*michael parekh on IT*

ON STAR TREK RE-TOLD

BRACE FOR IMPACT

The newest trailer for the upcoming Star Trek movie, helmed by J.J. Abrams of "Lost" fame, shows again how story trumps everything. 

Here's the clip to see what I mean:

The line that got me the most was of course the kindly mentor talking to the young Kirk after he'd just been in a bar fight, about his father (spoiler alert):

"Your father was the Captain of a Starship for 12 minutes.  He saved 800 lives, including yours.  I dare you to do better.  Enlist in Starfleet."

Wow, what a whopper of a re-introduction to the Star Trek story. 

As powerful as the "Earn this" line by Tom Hanks at the end of "Saving Private Ryan".

We all yearn for good stories, told and re-told again. 

The new Star Trek movie, may well be on it's way to do this better than the 10 Star Trek movies preceding it.  Looking forward to 5.08.09.

ON A MUST-HAVE iPHONE APP

THRILLING READ

The single best third-party App on the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) showed up today, at least in the view of this avowed book geek.  As a long-time fan and user of Amazon's Kindle (and now Kindle 2), and now an eager user of the new free Kindle iPhone app from Amazon, I heartily recommend people try this new App out, whether they own a Kindle or not. 
Walter Mossberg describes all of this well in detail in this review today:

"As I predicted in my review of Amazon.com’s Kindle 2 e-book reader last week, the giant bookseller has moved quickly to make the 240,000 book Kindle catalog available on other devices. On Tuesday night, the first Kindle software reader appeared, and it’s a free iPhone app.
Called Kindle for iPhone, the app replicates the basic book-reading functions of the hardware Kindle device, and can be thought of as a complement to that device, which has more features. However, you don’t have to own a hardware Kindle to use this app. You can now choose instead to use your iPhone or iPod Touch as the reader for books from Kindle’s catalog."

He goes on to add:

"...it is a solid basic app for reading books, and is especially valuable if you already own a hardware Kindle, as I do. In my brief tests, the iPhone app synchronized rapidly and perfectly with my purchased library of Kindle books on Amazon’s servers, and allowed me to retrieve a previously purchased e-book, without paying again, just as my hardware Kindle does.
It also synchronized to the furthest page I had read in that book on my Kindle. After reading for awhile on the iPhone, I performed that process in reverse, and my Kindle took me to the same spot where I had quit reading on the iPhone."

CNET has another review of the software worth reading with some additional details.

I'd add that Kindle books, at least for now, are generally less expensive to buy than their physical counterparts, partly due to Amazon subsidizing many titles.  Most of them are available for $9.99, with many paperbacks available for far less.
In addition, since the iPhone is generally with me at all times, it's very convenient for a quick access to any book in my library I'd like to peruse at will.
With free samples of many books available for download on to an iPhone/iTouch, I'd recommend giving the free Kindle App a try.

ON PONDERING GOOGLE SEARCH

STOP TO SMELL A ROSE

Use something several times a day, everyday for half a decade or more, and you can't but help take it a bit for granted.  I'm talking here about Google Search, which so many of us have become so addicted to in living our daily lives.

For that reason alone, it's interesting to note this blog post by Udi Manber, who leads Search Quality at Google, as their VP of Engineering, re-introducing us all to what Google Search is all about, and how it works behind the scenes.  That it works at all is a wonder, considering the scope of the task at hand:

"A few hundreds of millions of times a day people will ask Google questions, and within a fraction of a second Google needs to decide which among the billions of pages on the web to show them -- and in what order."

Peel that simple idea back to see the scope of the problems being solved, all revolving around core ranking, and it becomes even more amazing that it can be done at all:

"Ranking is hard, much harder than most people realize. One reason for this is that languages are inherently ambiguous, and documents do not follow any set of rules. There are really no standards for how to convey information, so we need to be able to understand all web pages, written by anyone, for any reason.
And that's just half of the problem. We also need to understand the queries people pose, which are on average fewer than three words, and map them to our understanding of all documents. Not to mention that different people have different needs. And we have to do all of that in a few milliseconds."

