Johnny Ray

Anyone who knows me knows I’m an avid music collector. I enjoy a variety of genres and sounds. Like most people, I was pretty excited when Google finally announced their Music Beta product. It was something I had been waiting for, for quite a while. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if Google was filling some sort of void. After all, Amazon had already beat them to market with their Cloud Player solution. Amazon’s solution, coupled with their existing MP3 store makes for a seamless music management experience. Thing is, I already consume other Google Cloud services (Gmail, Docs etc) so, to finally have a solution that will almost certainly integrate with those services in the future was welcomed news.

The first thing I thought was interesting is that Google doesn’t seem to enforce a storage limit in terms of raw storage space. Instead, they have a 20,000 song limit (free while in beta) which is huge! My collection consists of roughly 3500 songs which isn’t even putting a dent in my quota. This is great seeing as though one of my biggest complaints about alternative solutions, is that in order to get that type of storage you have to spend an arm and a leg and you don’t get the integration that Google will inevitably offer. Now, Google will most likely charge for the service once it’s out of beta but if it’s competitive with similar services – I’d be willing to pay for it.

There are solutions out there that predate even Amazon. My gripe with home server based solutions is that they require you to setup your own server and rely on your home Internet connection to serve up your songs through the cloud to your client. A solution that comes to mind that many people aren’t talking about is Opera Unite. I’ve actually used Opera Unite and it works remarkably well. It’s easy to setup and easy to manage. Last time I used the service though, the playback interface was a bit lacking. Some people don’t mind relying on their home infrastructure for their content delivery and in best case scenarios that may be ok – but I’d prefer to rely on a robust infrastructure with support for redundancy, distributed storage, caching to serve up my content. In addition, if you’re away from home and your server suddenly shuts down, your power goes out, or the software simply breaks it’s likely to not be fixed until you get home to troubleshoot it yourself. If you just so happen to be out of town when this occurs, you may be screwed. That’s not to say these solutions aren’t feasible, I’ve used them myself – they’re great. I just imagine the worst case scenario. Even in the day of Google Music and Amazon I still have a backup for my music. And a backup for my backup (seriously). So, it’s not personal.

As you may or may not know, Google Music is integrated with the latest version of Android’s Music player. I have access to my entire music collection on my phone which is awesome! My Zune HD is so jealous. And yes, I have a Zune HD, say what you like about the device but the damn thing is sexy and much more suited to my taste than any variation of the iPod. I know I know, I don’t get the apps but, I don’t care. Anyway, in addition to being able to stream your entire collection natively on Android, you have the ability cache any of the albums on demand on the device itself which is great if you find yourself temporarily without an internet connection.

There are a bunch of other features as well as gotchas associated with the service as well as the app (well not really the app it’s pretty basic) but this is not a review by any stretch of the imagination. It’s also worth mentioning that Apple is expected to launch a similar cloud music solution (presumably tightly integrated with iTunes). The difference being Apple is rumored to have the “blessing” of major music labels – something at which Google has failed. I’m sure this has something to do with the wild success of iTunes – music labels figure if they’re going to jump on board with someone they’d rather it be with Apple because of the proven revenue stream associated with iTunes. Like with all other things – these companies competing in the same space will be great for the consumers and gives techies like me one more thing to argue about with fellow geeks.

It seems 2011 will be the year of the tablet. It’s funny how just a year or so ago, most people were saying there wasn’t a real market for tablets – that they didn’t provide any real purpose. Well, you can still make that argument, but that doesn’t mean the demand isn’t there. So what exactly is it people are really demanding? Is a device that’s too big to be a phone yet, too small (and low on functionality) to be a laptop – or even a netbook – really that important to us? I must admit, I was a bit skeptical when the tablet was first beginning to catch traction. However, I did not allow that to stop me from testing the waters. A couple months after the release of the iPad I purchased one. I enjoyed the device. I’d have to say the number one selling point of the iPad will have to be the gaming – it’s an excellent gaming device. I’m not much of a gamer personally so although I recognized the iPad’s remarkable gaming capabilities, that did not stop me from selling it a couple months later. I do, however miss the e-reading capability.

