the makers of Blackberries. 

First up is the Blackberry Bold (one with the keyboard on the left, due out on U.S. carriers like AT&T) and the Blackberry Thunder (full touch screen a la iPhone, expected only on Verizon initially). 

Gadget site BoyGenius has been on a tear of late on both these phones, with a full hands-on review of the Bold just a couple of days ago, and they seem to have the scoop on when these two Blackberries might be expected:

"We’ve been told that the Bold might have been pushed back yet again. What’s the whispered launch month now? September for a lot of carriers. That’s not to say it couldn’t launch sooner on a couple carriers, but that’s what we were told.
It looks like there are still some problems with the radio code that have to do with network roaming, searching, etc...
Now, what about the BlackBerry Thunder?...Here are the most confirmed Thunder dates: a huge marketing push in the U.S. starting in September, and device release in mid-October on Verizon. We said November because we were betting on a couple week delay which, knowing RIM, certainly wouldn’t be out of the question."

Of course, no word yet on the "Pearl" version of the Bold, which would be a slimmer profile with the much smaller keyboard.  And the "Javelin" Blackberry, which would be the "Curve" version of the Bold, isn't expected until 2009 as Engadget reported last month.  Later this year could also see the release of the "Kickstart" Blackberry, which is expected to be a clamshell version of the Pearl version of the Bold.  Confused? Don't be...it's just a lot of Blackberries.

In any case, we're talking about waiting until Fall at the earliest for our new Blackberry fix. 

ON SOME COOL, LESSER KNOWN iPHONE APPS

NEEDLES IN HAYSTACKS

Well, I've had a couple of days now to play with the new iPhone 3G and the flood of third-party applications now available for it in the Apple App Store, both free and for a fee. 

And the good news is that there are some pretty cool applications, especially games that take advantage of the iPhone various features and sensors.  Look no further than the leading paid application that shows up at the top of the App Store list, Monkey Ball from Sega, as a good example.  Apps like Monkey Ball have been long anticipated by users, given the opportunity they had to show-case themselves at Steve Jobs' 3G iPhone Keynote a while ago.  There are already good reviews of some of the best applications by folks like Walt Mossberg, David Pogue and others.

Having downloaded over 60 free and paid applications and them for a bit, I thought I'd highlight five, lesser heralded applications that merit a closer look, at least from my point of view.  In no particular order, let me start with:

1.  vSnax Videos by Rhythm NewMedia, is a free App that offers bite-sized aggregation of entertainment videos.  Although videos have long been available on the iPhone and iTouch through the YouTube application bundled by Apple on the home screen, vSnax's approach is more proactive in that it serves up a series of short videos in various categories that a mainstream consumer may find of interest.  It's an approach I think most purveyors of videos on the web will adopt over time, given that consumers are already close to a point of being overwhelmed by the choice of stuff to watch, and the effort required to find the good stuff.

2."The Battle for Waterloo" by Touchtomes is a fascinating little game for $3.99, especially for those geeks who have fond memories of the classic text-based early computer games of Zork fame by Infocom, over two decades ago.  We've made some progress from text here, where the story and game play are advanced by beautiful illustrations of that famous battle.  Here's a flavor of the game from Touchtomes:

"“Battle of Waterloo”
It is 1815; Napoleon has escaped captivity, become Emperor of France, and has raised an enormous army of 125,000 men. With it, he plans to conquer all of Europe.

You are the youngest officer in the British Army, serving under the Duke of Wellington. You have just returned from a dangerous scouting mission near the French and Belgian border. “Sir,” you inform Wellington, “Yesterday I saw French troops invading!”

Pretty cool stuff, that sometimes reminds you that you don't need the latest tech features to provide a cool gaming experience.

3. OneTap Movies by Avantar is another application, available for $1.99, that's a good example of a new class of services that make it easier to quickly get lots of information on a subject, widely available on the web, in a convenient and graphically pleasing manner.  In this case, the App does the following:

"OneTap Movies recognizes where you are and displays the nearest movie theaters, along with the movies that are being played, as well as the showtimes, critic ratings, basic info, posters, etc. All with a single tap of your finger. You can also watch the trailers or simply enjoy your time searching for details of any movie with a link to the International Movie Data Base (IMDB)."

Again, nothing one can't do with the excellent 3G browsing already possible on the new iPhone, but very convenient to get it all with "one tap" as it were.