And of course do it in so many languages.  It also needs to be done with a bit of secrecy, as Udi goes on to explain:

"For something that is used so often by so many people, surprisingly little is known about ranking at Google. This is entirely our fault, and it is by design. We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do. There are two reasons for it: competition and abuse."

He goes onto talk about the constant battles Google fights with web-spam.

The whole piece is worth reading, if only to step back for a few minutes, and remind ourselves how much life has changed in the last decade and a half for us all.  A whole host of innovations, and entrepreneurial companies have brought us to this point.  And some of them have even figured out  how to make a little  profit  while providing  a "free" global service.

Google, like Yahoo! and so many others long before it, is but one of so many companies that'll continue to perform seeming miracles in the services they provide to billions around the world.  Yes, today's accomplishments will pale in comparison with what tomorrow will bring, but it's nice to pause just for a post, and remember how far we've come.

ON THE JOYS OF AMAZON SHOPPING

SHOPPING MECCA

It's December 11th, and my wife and I are done with our Holiday shopping.  A bit of a record for us, given that most years we're scrambling until we're running to the airport to go visit the family.

And while we've done most of our shopping online for almost a decade, online played a particularly important role in the timeliness of our shopping this year. 

Having a ticking clock online reminding you to order before certain dates to get items shipped in time for the holidays definitely prodded us along.

The bulk of our shopping this year has been through Amazon, with a smattering via Red Envelope and other online retailers.

Over the past two to three years, Amazon has rolled out small, but important shopping features that collectively have gotten them a bigger piece of our shopping budget.  Let me go through the four biggies that particularly influenced our shopping this year:

1.  Prime Shipping: I've been an early adopter of this feature since it was introduced a few years ago, whereby, you pay a yearly subscription fee of $79 to get "all-you-can eat" Express shipping on your orders through the year.  This feature in particular has resulted in my shopping a lot more on Amazon throughout the year, not just for the holidays.

2.  Amazon's selection: This has particularly been impressive this year, with it's wide range of affiliate retail partners large and small.  It's gotten so that this holiday, we'd look up items found on other online stores, to see if they were available on Amazon. If the price was the same or better, we ordered it through Amazon, both for the prime shipping, and the next important feature.

3.  Multiple shipping addresses: For a while for now Amazon's offered the ability to store scores of shipping addresses in your account.  While many online shopping sites offer this, Amazon goes one better.  They make it supremely easy to buy via 1-click, and ship an individual item to a particular address, with multiple options on shipping and gift wrapping right there at your finger-tips. 

4.  Gift Organizer:  The last feature was particularly helpful when combined with the online shopping tickler available through the Gift Organizer, that allows you to build a list of friends and family on one's shopping list.   We've been using that feature for a couple of years now.  Also helpful here are the features to review your gift history with every person on the list (assuming your got the gifts via Amazon), and the ability to use Wish lists for friends and family.

To these four key features, add one of the best consumer review collections by product, to be found anywhere.  Talk about social shopping.  Amazon's had this one down cold before social anything was cool.

I also like the company's customer service features, both automated and human powered.  In particular, they make it very easy to cancel orders, and send a prompt confirmation email after every cancellation.

The ability to navigate through all the products availalbe on Amazon, while still daunting, seems to get better every year.  They've added Ajaxy software pop-ups in many places providing more product information, without having to click and navigate away from a page full of products.  Also, the addition of video previews for many products is also a huge boon in product selection.

A lot of these features are not new, either to Amazon or to many other online retailers.  But if one has cumulatively used these features via Amazon over the years, they collectively become more useful every year.  Like a snowball going down a hill.

It's all hit a tipping point of sorts for us this year.

For all these reasons and more, I rate Amazon shopping a "Thriller" service this year.  Should have done it far sooner.

The only problem at Amazon these days is not that they don't have cool features.  It's that they have so many, that you really need to work to find most of them, and make them part of one's shopping routine.

It's a high-class problem, and one that Amazon will hopefully solve sooner than later.

Good luck on your holiday shopping, one and all.

ON THE THRILL OF THE READ

BREAKING THROUGH

After several days with the Amazon Kindle, I'm ready to call it a "Thriller" product.  A lot of nits have been picked by a lot of folks on how this could be so much better.