The iPad isn’t the only slate in town. Since then, Samsung has released the Galaxy Tab – an Android based tablet device. It’s a smaller device than the iPad but has similar functionality (wifi, 3G, e-reading etc.). Apple is expected to release the iPad 2 (that’s not the official name) in 2011. I’m willing to bet it will have a front facing camera which will make it Face Time capable. This will help to expand the device’s communication capabilities. The Samsung Galaxy Tab already has this capability. In addition to the new iPad, 2011 promises* to bring several other tablet devices. Recently, Andy Rubin, while demonstrating the new Google Maps application showed us a prototype of a Motorola tablet device. Also, there’s the once famous, now infamous Notion Ink Adam which is supposed to be released next month. I say infamous simply because of the controversial pre-order launch of the device. I won’t get into the nitty gritty but it all boils down to crashing servers, lack of communication, no mastercard payment options, confusion and the fact that despite people paying over $500 for the device, the final product has yet to be demonstrated or even photographed. Notion Ink has indicated it has heard the concerns of its current and would-be customers and announced a detailed video showing the device and its UI will be released on December 18th. Honestly, I had high hopes for the Adam. My confidence was shaken during the whole pre-order debacle and the resulting war of words between NI and Android Police. However, I’ll be the first to eat my words and sing praises should NI actually deliver in two days (NI has indeed delivered it’s video and can be viewed here ).

Fusion Garage’s JooJoo tablet was recently discontinued. It was a little TOO much of a niche device. Although it looked great, it was nothing more than a web browser. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, but the price was comparable to the iPad. Sure, the iPad doesn’t have native flash capabilities in the browser but other than that, feature wise, there was no contest – iPad won. I was pleased to read later that the JooJoo 2 (not the official name) will return with an Android based OS (Good move, Fusion Garage).

I’m quite interested in seeing what Motorola will do with their tablet. The line of ‘Droid’ phones they’ve been releasing with Verizon Wireless are arguably the best Android based phones on the market today (My original, rooted Droid is still running strong with Bugless Beast 0.4 overclocked at 1.2gz). Anyway, back to tablets: what are they for? Well, it sort of depends on who you ask. In my humble opinion, they’re just a different form factor general purpose computing device. For the gamers, they’re a great gaming device and everything else is just frosting. To others, it’s a great way to check your email, surf the web, and stay connected via social networking. And to some, it’s a kick ass e-reader with some extra flavor. The confusion about the purpose of tablets stems from it being a completely new type of device. We’ve had desktops, laptops, cell phones etc for quite a while. Yes, their capabilities have grown exponentially but they have a place in our lives. Take a look at smart phones…hell, of all the things I use my smart phone for, a phone is probably one of last things on the list, yet, it’s still called a smart phone. Why? Because before it was anything else, it was a phone – period. Tablets are different. They’re new to us. They weren’t anything before tablets. They don’t fit anywhere – yet. It may be a while before tablets find their niche purpose.

I was surprised to learn that the JooJoo tablet has been discontinued by Fusion Garage. Well, ok I wasn’t’ that surprised. The tablet device was anticipated by some to be a competitor to with wildly successful iPad. Only thing is, the JooJoo only touts a small fraction of the iPad’s capabilities – for the same price! Sure, the JooJoo has support for flash and it has a bigger screen but for many, this simply wasn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, the device is attractive and I even considered getting one for myself but I simply couldn’t justify spending that type of money on a device that was only a web browser. Users have no real access to the internal storage so, storing user owned data was out of the question. To my knowledge, there wasn’t even an e-reading capability.

All is not lost! Fusion Garage founder Chandrashekar Rathakrishnan has previously mentioned that the company will indeed release a follow on device that will run Android. This should help bring some much needed capabilities to the JooJoo and make it a real competitor in the tablet space. Whether or not this new device will run stock Android or a customized version of the OS is uncertain. What is certain is that you’ll be able to do a LOT more than just surf the internet. JooJoo2 where are you?

As I stood in the airport, waiting for my bags to emerge from the abyss (better known as the baggage claim belt), I just so happened to glance at my phone to see that I had a new e-mail. Upon further reading I learned I was one of the lucky ones chosen to receive a free Logitech branded Google TV device. This, is of course Google’s way of “stimulating” the development of applications and optimization of web sites for the device. Up until I learned of the news I hadn’t given much thought to developing anything for Google TV simply because I wasn’t sure if it was going to catch on or not. I’d hate to see it go the way of Google Wave. I won’t be selfish, though. I won’t take this device and keep it all to myself and contribute nothing to the community. After all, the device IS retailing for $300 and I’ll be getting one for free so, out of sheer appreciation I do plan to give back in some form or fashion.