4. Trism by Demiforce is a cool $4.99 App for those who already love classic games like Tetris and Bejeweled. 

Trism stands for triangular prisms, which you move around and match by color to progress in the game.  The game has a lot of polish and is fun to play using the iPhone touch interface.

There are various types of challenges available, so the game doesn't get old too fast.  The developers have managed to cram in a good tutorial which is so far unusual for a lot of iPhone applications.

5.  OmniFocus for iPhone is by the Omni Group, a developer well known for a number of great productivity applications on Apple's Mac platform.  With a price point of $19.99, this is not an inexpensive iPhone App, but does provide pretty useful on-the-go productivity enhancing features.  Here's how their site describes the application:

"OmniFocus for the iPhone brings task management to your fingertips. Keep track of actions by project, place, person, or date. Bring up a shopping list, agenda items to discuss at work, tasks for home, and any other lists you need.

Using your location, OmniFocus can create a custom list of actions to complete nearby. Buying groceries? OmniFocus can show you the closest grocery store and create an instant shopping list.

Capture tasks anywhere, anytime with OmniFocus: you can enter text, take a picture, or even make a quick voice recording."

There's a fair bit of power under the hood, especially if used with a beta version OmniFocus for the Mac, a separately sold desktop application, which will soon officially support the iPhone version of the App.

This list of five cool, lesser-known Apps is by no means comprehensive, and the above is but a tiny sampling of the good stuff that's available in rapidly growing piles of haystacks.  To be continued.

ON IMPROVING THE Wii

SHARPENED SENSES

OK, so now that the iPhone 3G debut Tsunami has passed, what can we geeks look forward to next? Well, the gaming industry confab E3 is at hand, and there should be a spate of fun product announcements this week.  An example would this cool item from Engadget on Nintendo's plan to sharpen the motion sensitivity of it's world-beating Wii platform controllers:

"While we saw it hinted at in patents, Nintendo is springing quite the doozy on us at E3 in the form of its new Wii MotionPlus add-on. Perhaps in a preemptive strike against supposed Wiimote competition from the likes of Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo is beefing up its motion support with this add-on, which is supposed to proved "an unmatched level of precision and immersion," with sensors to supplement the accelerometer and sensor bar to provide 1:1 motion -- as in, I move my arm this much, my character moves his arm that much. So far that's all we know about the unit, Nintendo will be detailing more at its E3 media briefing tomorrow."

Kind of like Wii remote 3G, only without the 2-year service contract with AT&T.

ON CHINA'S ARCHITECTURAL RENAISSANCE

NEXT IN LINE

A few days ago I posted about a unique building going up in Beijing, the new CCTV tower designed by Rem Koolhas, with critical praise by Paul Goldberger in the New Yorker. 

Today, the New York Times has a feature piece on the architectural renaissance going on all across China, lead in many cases by prominent architects from around the world.  The piece also has a great picture of the Koolhas building in the context of the Beijing landscape around it (featured here). 

The piece starts with a powerful introduction:

"If Westerners feel dazed and confused upon exiting the plane at the new international airport terminal here, it’s understandable. It’s not just the grandeur of the space. It’s the inescapable feeling that you’re passing through a portal to another world, one whose fierce embrace of change has left Western nations in the dust.

The sensation is comparable to the epiphany that Adolf Loos, the Viennese architect, experienced when he stepped off a steamship in New York Harbor more than a century ago. He had crossed a threshold into the future; Europe, he realized, was now culturally obsolete.

Designed by Norman Foster, Beijing’s glittering air terminal is joined by a remarkable list of other new monuments here: Paul Andreu’s egg-shaped National Theater; Herzog & de Meuron’s National Stadium, known as the bird’s nest; PTW’s National Aquatics Center, with its pillowy translucent exterior; and Rem Koolhaas’s headquarters for the CCTV television authority, whose slanting, interconnected forms are among the most imaginative architectural feats in recent memory."

But the piece also offers the negative side of these dramatic architectural changes:

"Yet your sense of marvel at China’s transformation is easily deflated on the drive from the airport. A banal landscape of ugly new towers flanks both sides. Many of those towers are sealed off in gated compounds, a reflection of the widening disparity between affluent and poor. Although most of them were built in the run-up to the Olympics, the poor quality of construction makes them look decrepit and decades old.

