Month: November 2007

So long 712!

Brand New BroomAs you may know, for the last few weeks Dickson and I have been moving out of the office. It was early 2005 that we decided we needed a central place to setup shop and started looking around for one. We ended up at the Empire Building on 101st Street and Jasper Avenue, a building I had been in before. We moved into Suite 712 in late April. There were lots of reasons we chose this particular building – among other things, it is secure, renovated, and well-connected (can get any kind of Internet connection in there).

The biggest positive about the location is also the biggest negative – you can’t get more central than the Empire Building.

I loved being right smack dab in the middle of downtown Edmonton. The Jasper Avenue address looks good on marketing materials, for one thing. It feels like the place a business should be. More importantly, it is easy to get to from pretty much anywhere in the city. The office was more than a place for Dickson and I to code…it became a meeting place for us and our friends. Going to the hockey game? Let’s meet at the office and take the train. Out for dinner? Meet at the office and then we’ll go. It was quite handy!

But being so central has it’s drawbacks too. Parking is pretty much nonexistent…I don’t want to think about how much gas I wasted driving around looking for a meter. There’s also the issue of Edmonton’s street people – not a major problem, but sometimes an annoyance. And the biggest drawback of all – cost.

That’s the main reason we decided to bid farewell to the office. We’ve changed quite a bit in the last two and a half years, and we just couldn’t justify the cost any longer. Our servers are in a data center now, and we’ve been working remotely more and more frequently. As an Internet+software company, we don’t really have visitors in meatspace.

That said, I still think there is value in having an office, and we may find a new one before long. Being in the same room usually can’t be beat when you’re working to solve a problem. We certainly accomplished a lot in 712 over the years. A new office will certainly be somewhere else though, with a smaller monthly bill and lots of free parking 🙂

Moving is hard work. It feels like we have been moving out of the office for months! Tonight I finally handed over the keys and access cards, making it official. The broom in the picture above was one of the last things we moved out. It’s kind of funny, because neither of us remembers buying it, and it clearly hasn’t been used (the building had a cleaning staff). Moving is definitely a good opportunity to clean house.

Now it’s finally finished. Nothing left to move, and we’re officially a virtual company again. So long 712!

Outlook 2007 on Vista with RDC is driving me crazy

I have written about Outlook 2007 here before, usually in relation to performance. The hotfix that was released back in April has mostly fixed that problem for me, but I have a new problem.

Outlook 2007 on Windows Vista is a piece of shit when it comes to accessing it through Remote Desktop.

I haven’t been able to take a screenshot of this yet, but essentially it renders the computer (or at least the remote desktop session) unusable. Outlook 2007 works fine for a while, but minimize it one too many times, and the next time you try to bring it up the screen is washed out with windows appearing all over the place and everything is just garbled. You can’t see the start bar either, so figuring out how to close it or get rid of it is problematic. I have to close the session and sometimes restart Outlook on the actual computer before it’ll work again.

I don’t understand what the problem is. I have tried messing with all of the RDC settings, and I am running the latest version. All the updates are installed, on both machines. The only application I have this issue with is Outlook 2007. A search on Google for ‘why does outlook 2007 on vista suck using remote desktop‘ didn’t return anything helpful either. Heh.

It’s driving me crazy. I love Outlook, but the latest version has been a real pain in the ass at times.

Any suggestions on this one? Any softies out there reading this? Help!

One Messenger Account, Multiple Computers

Post ImageMy favorite Skype feature appears to be coming to the next version of Windows Live Messenger! According to a cached LiveSide post, Windows Live Messenger 9 will get something called "Multiple Points of Presence Support". Essentially that means you can sign in using the same account from multiple places. Currently, if you sign in on your desktop and then try to sign in on your laptop, your desktop gets disconnected. Skype has had the ability to sign in from multiple computers for quite a while, and I absolutely love it!

I can’t believe it has taken Microsoft so long to add support for this feature. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has created multiple Live accounts just so that I can be signed in on multiple computers. That means you have multiple contact lists though, which kind of sucks. With this feature, and the ability to link Live accounts (released last month) I expect there will be a significant drop in the number of accounts in use.

Another obvious feature coming to WLM9 is support for hyperlinked status messages. Basically that means you’ll be able to click the Twitter link I always have in my status 🙂

Read: ZDNet

Notes for 11/25/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • Happy Birthday Andrew and Jane and Ana!
  • I really like the new Flickr Uploadr beta. Check it out here.
  • Interesting article on how Apple’s iPod commercials are making stars out of new bands and artists. Apple is the new MTV.
  • From the "copyright-laws-are-stupid" department: "We are living in the "infringement age," where it’s impossible not to infringe on copyrights every single day — yet many people still don’t understand why it makes sense to change copyright laws to make them more reasonable." Read about the research paper here.
  • Who would have thought that simple typos could be such big business?
  • Striking stagehands in NY resumed talks with producers today. I hope they come to an agreement soon – we have tickets for Wicked!
  • December is going to be a crazy month for me. I’ll be in Edmonton for just a single week! On the 1st I fly to London, on the 16th I head to New York, and on the 23rd I am going home for Christmas to Yellowknife.