The first thing I’ll do is simply optimize my current website for Google TV. This may seem like a fairly trivial task, and to a certain extent, it is – technically. Only thing is, I’m no UI designer. I have trouble ascertaining what looks good. And when I do decide something looks good, most times it looks good to me and not necessarily anyone else. I’ll probably go through several iterations of layouts and navigation techniques before I finally settle on a design; and will then probably change that final design two more times. In the end, I’ll most likely deliver a clean cut, fairly ‘plane jane’ layout which will suffice.

As far as applications are concerned, I have no idea. The things you expect to be in Google TV are almost all there out of the box (Netflix, YouTube, Pandora etc) albeit missing some features but it’s a good start. The challenge I’m facing is, besides streaming video and music, what would the average consumer want to do with a truly internet abled television? This is a challenge simply because no one has succeeded in this niche area so, there is no industry leader – no example to follow. This is sort of a good thing because there is no arbitrary box; which opens the door to some truly creative ideas. Think YouTube – remember all of the video streaming sites that came AFTER that? Most of them sort of took YouTube as their model and built from that baseline. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it’s difficult to discriminate yourself that way. With Google TV, as of the time of this writing, there are no established models.

I’ll probably spend a good amount of time trying to figure out the best way to approach this challenge. Perhaps I’m over thinking this a bit. Maybe I should just start with the obvious things such as social network integration and just sort of work my way from there.

I was one of those people fortunate enough to join the Facebook madness back when you needed a valid college e-mail address to join the site. This was waaaaaaay back in the day – 2005. This past weekend I visited my favorite movie theatre establishment to see what “The Social Network” had to offer.

As I’m sure you’re already aware, “The Social Network” is a story based on the genesis of what we know today as Facebook. In case you’ve been under a rock, blind folded with ear plugs the past 5 years you can visit the site here. My first impression of the movie was that it was well written and directed. The dialogue was clever, witty as well as funny. My first issue is rooted in the film’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg (CEO – Facebook). Now, I certainly don’t know Zuckerberg but I’ve heard him speak on several occasions and the persona I got form his public appearances did not match with what was depicted on screen. I’m sure he has a public persona which is not necessarily what is presented in his public speaking events but still, the Zuckerberg depicted in the film didn’t seem to care much about public personas. The film sets Zuckerberg as – while smart – a back stabbing thief who stole the idea of Facebook and deceived his victims until the site went live – not to mention an asshole. There are so many things wrong with the premise that Zuckerberg stole Facebook it’s not even funny. First of all, for someone to lay claim to an “idea” as if any person can ever “own” something as abstract as an idea is absolutely ludicrous furthermore; the current litigation system was not and is not designed to protect against the idea of software. Two people’s software, both of which obtain the same goal, can do so by completely different mathematical and algorithmic means. But, in a court of law, if someone patents an idea, the other guy has to pay. This isn’t good enough. The battle on Facebook doesn’t truly address this but it shines light upon it.

The next thing I noticed about the movie is the lack of substance for the female characters. I observed it, but had no opinion about it initially. I read somewhere that the lack of meaningful roles for women within the story was offensive. I actually understand this but I cannot sympathize. Not because I do not believe that woman can, and are valuable assets to not only Facebook but within information technology as a whole (because I do) but because as a software engineer I can personally testify that, it’s primarily a male driven industry. I can only think of one software engineer I’ve worked with, that was a woman. She was a very smart and intelligent counter-part and I enjoyed working with her very much but she’s the only one. I do however, agree that the women that were in the film (even if it was only for a few scenes) were used as throw-away characters – sexual playthings for the male driven cast and their intellectual quests and that’s sad.

Moving right along: I take issue with how quickly this movie was released. Facebook has taken the internet by storm and has definitely changed the way we interact with each other not only online but in real life. How many times have you told someone “add me!” or “Please, no tags!” or even “these pictures must never make it to Facebook.”? How many relationships have the infamous relationship status ruined (or sparked – depending on your point of view)? That said, as of the time of this writing it has only been a few years since Facebook has really taken off. I believe the story would have benefited from a little closure. I’m aware the movie was intended to tell the story of how Facebook began, not necessarily tell the entire story of Facebook but that doesn’t stop me from feeling just a bit cheated.

