"I will certainly agree that as far as sound quality goes, the Shuffle is definitely an inferior product. "
Interesting. I personally don't have the ears to tell the difference, but I this PC Magazine article by Bill Machrone disagrees with your assertion:
"Apple's new iPod shuffle has stellar audio performance. In the bass registers, it blows away the competition, including its bigger siblings.... The iPod shuffle's near-perfect rendering of the [40-Hz] square wave means that it uses push-pull output instead of the single-ended, capacitor-coupled output found in just about every other player. You just can't get this kind of audio performance from a single-ended circuit. I find Apple's audiophile approach exciting on several different levels."
We don't need software to predict how many posts will mention Britney Spears even though she faded away years ago. She's no longer an appropriate proxy for manufactured pop music. Pay attention people. It's 50 Cent's world, we just live in it.
"I don't understand how this helps - if you install application "X" you expect to trust it, and I assume you grant it privileges to run on your machine etc."
You trust it to perform specific actions. You do not mean to implicitly grant unlimited privileges. You expect, and trust, your web browser to render HTML. You do not grant it permission to delete all your files simply by the action of running it. So there has to be a trust within limits relationship. Applications should be able to execute in a non-destructive manner but require further authorization to do such things as install other apps, delete or modify any files other than its own, etc.
"This gets said a lot, but I'm not convinced it's true"
I agree with you there.
"Google does not have a desktop platform, they have an advertising service."
OK, here's why Google makes Microsoft paranoid. You are right that Google is not, and will not be, a "platform" in the sense that the Windows OS is. And all those things you mention are expressly designed to drive traffic to Google services in order to increase advertising revenue. But what they also do is create ubiquity. The more Google services can meet the needs of users, the less important the operating environment becomes. That's because Google is a network service rather than a program that runs on an operating system. With the exception of a couple of Windows programs, Google is offering search-related services accessible from nearly any networked device. I wouldn't argue that they will render Windows obsolete, but they may well lessen its market dominance.
This seems to be a throwback to the 1990's portal strategy of "stickiness." That is, trying to keep users in the offered services as long as possible in order to market to them. I would be more inclined to believe in a Google messaging system if it was designed around the concepts of search. Google can already offer search via any IM service using a bot to return results just as they do via SMS. Google Desktop can search IM logs from any client that saves logs in a text file. So what's the advantage of yet another IM service? Sure it might raise the profile of Jabber but I don't see that much helping the situation. Unless they are going to unveil some form of speech archiving and searching, I don't see what use this will be.
"E-mail is still used by 90 percent of online teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging."
"Three-quarters of teen Internet users use instant messaging, compared with 42 percent of adults."
OK, 90% of teens use email and 75% of teens use IM. Yet teens have a "greater enthusiasm for instant messaging"? Sure, a greater enthusiasm than adults (75% to 42% according to this survey). Is that a surprise to anyone? But they are still more likely to be users of email. So what's the point of this?
"Right now RSS is a delivery mechanism for content and not advertising."
Advertising is content. It can be delivered through RSS just like the rest of the content you want. Smart RSS advertising will be narrowly targeted and unobtrusive. Blogs are a great medium for this because they themselves are narrowly targeted and have more actively engaged viewers than other forms of traditional media.
"You can scan so much content because you don't have to filter out advertisements, images, differing layouts, etc."
True. That's why RSS advertising can be successful. It necessarily will have to abandon the in-your-face model of multimedia banners and adopt the plain text format of the rest of the content. You won't despise the very site of it, it will be targeted to the interests of the readers of that blog/feed, and it will be low key enough to be deemed acceptable by the owner of the content who does not want to lose viewers.
"They're not going to allow you to select only the ads with the hot chicks, or turn ads off after 9pm."
Sure they will. In exchange for your permission to be exposed to advertising that is relevant, and your attention to it, smart marketers will reach you in the way you want to be reached. A single informative car ad the moment before you go out to shop for cars is worth more to the marketer than the past 500 ads they paid to run past everyone hoping for that moment of influence.
"People don't really browse the internet with handheld devices [...]"
Great point. The key word here is "Browse." I speculate that those of us accessing online content via a mobile (i.e., small screened, small-format, and wireless) device are looking for a particular datapoint. Large screens and broadband are the Sunday drive of connectivity - they enable one to serendipitously discover new things and explore on a whim. If I am on the road with only my trusted mobile phone and its tenuous (and metered) GPRS connection I just want what I want. It may be an address, a weather report, the location of the nearest Starbucks, or something else I can articulate. It's very unlikely to be "I wonder if there is anything interesting on Slashdot." Even in the latter case an RSS reader would be preferable to an HTML browser.