Two Years of Xbox 360, Five Years of Xbox Live

Post Image It was two years ago today that I lined up at Best Buy very early in the morning to be among the first to snag the Xbox 360 gaming console. So, happy birthday Xbox 360! Kind of hard to believe it has been that long.

Last Thursday was another anniversary – the fifth for Xbox Live! It’s even harder to believe the service has been around that long – it launched exactly a year after the original Xbox console. My latest article at last100 examines Xbox Live:

Xbox Live started out as a multiplayer gaming network, but today the 8 million users with Live accounts do much more than just play games. Users can download movies and television shows, chat with friends, and more. Even Microsoft now describes the service as a “comprehensive unified online entertainment network”. Marketing-speak at its finest, but it’s true – Xbox Live is a key component of Microsoft’s connected entertainment vision. In this post we look at the state of Xbox Live today, and explore some of the ways Microsoft will likely enhance it in the future.

Give it a read, and let me know what you think!

Read: last100

Goodbye optical discs, hello write-once memory cards!

Post Image Engadget posted yesterday about 1GB write-once memory cards from SanDisk that would cost around $5.99 USD. My first thought was that it would never work. Why buy a memory card you can only use once for $6 when you can buy a rewritable one for as little as say $15? It wouldn’t make sense. But after reading the comments and thinking about it a bit more, it became clear that write-once and rewritable memory cards could serve very different markets, just as CD-R/CD-RW and DVD-R/DVD-RW do today.

For the digital camera user, a write-once memory card doesn’t make much sense, unless it comes as part of a "disposable" camera. Otherwise, you’re likely going to want to stick to a memory card that you can fill up, erase, and fill up again.

For digital media however, write-once memory cards do make sense. Think about albums, movies, and games – they all come on optical media. And as handy as they are, CDs and DVDs are still pretty big as far as technology goes. Each disc is 12 cm across, which means you need a pretty big device in order to read them. Imagine how big your digital camera would be if it saved data on a CD! And yes, I realize there are mini-CDs and DVDs, but they have drastically reduced capacities.

By comparison, an SD card is about 3cm x 2cm. Much, much smaller. They can fit inside all sorts of devices, including phones, cameras, and digital media players. I’d rather have digital media like music, movies, and games come to me via the cloud, but if I have to purchase it in physical form, I’d much rather have a smaller SD card than a relatively large DVD.

Write-once memory cards make the most sense for data archival, however. I’m sure I’m not the only one that burns write-once DVDs as part of my backup regimen. How cool would it be to use tiny little memory cards instead? Rewritable memory cards have already far surpassed the capacity of DVDs, so I imagine that write-once memory cards won’t be far behind. Plus, backing up data to a memory card is faster and less error-prone than burning a disc. And when you’re done? Memory cards take up a lot less room than discs do, so you can store many more of them.

The one advantage that DVDs have over write-once memory cards, of course, is cost. You can buy DVDs for around 35 cents per disc. I don’t expect that advantage will last long. When production of write-once memory cards ramps up and technology improves, the cost will come down dramatically. Okay maybe one more advantage of DVDs is that they are harder to lose, but that depends on how you look at it 🙂

My initial negative impression is long gone – I’m looking forward to write-once memory cards!

Read: Engadget

Facebook dropping "is" from status updates

Post ImageI knew something was up! For the last week or so, all text message updates I have received from Facebook say something like "Kimberly Male is is eating dinner" – note the double "is". Also, I got a strange message from Facebook saying that texts were being turned off because I hadn’t sent a text to Facebook in the last 30 days. I had to go into my account and turn it on again, twice, before it started working.

The point is, they’ve been tinkering.

And now it appears the grammatically inflexible status updates feature is finally going to be fixed. Ding dong, the "is" is dead!

My sister gave me the heads up tonight that she could backspace the "is" from the input box, and then type whatever she wanted. I just checked it out, and I can do the same! Looks like the mobile site still contains a hardcoded "is" however.

The removal is obviously not yet complete, but hopefully it will be soon. Keep an eye out here, here, and here for updates.

Read: Facebook

More on the Amazon Kindle

Post ImageNow that Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader has actually launched, there is a lot more information available out on the web. And after reading a bunch of it, I am less excited than I was yesterday. Here are a few links that may be of interest if you’re curious about the Kindle:

I dunno. Crippled wireless, lousy document support, DRM, a $400 price tag, and it’s still ugly. The Kindle sounds less and less impressive with each article I read.

