Year: 2007

Notes for 2/4/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

Hubble Space Telescope in trouble?

Post ImageMany photographs of outer space have been taken over the years, but the really impressive ones have for the most part been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. I have learned quite a bit about the telescope thanks to the two astronomy courses I have taken this year – it is a pretty amazing piece of engineering. Needless to say, I was a little worried when I read the headline “Hubble humbled by power failure” today. Fortunately, the news isn’t that bad (and it’s a few days old too):

The main camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope has stopped functioning due to a short circuit, NASA announced Monday.

A previously planned service mission on the Hubble to install a completely new camera was already scheduled for September 2008. The new camera, currently called the Wide Field Camera 3, will replace the downed WFPC2 and prove more powerful than the ACS was in most ways…

So it’s not really in trouble. Though I suppose the scientists won’t be happy about having to wait until next year to use the main camera. As a mere bystander I’m just happy that it is mostly operational and that it will continue to be able to bring us amazing photos and information.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched on April 24th, 1990 and will be replaced in 2013 by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Read: CNET News.com

Pocket HD Video Recording

Post ImageIn the marketing presentation I gave on Monday I mentioned that podcasting will increasingly take advantage of advances in mobile devices, as well as high definition recording. When I put that idea into my presentation, I was thinking about the mobile and high def parts separately, but if this little video camera is any indication, they might come as a package deal:

The research kids in Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute just announced a tiny new video camera capable of shooting at a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and a variable frame rate up to 60 frames per second.

Pretty damn intense. The camera will be on display at CeBIT in March. I can just imagine the possibilities a small, high quality camera such as this would make possible. Bring it on!

Read: Engadget

Amazon Web Services Growth

Post ImageAmazon.com released their fourth quarter and year end (2006) financials today, and tucked away inside the press release was a little information on how their relatively new Web Services division is doing:

Over 220,000 developers have registered to use Amazon Web Services, up greater than 55% year-over-year.

Unfortunately – and this is often the case with these kinds of numbers – the release says nothing about how many of those 220,000 developer accounts are active.

The poster boy for Amazon S3, SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill, recently wrote yet another blog post on the service. The entire post is worth a read, but in particular he says:

Finally, S3 is a new service and yet remarkably reliable. Since April 2006, they’ve been more reliable than our own internal systems, which I consider to be quite reliable. Nothing’s perfect, but they’re doing quite well so far for a brand-new service.

I suspect their growth isn’t going to slow down anytime soon, so let’s hope their reliability and performance both scale with the continued influx of new developers.

Read: Amazon.com

What Comes Next for Jim Allchin

Post ImageI just read Jim Allchin’s final post over at the Windows Vista blog, and I have to admit, it’s kind of sad. He has been in charge of Windows development at Microsoft for so long, I’m sure he won’t know what to do with himself now. I mean, it must be pretty hard to go from running the Windows team to just relaxing, right? Running the Windows team has to be one of the hardest jobs around. They are always behind, always getting dumped on by the press, always fighting the bad guys, etc.

Jim’s post conveys this very well, with a funny overview of what a “typical day” might look like now that he’s retired. I guess he knows it’ll be hard to transition. This one is my favorite entry:

9:30 AM: Spent 45 minutes looking around the house for the big refrigerator with the free soda just like Microsoft – was unable to find it.

When I visited the Microsoft campus a couple years ago that was easily one of the coolest things. Big refrigerators all over the place with all the Coke you could ever want. It was wonderful!

Anyway, here’s my “thanks Mr. Allchin”. My fellow Windows fans and I appreciate all that you’ve done. And hey, no need to stop blogging! Start a personal blog!

Read: Vista Team Blog

A Rant About MySpace

Post ImageI hate MySpace. I simply cannot stand it. The navigation is horrible. The design is ugly. Their URLs are the most unfriendly ever. Random people add me to their “friends” list. Users have too much control over the look of the pages…which usually means that they end up making the pages painful to look at. Dancing text, repeating background images that were never meant to repeat, music that starts playing automatically, etc. I really cannot fathom how so many millions of people use MySpace on a daily basis.

