Tag: Technology

Going Extinct is More Fun When You Have Company

What do you get when you combine a bleeding phone company with a stagnant software company? You get Nokia phones running Windows Phone 7. Nokia has been feeling the pain from competitors as of late and even lost their crown as most popular smartphone manufacturer (they’re still the large phone manufacturer, just their smartphones numbers are lower than competitor smartphone numbers). Likewise Microsoft seems to be having a problem getting people to buy phones running their Windows Phone 7 operating system.

The natural thing to emerge from this is the two companies combine to create… Hell I don’t know what they’re trying to create. I guess it makes sense when you consider Nokia’s new CEO is a former Microsoft employee.

HP/Palm’s Unveiling

Yesterday HP/Palm unveiled their new WebOS product line. Needless to say after seeing it I’m feeling a bit underwhelmed but am certainly impressed with some of the announcements. First HP/Palm announced two new phones, the Veer and Pre 3.

The Veer is the new entry level WebOS device. It’s smaller than the Pre 2 which I find a bit perplexing as the Pre 2 is already a pretty small phone. Specs-wise the Veer is certainly not going to blow you away with a 2.6″ 320×400 screen, 800 MHz processor, 8GB of internal memory, and a goofy proprietary connector.

The second phone unveiled was the far more interesting Pre 3. This appears to be the new high end flagship phone for HP/Palm putting the Pre 2 between itself and the Veer. The main complain I have about the Pre 2 is the screen, it’s 3.1″ with 320×480 pixels of real estate. The Pre 3 on the other hand has a 3.58″ screen with 480×800 pixels of real estate (the same as the Evo 4G).

Likewise the Pre 3 has a 1.4 GHz processor which is pretty powerful for a phone. Since WebOS is known for its multi-tasking capabilities it makes sense to dump a decent amount of RAM in it, say, 512 MB. Sadly the internal storage is either 8GB or 16GB depending on the model you get. This is a rather pitiful maximum as the iPhone can go up to 32GB and any modern phone with a microSD card can be topped off with a 32GB card. HP/Palm really should have released a model of the Pre 3 with 32GB on board. I’m actually looking forward to this phone.

The third thing HP/Palm announced was the iPad TouchPad. This device looks rather familiar with it’s 9.7″ 1024×768 screen in a tablet format. With that said the TouchPad has some unique features such as 512MB of RAM on board and a far more pathetic choice in internal memory, either 16GB or 32GB (the iPad can have up to 64GB). The processor clocks in at 1.2GHz which is very respectable.

HP/Palm did some nice things to integrate the phone and tablet. The coolest feature is probably the fact if you physically tap a WebOS phone to the tablet whatever web page you’re viewing on the tablet will automatically open on your phone. Taken a bit further this feature would be absolutely awesome. I often look up an address on my iPad and then have to retype the address into my phone when I leave. I’d love to be able to tap my phone to my tablet and have them communicate the address themselves. Likewise WebOS lends itself much better to multi-tasking than anything Apple has attempted in iOS.

HP/Palm also announced something very interesting, WebOS will be coming to PCs later this year. The idea of having a universal operating system between my phone, tablet, and computer does have a nice ring to it.

All in all I think HP/Palm had a good show and unveiled some interesting, if not overwhelming, products. I’m looking forward to seeing if they can carve out a piece of the market for themselves or if they’ll end up being a complete niche which almost nobody uses.

HP/Palms Unveiling Event

So today is the big day, HP/Palm will finally be unveiling new devices. It’s likely going to be a combo of one or two smartphones and a tablet. Either way Pre|Central will have a live blog going which will be available here.

Honestly I’m rather excited and hopeful that HP/Palm unveil something impressive that could rekindle people’s interest in WebOS.

Since the Cat is Out of the Bag

My interest in Palm’s WebOS should be well known to anybody who’s read this site for a while. Although I’ve had a lot of interest and did eventually get a used Palm Pre I never ended us using a new Palm device as my primary phone. The main reason was the fact their hardware was woefully behind once I finally decided to upgrade form my Palm Treo 755p.