Here’s to hoping that version 2 is better!

Notes for 11/18/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

What I’m Listening To: Paramore
I’m addicted to Paramore! I first heard them on MTV Canada (which is funny, as the channel almost never shows music videos). They’re an extremely young group of four (age range is 17-22), fronted by the bright-orange-haired Hayley Williams. My favorite songs so far are "Crushcrushcrush" and "Misery Business" off their newest album Riot!. I also quite like "Emergency" off their first album, All We Know Is Falling. If you hear anything about them coming to Edmonton (or Canada, for that matter) let me know!

The Amazon Kindle

Post ImageAmazon.com is venturing into the hardware industry on Monday with the launch of their new ebook reading device, Kindle. The image I have included to the right comes from a September 2006 post at Endgadget, so I have no idea if that is just a prototype or if it is a reasonable representation of the shipping product. I hope just a prototype, because it’s kind of ugly. The device is 4.9 inches by 7.5 inches by 0.7 inches and weighs 10.2 ounces (so slightly larger than the iPod classic, and double the weight).

Newsweek has a seven page article up all about the device, and after reading it, I’m pretty excited (though still distraught over the look…beige is so pre-Internet). I encourage you to go read it for yourself, but here’s the gist of the article:

  • The Amazon Kindle will sell for $399 USD.
  • It has no back-light, and utilizes E Ink technology that mimics the readability of ink on paper.
  • Battery will last 30 hours and will fully charge in just 2.
  • Wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi and EVDO.
  • Does not require a computer. You can buy the books on the device with one-touch and start reading.
  • There will be 88,000 books available at launch, for $9.99 each.
  • You can subscribe to newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
  • You get a private Kindle email address. Send a PDF to it, and the document is automatically added to your library, ready to read on the Kindle.

The Newsweek article then goes into the history of ebooks, and provides a pretty good analysis of how the Kindle could transform both reading and writing.

Don’t you wish you had one of these? Or maybe one of the second generation Kindles, with color screens, a sleeker design, and a lower price? I do. I know ebooks have been talked about for years, but the Kindle could be the device that finally opens the floodgates. The killer feature, as far as I am concerned, is the inclusion of wireless connectivity. It’s a big, big deal.

You don’t always have access to your computer, and even if you do, connecting a device to it is an annoying step that needs to go away forever. With a wireless connection, the Kindle can do everything on its own, without the need for a computer. Score one for the inclusion of wireless.

As the Newsweek article states, the Kindle is "the first ‘always-on book". That could transform the way books are published entirely! I read a lot of non-fiction, and I like to buy the books when they are brand new. For instance, I bought Freakonomics as soon as I heard about it. The problem is that these books almost always have a second "revised and expanded" edition! There’s no way I’m going to buy the book again. With the Kindle however, I could subscribe to the book. The author could update the book on the fly, and I’d see the changes instantly, wherever I am. How cool is that?!

Another key advantage to the Kindle’s wireless feature is the ability to venture out onto the web. You can look up something on Wikipedia for instance, and then capture passages to your Kindle library "with an electronic version of a highlight pen." Combined with the fact that you can send documents to the Kindle, it could become your hub for all kinds of reading. Books, newspapers, blogs, documents, and web pages.

There will always be critics and individuals who say nay to the idea of ebooks, but it’s a losing battle for them. From the Newsweek article:

"I’ve actually asked myself, ‘Why do I love these physical objects?’ " says [Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos]. " ‘Why do I love the smell of glue and ink?’ The answer is that I associate that smell with all those worlds I have been transported to. What we love is the words and ideas."

Microsoft’s Bill Hill has a riff where he runs through the energy-wasting, resource-draining process of how we make books now. We chop down trees, transport them to plants, mash them into pulp, move the pulp to another factory to press into sheets, ship the sheets to a plant to put dirty marks on them, then cut the sheets and bind them and ship the thing around the world. "Do you really believe that we’ll be doing that in 50 years?" he asks.

Amazon’s Kindle attempts to solve the first problem – the affinity for the physical book – by being a device that disappears as you read. The print is clear and crisp, the device mimics the size of a paperback, and there isn’t much to distract you from reading (I guess that’s one advantage to the less than sleek look). It solves the second problem – environmental waste and inefficiencies – by getting rid of the need for paper altogether.

I think the Kindle could be good. Read the Newsweek article, and also this post by the author, Steven Levy. In it, he addresses the "ugly" reaction that bloggers like me have had. There’s even more on the device at Techmeme. Maybe in a few years you’ll be reading this on the Kindle!

Oh, and don’t let the $399 price tag get in the way of realizing how much potential the Kindle has. After all, when the iPod launched in 2001, it was priced at $399 too.

Read: Newsweek