I think Palm was really onto something with its PQA applications for the wireless Palm VII. If you wanted a stock quote you'd enter the ticker symbol into the appropriate PQA screen and get back an instant quote. Contrast this to attempting to view a Yahoo Finance page through a tiny window where the actual data point(s) are a small fraction of everything on the page. Unfortunately, the PQA model required having the specific queries preloaded. I view its successor to be Google SMS. Now if I want an address I send an SMS to 46645 ("googl") and get the text response back. That's a whole lot easier than trying to shoehorn a Mapquest page into my 128x160 pixel phone screen.
I'd like to see more services like that. And that RSS reader as well.
"Supposedly the netscape version has built in the IE rendering engine for compatibility, while still maintaining the security of Firefox. We shall see. This may mean a browser that is vulnerable to every exploit."
"If a site is considered trustworthy, Netscape automatically renders it using the Internet Explorer method, for maximum compatibility. Internet Explorer's method for rendering Web pages opens security vulnerabilities that Firefox's doesn't. Netscape figures that, at trusted sites, it's OK to take that risk."
Profit is exactly the motive behind such UI-hostile interface elements as a permanent shopping search bar. AOL is throwing in several ways to get the user directly to AOL's own web properties. It looks as if they already pre-installed a few of those spyware toolbars.
Slashdot Mirror
"I will certainly agree that as far as sound quality goes, the Shuffle is definitely an inferior product. "
Interesting. I personally don't have the ears to tell the difference, but I this PC Magazine article by Bill Machrone disagrees with your assertion:
"Apple's new iPod shuffle has stellar audio performance. In the bass registers, it blows away the competition, including its bigger siblings.... The iPod shuffle's near-perfect rendering of the [40-Hz] square wave means that it uses push-pull output instead of the single-ended, capacitor-coupled output found in just about every other player. You just can't get this kind of audio performance from a single-ended circuit. I find Apple's audiophile approach exciting on several different levels."
We don't need software to predict how many posts will mention Britney Spears even though she faded away years ago. She's no longer an appropriate proxy for manufactured pop music. Pay attention people. It's 50 Cent's world, we just live in it.
"I don't understand how this helps - if you install application "X" you expect to trust it, and I assume you grant it privileges to run on your machine etc."
You trust it to perform specific actions. You do not mean to implicitly grant unlimited privileges. You expect, and trust, your web browser to render HTML. You do not grant it permission to delete all your files simply by the action of running it. So there has to be a trust within limits relationship. Applications should be able to execute in a non-destructive manner but require further authorization to do such things as install other apps, delete or modify any files other than its own, etc.
"We're not going to strict"
In perhaps the most important measure, spelling errors in editor comments, it's still the same Slashdot. I find that comforting.
"I can duplicate a USB key in just a few minutes while you're in the bathroom.
Since my keys are always in my pocket I will probably find your actions suspicious.
I agree with you there.
OK, here's why Google makes Microsoft paranoid. You are right that Google is not, and will not be, a "platform" in the sense that the Windows OS is. And all those things you mention are expressly designed to drive traffic to Google services in order to increase advertising revenue. But what they also do is create ubiquity. The more Google services can meet the needs of users, the less important the operating environment becomes. That's because Google is a network service rather than a program that runs on an operating system. With the exception of a couple of Windows programs, Google is offering search-related services accessible from nearly any networked device. I wouldn't argue that they will render Windows obsolete, but they may well lessen its market dominance.
This seems to be a throwback to the 1990's portal strategy of "stickiness." That is, trying to keep users in the offered services as long as possible in order to market to them. I would be more inclined to believe in a Google messaging system if it was designed around the concepts of search. Google can already offer search via any IM service using a bot to return results just as they do via SMS. Google Desktop can search IM logs from any client that saves logs in a text file. So what's the advantage of yet another IM service? Sure it might raise the profile of Jabber but I don't see that much helping the situation. Unless they are going to unveil some form of speech archiving and searching, I don't see what use this will be.
NASA should send up vehicles shaped like a giant broom and dustpan. There's a lot of dangerous debris up there.
"E-mail is still used by 90 percent of online teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging."
"Three-quarters of teen Internet users use instant messaging, compared with 42 percent of adults."
OK, 90% of teens use email and 75% of teens use IM. Yet teens have a "greater enthusiasm for instant messaging"? Sure, a greater enthusiasm than adults (75% to 42% according to this survey). Is that a surprise to anyone? But they are still more likely to be users of email. So what's the point of this?