Palm (well technically now HP but I like calling them Palm better) has been running a discount program form developers. If you’re a developer Palm will give you $200.00 off of an unlock Pre 2. It’s a pretty sweet deal when you consider it’s an unlocked phone that gives you access to WebOS 2.0. A couple of weeks ago I inquired with Palm about this program and they sent me back a couple of e-mails asking about the applications I was planning on writing. This was basically a quick screening process to ensure I wasn’t just trying to get a cheap unlocked phone, but instead actually planning on developing for the platform.

After a couple of e-mails they offered me a free Pre 2 for development purposes. I figured that was a pretty good deal and took them up on the offer. I’m not exactly sure when the phone will arrive but I was told it could arrive as early as this week (although being Palm is having their big event tomorrow I was told that was no guarantee).

Either way I didn’t say anything as I was unsure if this was something Palm was doing but wanted to keep if to developers expressing interest in the discount program. Well it seems that’s not the case and Palm has 100 99 Pre 2 phones they’re planning on giving out to developers free of charge. So if you’re a developer and have interest in WebOS you could get a hold of Palm via the Pre 2 discount program. It’s likely you can nab yourself free reference hardware (that will function properly on either T-Mobile or AT&T but will only have 3G speeds on AT&T).

Remember When You Could Just Play a Video Game

Remember the days of the NES, SNES, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and pretty much every other game console that has previous been released? You just pop your game into the console, power it up, and play it. Those days are sadly dead and buried as companies try to find ways to inconvenience paying customers while doing nothing to stop the piracy of their products. It seems Capcom is going to require you be connected to the Internet in order to play their upcoming released, Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2.

What’s most annoying is the simple fact that the game is mostly a single-player endeavor so there is no actual need to be connected to the Internet in order to play it. It also means at some future point when Capcom shuts down their servers you will no longer be able to play this game. So in the end at some future point you will have to pirate the game in order to play it.

What many software companies don’t seem to understand is the simple fact that pirating is easy. Digital “Rights” Management (DRM) makes life complicated and difficult for the user. It’s actually less of a headache to find and download a title illegally than it is to legitimately use some software. How is making the customer’s life more difficult supposed to prevent piracy? The simple answer is it won’t. DRM simply causes further loss of sales since potential customers (such as myself as I was previously planning to buy Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2) are willing to put up with the headaches.

Companies seem to believe an Internet connection is a constant and stable item. For most people this isn’t the case as their Internet connection dies with enough frequency to warrant a lot of complaining. Tying a piece of software to an Internet connection when there is no need only makes your software worthless when said Internet connection dies.

Verizon to Throttle Heavy Data Users

Verizon has been making a big deal about having an unlimited data plan while AT&T offers a tiered service. It’s a nice feature to advertise but it appears Verizon is leaving itself a back door in case the new glut of iPhone users decide to rape their data network:

Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren’t negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.

This is interesting verbiage I must say. Basically if you are in the top 5% of bandwidth users your data speeds will be reduced for up to two billing cycles. Yes, potentially two depending on how early you fall within that top 5%. Of course using the qualifier of 5% is interesting because the potential exists where the top 5% of data users would consume only 1MB of data (granted the possibility of that happening are less than a unicorn walking through my business within the next five minutes). T-Mobile has a much easier to understand cap where you get throttled after you’ve downloaded 5GB of data and I haven’t a clue what Sprint does (I’ve gone past the 5GB barrier before with no noticeable throttling).

It seems Verizon chose to use a percentage as a method of dropping the throttle hammer on anybody they chose to without having to give a concrete explanation as of why. If you have a nebulous figure of X% then you can pretty much do whatever the Hell you want because nobody can actually confirm whether or not they were within that percentage or not.

It’s an interesting response to a scenario they know will be occurring soon (a high increase in the data usage on their network).