It’s the flip side of China’s Modernist embrace: tabula rasa planning of the sort that also tainted the Modernist movement in Europe and the United States in the postwar years. China’s architectural experiment thus brims with both promise and misery. Everything, it seems, is possible here, from utopian triumphs of the imagination to soul-sapping expressions of a disregard for individual lives."

What struck me about these two paragraphs, is that one could probably have made the same societal observations about New York and London when they were going through their early periods of dramatic architectural changes,  a hundred and two hundred years ago respectively, driven of course by the dramatic economic growth of the nations they represented. 

The difference this time with what's going on in China is likely the scale and the pace, spread out across so many cities across China each with burgeoning millions in population.

But China is going through a time-honored phase of fast developing global nations.  The architectural "monuments" are merely a way to keep score in the cycle.

ON A DIFFERENT SPIN ON HOME PRICES

EYE OF THE STORM

This week ended with a seemingly endless torrent of bad financial news sharply knocking the financial markets around.  And by all indications it'll be more of the same next week, as the financial markets decide what to make of the turmoil in housing stalwarts Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with a back-drop of ever-rising oil prices. 
So it was startling to see this cover story in Barron's this Saturday, titled "Bottoms'-Up:  This real-estate rout may be short-lived".  Kind of like spying a teeny bit of sun in the darkest of rain-storms.  Here's a piece of their argument:

"Home prices are down nearly 18% from the market's peak, according to Case-Shiller, and inventories of unsold homes are at near-record levels. Foreclosures are mushrooming on "subprime" properties, or homes whose purchase was financed with subprime debt. Blowback from the crisis has left mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae (ticker: FNM) and Freddie Mac

(FRE) financially strapped, while many other lenders lack the stomach -- or money -- to offer new mortgages. Noted market experts such as Pimco bond-fund manager Bill Gross and economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com predict the meltdown in housing will continue for many months, with home prices declining by 10% or more from today's depressed levels.

Yet, such pessimism appears overdone, based on much recent data. Sales of existing homes are showing tentative signs of increasing, while the plunge in prices likely is nearing an end. Total inventories fell in May to 4.49 million existing homes for sale, or a 10.8-month supply at the current sales pace, down from an 11.2-month supply in April, according to the National Association of Realtors, in just one statistic emblematic of the nascent trend.

YES, THE SUPPLY OVERHANG still is humongous, but at least the numbers are moving in the right direction..."
Still other numbers suggest prices are close to bottoming. The S&P/Case-Shiller Index for April, released just last month, showed the biggest year-over-year price decline yet, of 15.3%. Buried in the numbers, however, and widely ignored in the media, was the news that home prices actually rose, albeit slightly, between March and April, in eight of the 20 markets covered by the index (Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Portland, Ore., and Seattle). This was in sharp contrast to the readings for March, which showed prices falling in 18 of the 20 surveyed markets. Also, the pace of monthly price declines is starting to slow in most of the markets with negative readings."

The piece goes on to cover a whole lot of reasons why the broader real estate market back-drop is still bad, and doesn't get carried away with the bullish case.  But the very attempt to go through some reasons that not all the news is bad, is notable in a period where the successful trade has been in one-direction, down. 
We now go back to our regularly scheduled torrent of relentlessly bad economic news.

ON THE NEW AMERICAN SUV?

ALMOST THERE

The new Mini Cooper Clubman gets a nod from the Wall Street Journal for it's gas-sipping qualities, and it even looks like a mini-SUV:

"...the new 2008 Mini Cooper Clubman has the potential to be just the thing for this $4-per-gallon summer, thanks to an EPA combined rating of 32 miles per gallon.
And I'll do that one better: Without even trying I got an average of 36 miles per gallon during roughly 500 miles of test driving.
When I slowed down to 55-65 miles per hour, over a 100-mile freeway stretch, the Clubman even managed to return 48 miles per gallon.
That's better-than-hybrid fuel economy. And no, this car is not a hybrid."

It's a mini-SUV in appearance only though, as the review goes on to add:

"The car is still too small to accommodate even a three-person family on a weekend trip. A regular-sized cooler takes up nearly the entire cargo area, and with a kid or two in the back there's just no room to safely pack your gear."

Oh well, maybe a mini-SUV for the mini-American family in these maxi-stress times.