But for any lover of reading, there are three things that transcend the specific attributes of the device and service:

1.  Amazon Whispernet:  The embedding of broadband wireless has a backbone of the service makes the Kindle experiment in portable commerce really unique compared to anything we've experienced online before.  It's a model that'll likely be emulated by other portable products by a range of third-parties, much in the way the iPhone made multi-touch interfaces a whole new way to do phones and music on the go.

In fact, after browsing, researching and buying dozens of books off the Kindle, and then using the iPhone to buy a music track or two off it's Wifi iTunes store, I couldn't help thinking how a Whispernet type of data network would make a future iPhone/iPod so much more useful.

2.  The e-Ink screen: Despite the fact that the screen is not back-lit and doesn't do color, it really nails what it does try to do, which is try and duplicate the experience of reading on paper.  The text is crisp and eminently readable for hours.  And yes, it'd be nice if it didn't flicker to black at the turn of every page, as the page reset itself to the new page to follow.  But it's really amazing how attached one can get to reading off the Kindle. 

3.  The selection:  This is the part of the Kindle experience that makes me the most optimistic that my investment in a couple of Kindles (one for my wife) and dozens of books is going to be worth it in the long=run.

Given that this is an Amazon service, there are over 80,000 titles to choose from vs. 20,000 or so from competing services like the Sony Reader.  And one can imagine how the Kindle library can grow pretty quickly from here.

Most of all, one of the coolest parts of the Kindle experience is having a paperback sized gizmo, that lasts for days without a charge, with a growing collection of all the stuff you like to read.

And it's a very different online experience than laptops, PDAs, smartphones, MP3 and video players.

There a lot of ways the Kindle can be improved, and in future posts, I'll add my two-cents on them.

But for now, this is one of the coolest things from Amazon to date.

Recommended for any fan of books.

ON COMPANIES THAT PROVIDE AN "APPLE-LIKE" EXPERIENCE

LIKE IT LIKE THAT

On a recent plane ride, as I was taking out my favorite gadgets for the flight, it hit me that there are some products that provide almost as much a thrill in using and handling, as an Apple product.  The notion was triggered by taking out my Bose QC-3 headphones for the 5-hour flight. 

The thing is encased in it's own, compact zippered case, with it's few components all laid out in their own little compartments.  Also, as I walked up and down the aisles, I noticed almost as many folks using Bose headsets, as there were iPods on the plane.

This got me thinking of an on-going list of products that one can consider as "Apple-like".  Products that give the user as much satisfaction, visceral and otherwise, as any popular Apple product.  To paraphrase that popular saying about defining porn, one may not be able to precisely define an "Apple-like" experience, but we know it when see and feel it.

One condition for this "Apple-like" list, is that their key product/s must be an elegant combination of hardware and software. 

This is not to say there aren't software only products and/or online services that provide an Apple-like experience (Google Maps and Gmail come to mind). 

Nor can it be a company that provides an elegantly designed hardware product, like Monster's compact travel power-strip that I wrote about a while back.

For the purposes of this "Apple-Like" list, we'll stay with companies that uniquely combines hardware and software, in either a key product, or a family or products.  And of course, provides a "Thriller" experience.

So to kick off the list, I'll start off with,

1.  The Bose family of products of course.  Whether it's their headphones, or any of their various music systems, Bose seems to generally provide an "Apple-like" product experience.  I've been a long-time fan of their music systems, like the Soundock, I use the guest bedrooms at the house.

2.  Sonos is another company that in my book qualifies as an "Apple-like" product experience.  I've talked about their Sonos home music systems before, as has Fred Wilson, who particularly enjoys his Sonos system with Real network's Rhapsody music subscription service.

3.  Segway would be another company I'd nominate for an "Apple-like" qualification.  Their products are not mainstream yet, and at $5,000 plus a pop, not easily accessible.  But if you haven't tried out a Segway, I'd encourage you to check it out at a Segway dealer. 

The sheer experience of gliding along with almost not physical effort, is worth the time to check it out.  Again, their products provide a "magical", "Apple-like" experience, via an utterly innovative combination of hardware and software.