Quite possibly the only thing I like about MySpace is that it runs on .NET and is therefore an excellent case study/example. But that would be the only reason.

Every single time I look at MySpace I cringe. Maybe I just don’t get it?

Marketing Presentation Audio

Post ImageLast night I gave a presentation on podcasting & marketing to students taking MARK 450 (Electronic Marketing) at the University of Alberta. I covered “what is podcasting”, Podcast Spot, some podcasting statistics, podcasting and its effects on marketing, and finished with some final thoughts. The presentation went very well and the initial feedback was very positive, so I hope the students got something out of it. I enjoyed talking to them!

We recently purchased some digital voice recorders and they arrived just yesterday afternoon. They are Olympus WS-100’s, and last night we tested them for the first time by recording my presentation. In general I’m pretty happy with them. We had one at the back of the room and one on the table in front of me. The far away recording isn’t so great, but the close range recording is quite good.

So if you’re interested, you can listen to my presentation here. The only editing I did was to remove the questions (as I didn’t have permission to post them). Otherwise it’s a straightforward recording. You can look in the show notes to see the time codes for the major topics I covered. I don’t know why, but it sounds like I was sniffling quite a bit – apologies for that!

If you have questions or feedback, I’d love to hear from you. I’m not going to post the slides here, but if you’re interested in them, feel free to email me.

Read: MasterMaq’s Podcast

Windows Vista available today

Post ImageToday’s the day. Windows Vista is now available in stores, ready for you to purchase. I went to Best Buy today (for something else, not for Vista) and I have to say, the Vista display was sad. There were only a couple boxes on the shelf, and one demo computer. More people were buying the WoW expansion than Vista.

I guess that is to be expected though. Most people will get Vista when they buy a new computer. That has caused some people to wonder why Microsoft has spent so much on advertising for Windows Vista. I think it’s a tactical move.

Here are some of the more interesting things I have come across today related to the Vista launch:

Make the music free and sell the show

Post ImageChris Anderson’s post today at The Long Tail is about the music industry and provides a really good analysis of what should be happening with music. Essentially, bands should give the music away for free and make their money on live shows. He explains:

Music as a digital product enjoys near-zero costs of production and distribution–classic abundance economics. When costs are near zero, you might as well make the price zero, too, something thousands of bands have figured out.

He points out that the average price for a ticket increased 8% last year, reflecting demand. Indeed the fastest growing part of the music industry is live performances, up 16% in 2006 in North America.

And don’t think that live shows are not profitable. They are extremely profitable for the artists, just not for the record labels. Chris includes a list of the top ten grossing touring bands of 2006 – and their numbers total a truly astounding $970.3 million.

I say – goodbye record labels, hello free music and awesome not-free shows!

Read: The Long Tail

Notes for 1/28/2007

Here are my weekly notes:

  • I’m giving a talk tomorrow night on podcasting to students taking a fourth year e-marketing course at the University of Alberta. Should be fun!
  • I’ve praised Office 2007 in the past (minus Outlook 2007) but it’s worth doing again. The new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint versions are amazing. Believe it or not, using them is fun! If you haven’t had a chance to try them, you’re missing out.
  • Here’s an interesting post from the writer of the Elk Cloner virus – the first known computer virus that spread “in the wild.”
  • Looking for a new blog to read? Check out It’s a Rich, Full Life. The blog is written by Chris LaBossiere of ProTraining.com, the guys that won VenturePrize last year.
  • If you’re under 25 years of age and are interested in video, why not join UNICEF’s one-minute video contest? The deadline is March 30th, 2007.
  • Sir Richard Branson is launching a Virgin-branded stem-cell storage company. Parents will be able to put the umbilical blood of their newborn into cold storage. If I was having kids, I’d do it. Who knows what magic the scientists will come up with in the future!
  • This is nuts…a 23 foot long python swallowed at least 11 guard dogs protecting a fruit orchard in Malaysia before being discovered.