Greedy Prats

Yes I use an iPhone but also keep a love-hate relationship with the device due to Apple’s draconian controls over what you’re allowed to and now allowed to do on your device. The main problem I have is Android didn’t work out for me as Google went and lost every record of every application I had purchased leaving me to either purchase them again (there is no support e-mail or phone number for the Market and their support forum seems to go entirely unmonitored) or abandon the platform. When you fuck me over I’m done so here I am in Apple land mostly happy.

Well Apple apparently has decided to be even more greedy and are forcing app developers who offer paid content outside of the App Store to include that same content through the App Store by March 31st. What makes this an even bigger deal is the fact Apple will take a 30% cut of all items purchased through the App Store.

This came to light when Apple rejected Sony’s e-reader application on ground that it allowed users to purchase content inside the app but not through the App Store. Amazon got away with this but sending users to the Kindle website when they clicked the button to buy a book in their Kindle app for iOS. Now Apple is changing the rules and both the Kindle and Barnes and Nobel apps will be required to offer all of their content through the App Store or abandon the platform.

Of course Apple’s 30% cut is rather insane for something like e-books because it means those e-books go from a profitable endeavor to a loss. When you buy a book most of the money goes to the publishers with a small percentage going to the store that sold the book and maybe some to the author if their book has already made the publisher their advance back. If you self-publish on Amazon they take 30% of the sale price of the book. This means all books sold through the App Store will lose Amazon money (probably Barnes and Nobel as well but I’m not familiar with their self-publishing option).

Who is going to continue doing business when you lose money with every purchase? Nobody that’s who. That very well could be Apple’s intention as well. The Kindle and Barnes and Nobel apps both compete with Apple’s iBook application (and by compete I mean dominate because the selection available through iBooks is pathetic at best). I wouldn’t be surprised if this entire maneuver is just a ploy for Apple to push their competition out of their market. Talk about being complete assholes and morons at the same time. If Apple starts pushing out other companies they will soon lose their main advantage, the app ecosystem.

Internet Kill Switch

I’m sure you’ve heard that Egypt has basically killed Internet access in a pointless attempt to censor those rightly angry with their dictator government. Many people are decrying this and rightfully so but many of these people are also making statements proclaiming how glad they are that such a situation couldn’t happen here. These people are stating that only fascists and dictators would do such things.

So, which on is our government? Personally I’d say closer to fascists since we don’t really have a single dictator in power at the moment. Either way our government has been pushing for legislation to create some form of “Internet kill switch” for some time now. They want to have the legal authority to shutdown the Internet in “times of emergency.”

This can happen here and our overlords representatives are trying to make it a possibility. If you don’t want to see the Egypt style kill switch here you need to complain to your so-called representatives now before they decide to pass it in some lame duck session.

Facebook Turns on HTTPS

Just to let everybody know it seems Facebook has finally activated the option of turning on HTTPS. HTTPS encrypts the traffic between your computer and Facebook making it more difficult to eavesdrop on your traffic (useful for example if you actually use open Wi-Fi access points). You should go to your settings and enable this right away.

Of course if you’re using HTTPS Everywhere you don’t have to worry about manually enabling this Facebook feature. Or you could add Facebook to NoScript’s force HTTPS section.

Google Not Happy with Android Market Performance

Hey Google and I share something in common, neither of us are happy with the Android Market. It’s for different reasons of course, they aren’t happy with the number of application sales, while I’m not happy with the fact Google lost all records of every application I purchased from the Market. Maybe they just wanted me to rebuy everything to bump their sales figures (that was sarcasm in case anybody decides to claim I’m just making up a conspiracy theory).

Either way I think Google needs to do two things in order to improve the Android Market. The first one is to make it easier to search for applications. If you do a search for an application there is a very good chance you’ll get pages of unrelated applications. When I do a search for an application Google of all companies should provide me with great search results. The other thing Google should do is create some kind of real customer support for the Market. Current Google only has their Market forum which I’m doubting they even monitor (I still haven’t seen a single reply to my question from back in November). If Google at least setup a monitored e-mail address customers could contact when they have problems it would go a long ways in my not so humble opinion.