4. Research in Motion (aka RIMM), the makers of the Blackberry devices, has really pumped up their ability to provide an "Apple-like" thrilling product experience, especially with it's "Pearl" family of devices, with their integrated track-balls.  Again, these are products I've raved about before.  Speaking of cool software touches, I've long loved the way a double tap on a Blackberry space bar gives you a period, something that the iPhone would do well to "emulate".

5.  Jawbone, a relative new-comer, has one of the best blue-tooth headsets I've used (and sometimes I feel like I've used them all).  The product combines it's "Noise-shield" software, in a hardware design aesthetic, that makes you do a double-take when you see it.  Although it doesn't have a body of products yet, the first product is "thrilling" enough to qualify for an "Apple-like" rating.

This list of five is but a start, so much so, that I'm establishing an "Apple-like" category, to use on future posts featuring cool gadgets that aspire to the Apple aesthetic.  Also, would be very curious to hear what products you'd nominate for an "Apple-like" qualification.  Thanks.

ON GOOGLE BROWSER SYNC LOSING BOOKMARKS

HELPLESS AND HAPLESS

Well, it happened almost on the first anniversary of the day I declared Google Browser Sync (aka GBS) to be a "Thriller" product.

Last year, I had the following great words about GBS:

"With this post, I'm officially classifying Google's recently introduced "Browser Sync" extensionaggressive marketing by the company. as a "Thriller" product, worthy of more

I was pretty enthused about Browser Sync already when Google introduced it earlier this month.  As a refresher, here's how Google describes this cool piece of software:

"Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers.

It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. For more info, please visit our FAQ."

Well, I may have spoken a year too soon.  GBS did work relatively flawlessly syncing all my bookmarks, passwords, cookies, etc. across a handful of Windows and Macs, for all these months.

But yesterday, I noticed that my primary Windows laptop had a blank bookmark bar in my Firefox browser, where the day before, there'd been dozens of folders meticulously organized with all my important bookmarks.

I quickly went to my primary Mac laptop and fired up Firefox.  Sure enough, no bookmarks.

Then went quickly to my primary Windows and Mac desktops, and also, no bookmarks.

It's as if each machine had been lobotomized overnight.

I didn't panic.  I figured it was just some sort of a server synchronization error on Google's side.  I mean, as reliable as Google services like Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. have been, there HAVE been occasional hiccups.

So I went to the GBS FAQ and went through the meager suggestions offered for refreshing and reconnecting GBS.

Did them all.

No dice, no bookmarks, no joy.

Then the normal demands of the day intruded, and I had to put aside the whole GBS thing yesterday. 

I hoped in the back of my mind that things would be back to normal today.

Again, no such luck.

This morning, I've spent a good amount of time on the web researching this issue, and it seems I'm not alone.

Google doesn't seem to have proper support for GBS.  There is a discussion group though, rife with reports of similar problems over the last couple of months.

But I can't seem to find any official response from Google on the problem, or on how to fix it.

At this point I'd even settle for some way to get an older copy of my bookmarks, so I can restore them directly to a browser again.

The various kind folks in the Google discussion groups all seem to refer to the "Wrath of GBS" discussion thread, where after one reads through countless posts, several work arounds have solved the problem for some.

I read through most of them, and tried the various things suggested.  No luck my end.

To my amazement, there seems to be no setting within GBS that allows one to access previous states of one's browser configuration.

I'm not even sure of how one might make a backup of one's bookmarks with GBS.

The discussion groups all suggest that Google has all but orphaned the GBS project, with one or two Google engineers working on the product in their "20% pet project" time.

If that's the case, it's a pretty abominable state of affairs.

There's no warning label on the GBS site that this is a beta product.

Now I know it's still a Google Labs project, so that implicitly means that it's a beta product.

But I'm mad at myself for having let it become to mission critical to my online work, and being oblivious to the beta nature of the product. 

And of course for not worrying enough to have figured out how to make a backup of all my bookmarks.

So I'm up the proverbial creek for now.

So much for living one's life "in the cloud".

Makes one yearn for good, old-fashioned desktop applications again.

Any thoughts and/or suggestions out there, are most welcome.

Oh, and I'm suspending the "Thriller" rating on Google Browser Sync, for now.

Now, I'm going to try and figure out how to back up all my documents and spreadsheets on Google Docs.  Just in case.