ON DANCING AROUND THE WORLD

GOOFILY GREAT

I hadn't heard of Matt Harding or his viral internet video of dancing goofily around the world, until this New York Times piece yesterday, so I'm the five or ten millionth or so person to come across it thus far.  As the piece explains:

"“Dancing” shows a guy dancing: a big, doughy-looking fellow in shorts and hiking boots performing an arm-swinging, knee-pumping step that could charitably be called goofy. It’s the kind of semi-ironic dance that boys do by themselves at junior high mixers when they’re too embarrassed to partner with actual girls.

The dancer is Matt Harding, the 31-year-old creator of the video, and with some New Agey-sounding music playing in the background, he turns up, grinning and bouncing, in 69 different locations, including India, Kuwait, Bhutan, Tonga, Timbuktu and the Nellis Airspace in Nevada, where he performs the dance in zero gravity...

"...The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Mr. Harding’s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting."

It apparently took him 14 months with travels to 42 countries to make, and the NYTimes has this part right about it:

"However you interpret it, you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier."

For that reason alone, it's worth watching it for even a fraction of it's 4 minutes and a half minutes. For me it really picks up around he 50 second mark, where people start to join him in his crazy dance.

Here's another one a little under 4 minutes, with even more places he's dancing around it...he does get around.  I even enjoyed the out-takes.

It's kind of a real-life version of that Cisco "Human Network" commercial from a while ago.

Dance, and the world will dance with you, it says.  Someone has just got to go out and do it first.

ON DARK SUMMER THRILLS

NO JOKING MATTER

So this Friday, we've got the new iPhone 3G release from Apple to look forward to, but what about next Friday?  What can we look forward to then, to give us a break from the dog days of summer? 

Why, "The Dark Knight" of course, the next Batman movie.  This time, the caped crusader goes up against The Joker, played by Heath Ledger in his last role before his untimely death.  Time magazine already has a review up and this is what they have to say:

"The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's second chapter in his revival of the DC Comics franchise, will hit theaters with all the hoopla and fanboy avidity of the summer season's earlier movies based on comic books.

It's the fifth, and three of the first four (Iron Man, Wanted and Hellboy II) have been terrific or just short of it. (The Incredible Hulk: not so hot.)

It's been one of the best summers in memory for flat-out blockbuster entertainment, and in the wow category, the Nolan film doesn't disappoint. True to format, it has a crusading hero, a sneering villain in Heath Ledger's Joker, spectacular chases — including one with Batman on a stripped-down Batmobile that becomes a motorcycle with monster-truck wheels — and lots of stuff blowing up."

So they like it, and it'll likely join a string of Super-hero movie hits from this summer.  But here's where the review really got my attention:

"In its rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity..."

Whoa, they compare this to The Fly, one of my all-time favorite sci-fi movies, where Jeff Goldblum puts in one of the best performances of his career in the title role.  And think it can share that company.

Now I've definitely have to add this movie to my "must-see" this summer list.

ON CHECKTHROUGH LAPTOP BAGS

HIT OR MISS

Fellow travelers, it may be time to get excited about the prospects of a special laptop bag that would not require the laptop to be removed at an airport TSA screening.

Engadget has a post with a picture of the pre-production bag from Skooba, and it isn't as bad as one might fear:

"Okay, third time's the charm -- here it is, a pre-production picture of the Skooba Checkthrough TSA-approved bag, direct from Skooba's CEO, Michael Hess. Michael got in touch with after our last post to say that the Checkthrough will indeed be a multi-pocketed bag and have several unique and patented features, including a specal 3-1-1 liquids compartment and a see-through window for rapid ID of contents.

There's also a number of minor changes coming to the design, but no matter what, you should be able to get through security without having to take your laptop out of your bag."

It's not at all clear how a TSA screener will know that this is an approved bag that won't require removing the laptop.  I can easily see it being a hit-and-miss Russian roulette proposition every time one goes through a screening.  "Will they or won't they?" stress will be the name of the game.  So it may make the bag an iffy proposition, at least for early adopters.

No word on when the bag may be available, but if you're impatient, you may want to go with the Skooba Skreener for now, which features an X-Ray image of stuff in a typical bag, as a design touch. 

And NO, it's NOT a Checkthrough TSA bag.  Also, you'd better hope the TSA folks have a sense of humor.

Now if they'd only make Checkthrough designed TSA-approved shoes...