"My ISP, Pair , for example, uses RSS maintenance feeds to notify customers about about outages, maintenance, or other known problems."
Your ISP uses RSS feeds to notify you of outages? That's a great idea. I think the power company should do the same thing.
"Right now RSS is a delivery mechanism for content and not advertising."
Advertising is content. It can be delivered through RSS just like the rest of the content you want. Smart RSS advertising will be narrowly targeted and unobtrusive. Blogs are a great medium for this because they themselves are narrowly targeted and have more actively engaged viewers than other forms of traditional media.
"You can scan so much content because you don't have to filter out advertisements, images, differing layouts, etc."
True. That's why RSS advertising can be successful. It necessarily will have to abandon the in-your-face model of multimedia banners and adopt the plain text format of the rest of the content. You won't despise the very site of it, it will be targeted to the interests of the readers of that blog/feed, and it will be low key enough to be deemed acceptable by the owner of the content who does not want to lose viewers.
"They're not going to allow you to select only the ads with the hot chicks, or turn ads off after 9pm."
Sure they will. In exchange for your permission to be exposed to advertising that is relevant, and your attention to it, smart marketers will reach you in the way you want to be reached. A single informative car ad the moment before you go out to shop for cars is worth more to the marketer than the past 500 ads they paid to run past everyone hoping for that moment of influence.
"Qwests idea of fiber to the curb is to leave a bran muffin on your sidewalk every day for just $50 a month."
Cheaper than Starbucks. And delivered!
"Install a WiFi Max mobile station at each WalMart and you have close to an instant cell network...."
Good idea. Sounds like something Cringely would dream up.
"Virgin Mobile runs over T-Mobile's network in the USA, which is GSM."
Virgin Mobile USA, and most other U.S. MVNOs, are using SprintPCS's CDMA network.
"... the real tune is inside your head, and it always sounds fine."
Except when the voices talk over it.
"Kill the pundit, kill the pundit!"
I wonder what age one has to be to have instinctively read that in the appropriate operatic voice. *sigh* They just don't make 'em like that anymore.
"how can anyone read that with a straight face?"
Botox?
"People don't really browse the internet with handheld devices [...]"
Great point. The key word here is "Browse." I speculate that those of us accessing online content via a mobile (i.e., small screened, small-format, and wireless) device are looking for a particular datapoint. Large screens and broadband are the Sunday drive of connectivity - they enable one to serendipitously discover new things and explore on a whim. If I am on the road with only my trusted mobile phone and its tenuous (and metered) GPRS connection I just want what I want. It may be an address, a weather report, the location of the nearest Starbucks, or something else I can articulate. It's very unlikely to be "I wonder if there is anything interesting on Slashdot." Even in the latter case an RSS reader would be preferable to an HTML browser.
I think Palm was really onto something with its PQA applications for the wireless Palm VII. If you wanted a stock quote you'd enter the ticker symbol into the appropriate PQA screen and get back an instant quote. Contrast this to attempting to view a Yahoo Finance page through a tiny window where the actual data point(s) are a small fraction of everything on the page. Unfortunately, the PQA model required having the specific queries preloaded. I view its successor to be Google SMS. Now if I want an address I send an SMS to 46645 ("googl") and get the text response back. That's a whole lot easier than trying to shoehorn a Mapquest page into my 128x160 pixel phone screen.
I'd like to see more services like that. And that RSS reader as well.
In the future you will be "beamed" to the office.
More likely, in the future the office will be "beamed" to you.
"Vodaphone just charged me £500 because I went 50MB over my quota"
I wish there was a +1 Damn! mod.
"Supposedly the netscape version has built in the IE rendering engine for compatibility, while still maintaining the security of Firefox. We shall see. This may mean a browser that is vulnerable to every exploit."
According to Walt Mossberg's review in the WSJ:
"If a site is considered trustworthy, Netscape automatically renders it using the Internet Explorer method, for maximum compatibility. Internet Explorer's method for rendering Web pages opens security vulnerabilities that Firefox's doesn't. Netscape figures that, at trusted sites, it's OK to take that risk."
I'm pretty sure people were making more than 75 cents per hour during the dot-com bubble. Unless you meant the 17th century tulip bubble.
There is no "5) Profit!".
Profit is exactly the motive behind such UI-hostile interface elements as a permanent shopping search bar. AOL is throwing in several ways to get the user directly to AOL's own web properties. It looks as if they already pre-installed a few of those spyware toolbars.