ON SOFTWARE MAGIC BEYOND THE iPHONE

MAGIC THAT WORKS

Sometimes, technology products induce the greatest wonder and loyalty amongst users when they JUST, SIMPLY work, as they theoretically should. 

Preferably without much fussing and mussing by the users.

Apple has long done that with it's products over the years, resulting in a cult-like loyalty amongst growing legions of users.  And the company has been justly rewarded, as evidenced by a quarter very well received by investors yesterday (via GigaOm).

But yesterday I had such a "wondrous" experience with a non-Apple product.   And it made me think about what Apple may need to do to make sure it's upcoming iPhone can do just as well, if not better.  Above and beyond it's many anticipated software enhancements,

I  talked a few days ago about how I plan to replace my primary cell phone, which long has been a Verizon Wireless Blackberry 7130, with the upcoming Blackberry 8830.  And that's primarily because it'll be the first Verizon Blackberry with both CDMA and GSM technologies, enabling the phone to be used pretty much around the world. 

(While this has long been possible with phones from AT&T/Cingular and T-Mobile, given their GSM support, it's been lacking in phones from Verizon Wireless and Sprint, both of which use CDMA technologies.)

Maybe my 7130 Blackberry read my post while downloading it as an RSS feed, because in a almost vengeful way, it promptly ceased working reliably.  The device provided only intermittent voice and data/email service despite much technical fiddling and fussing.  It was almost as if it had decided to systematically wage a random work stoppage.

The Verizon Wireless service people, after much examination and discussion diagnosed it as some sort of hardware failure, and offered to replace it with another 7130.

It was a good alternative, while I waited for the 8830 to be released by the end of May, or early June.

I instead decided to tempt the tech Gods and opted to transfer my email service to a backup Blackberry 8100 Pearl I've had for some time from T-Mobile, while having my voice service temporarily forwarded to that phone as well.  The Pearl has been my primary overseas phone, because Verizon Wireless phones, as mentioned before, do not travel well outside the US, given their non-GSM technology.

I dreaded making the switch however, fearing that the process would be drawn out, very technical, and involve multiple calls with my hosted email provider, and tech support at Verizon Wireless.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised.  I had a quick email dialog with my Blackberry/Outlook email service provider, who's long provided me with Blackberry Enterprise Server and Microsoft Exchange based email.  Within a few minutes, they were able to wirelessly transfer and sync everything that made my 7130, MY PHONE, into the 8100 Pearl. 

By everything, I mean, all my contacts, my calendar information, my memos, my emails, past and present (Thanks, Jack!).

The only additional thing I had to do was to install additional mobile apps I use like Google and Yahoo! mobile services.

The whole thing was much less painful and time-consuming than expected.

Now that's what I call technology magic.  And explains why the Blackberry service is so special and a Thriller for email geeks everywhere.

Now, Apple's iPhone is unquestionably going to provide some meaningful innovation in hardware and software-driven user interface design. In addition, the iPhone is expected to be enhanced going forward with software upgrades, as outlined by AppleInsider today.

But after yesterday's experience, I really wish Apple would do what Microsoft has done with RIM, the makers of the Blackberry.

And that was to make the Blackberry experience available on phones running Windows Mobile 6.0.  This is obviously coming from a Blackberry user with a personal ax to grind.  But there are a few million of us, who would love to have our cake and eat it too...with an iPhoneBerry.

Or whatever you want to call the thing.  I'm not particular, as long as I get both the Blackberry and iPhone magic.

DISCLOSURE:  I own shares in Apple, RIM, and Microsoft.

ON SIMULSCRIBE'S ATTENTION TO CUSTOMERS

STAYING ON TOP OF THINGS

It's been about a month using SimulScribe's "Visual Voice-mail" service that I wrote about here and here. 

I've been very pleased with the service to date, and have even recommended it to others, including my wife.

In the earlier post, I'd used Fred Wilson's apt description of this service:

"THIS IS A LIFE CHANGER. What Simulscribe does is reroute your voice mails to their service which is a traditional voice mail service, with the exception that it TRANSCRIBES the voice mail and emails it to you along with the wav file so you can play the original voice mail."

In the follow-up to the post, I'd then picked one nit with the service:

"Under the default setting, SimulScribe informs all callers that their message will be transcribed by their service. 

As I described in the second postscript note in yesterday's post, SimulScribe charges AN EXTRA nickel per message on top of the $0.25 per voice-mail if the subscriber chooses to turn that default tag line off."

It wasn't a deal-breaker for me, but something that did irk me about it nevertheless.

So it was a very pleasant surprise to receive an unsolicited email from the CEO of the company, James Siminoff, yesterday.

In it, he mentions that he came upon my posts on his service, and upon review, they've decided to take off the nickel charge for users opting not to use this tag-line ad for the service.

Well, this of course earns them a gold star in my book, especially for paying attention to unsolicited feedback on their service on the web.

It makes it that much easier to recommend the service to you all.

It's been about a month using SimulScribe's "Visual Voice-mail" service that I wrote about here and here. 

I've been very pleased with the service to date, and have even recommended it to others, including my wife.

In the earlier post, I'd used Fred Wilson's apt description of this service:

"THIS IS A LIFE CHANGER. What Simulscribe does is reroute your voice mails to their service which is a traditional voice mail service, with the exception that it TRANSCRIBES the voice mail and emails it to you along with the wav file so you can play the original voice mail."

In the follow-up to the post, I'd then picked one nit with the service:

"Under the default setting, SimulScribe informs all callers that their message will be transcribed by their service. 

As I described in the second postscript note in yesterday's post, SimulScribe charges AN EXTRA nickel per message on top of the $0.25 per voice-mail if the subscriber chooses to turn that default tag line off."

It wasn't a deal-breaker for me, but something that did irk me about it nevertheless.

So it was a very pleasant surprise to receive an unsolicited email from the CEO of the company, James Siminoff, yesterday.

In it, he mentions that he came upon my posts on his service, and upon review, they've decided to take off the nickel charge for users opting not to use this tag-line ad for the service.

Well, this of course earns them a gold star in my book, especially for paying attention to unsolicited feedback on their service on the web.

It makes it that much easier to recommend the service to you all.

ON THE ROAD FROM DELL HELL TO APPLE HEAVEN

BEATING EXPECTATIONS

Yesterday, I talked about getting ready to install my new Apple TV as soon as I get back from a current trip.

Not long after that, I got an email from Apple that went as follows (excerpted for brevity):

"Dear Apple Store Customer,

You recently received an email to notify you that we have shipped your
order.

We received notification from our carrier that your order has not
been delivered. The carrier will attempt delivery one more time...

Sincerely,
Apple Store Customer Support
Delivery Management"

The first part of the email then went on to give me the option to RESPOND DIRECTLY BACK to the email with an alternate address where I'd be over the next few days.  And offered to change the shipping address automatically.

Now, I've been ordering stuff online for a very, very long time.

But almost never have I seen a customer email that offers the utter convenience of just replying to the email for a change like this. 

Most often than not, it's a form letter sent from a robot email address.

In a similar situation, it would then ask me to either call a toll-free number, or go online to my account, and spend 20 minutes to so dealing with a human or an extended website session, making the necessary changes.

But never, just RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL!

Skeptical, i shot off a quick email with an alternate address and other necessary information.

Not more than 20 minutes later, I get the following reply back from Apple:

"Dear Michael,

Thank you for your quick response.

We have updated the carrier with the address information you have provided.  We anticipate the next delivery attempt to occur within one to two days.

You can access up-to-date information on your order by visiting..."

Thank ME for the quick response?? Are they kidding?

Thank you, Apple for the quick response, averting what could have been yet another annoying delivery adjustment chore into an absolute pleasure to deal with situation.

For this, I give Apple's delivery team a Thriller award.

If you think I'm over-reacting to this, just think back to the bad rap most computer companies have developed in the last little bit.  Remember the whole Dell Hell saga accentuated by Jeff Jarvis two years ago?

So when a company goes a little above and beyond in customer service, it deserves an unsolicited Kudos in a blog post.

P.S.  And Apple, don't think I didn't notice that while the first email to me may have been automated, and addressed to "Dear Apple Customer", the second one was addressed by my first name. 

Now granted, that could have been automated with my order information, but it was another sublte customer service touch nevertheless.