Finally, I’d just like to point out how Facebook, despite the popularity and money has failed. “Wait, Johnny, what the hell are you talking about? Facebook is extremely successful!” Hold your horses, let me explain myself. Throughout the movie, there is an on-going debate about which direction Facebook should take. Zuckerberg believed that Facebook should be cool and exclusive. By cool – according to the film – Zuckerberg did not want ads littering the pages of the site in fear that it would simply become another MySpace. By exclusive, only college students would be able to take part in the site. Facebook would differentiate itself from its competitors by associating people with VERIFIABLE networks (colleges/universities) therefore, not allowing a free-for-all sign up of accounts. In that sense, the Facebook we know today is nothing like that. I won’t even get into the ads on the side of my profile. As far as exclusiveness is concerned – first came the high school kids. This may not have been TOO bad perhaps you wanted to connect with old high school friends who simply did not go to college. I think most people were open to this so long as there was a way to keep the kiddies from getting on your page. Then, all hell broke loose with regional networks. Anyone, who claimed to be anywhere in the world could simply join Facebook. Hell, I’ve seen pages where it says “No Network”. Really, no network? Who let you in here? As a result, the Facebook envisioned by Mark Zuckerberg back in 2004 is not what we see before us today. So in that regard, Facebook has failed.

Let me just say that, as a whole, Facebook has not really failed us as a people. It has certainly brought people together, kept us up to date on friends, family and that cute girl in your math class. So what if there were a few arguments started by relationship statuses, time stamps on status updates which are the smoking gun which suggests you were NOT sleeping at 12:30am and tagged photos of you taking tequila shots with that prostitute in Las Vegas. The fact of the matter is, because of Facebook, our digital lives much more robust. “The Social Network”, despite potential inaccuracies helps to fill in the gaps and give the public a sense of what it takes to make something like this happen. It’s not easy; it takes hours and hours of work. You may lose a friend or two in the process but at least you have mutual friends through which you can exploit Facebook’s privacy flaws of allowing two non-friends to view each other’s photos.

Go see the movie.

This is not new by any means, but it’s still awesome! Check it out!

Ladies & gentlemen, Hell has officially frozen over. Apple has released a statement today indicating that it will be “relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps…” Yep, you read that correctly. For those of us who follow this closely remember when these restrictions were first put into place. It was an obvious jab at Adobe. Adobe developed a tool which cross-compiled flash based applications to native iOS applications. In a direct response, Apple restricted the development of iOS applications using third party tools. Now, Apple seems to be completely reversing that decision. This is great news for the development community as it gives developers the freedom to develop iPhone applications using any set of tools with which they feel comfortable. Apple cited the voice of the development community as the reason for the change of heart. Say what you like about Mr. Jobs but, he’s certainly no fool. If Apple wants to remain competitive in the long term, things are going to have to change. This is yet another example of how healthy competition is good for the consumer.

Samsung has finally officially announced their Galaxy Tab. When rumors and images of the device were first leaked I wasn’t impressed. This was mainly because there had been (and continues to be) so many promised Android based tablets – few have actually made it to market and the ones that have come to market have been absolutely atrocious. That being said, after checking out the hands on demo of the device via Engadget, I’m warming up to the idea of the device. I’m happy to see that Samsung has actually put some love and attention into the creation of a viable Android based tablet device.
Now for the elephant in the room: How does it compare to the iPad? Well, that’s partly a matter of taste. Having not actually held the Samsung device, I can’t really say and I’m quite sure you can compare specs yourself. However, I will say, having previously owned an iPad – the iPad is somewhat awkward to hold. Unless I’m reading or watching some media content I’m not sure how to hold the thing. Judging from the videos of the Galaxy tab, the device can easily be held in one hand because of its thinner width – assuming you’re holding it in portrait mode. To me, this seems much more comfortable. In addition, having the option of holding the device with one hand (comfortably) makes for a much better user experience overall.
I will point out, however that the Samsung Galaxy Tab does have a front and rear facing camera which will allow for video calls (a feature, some say should have been present on the iPad from day one). You can imagine using applications such as Skype Mobile, Fring and other third party video calling applications easily with this device.
I’m glad to finally see a quality Android based tablet device actually coming to market. No renders, no announcements of a ‘product in the works’ – a real, actual device getting ready to come to market.

Looks like Google is going to discontinue developing Google Wave. You can read about it on the official Google blog here. The reason cited for this course of action is low user adoption. It’s not all that surprising. Looking back at my own experience with Wave, I sort of have mixed feelings about it. When it was first unveiled at Google I/O 2009, like most other geeks I was pretty excited about it. The shiny new product from Google was slated to change the way we communicated on the internet in much the same way e-mail and instant messaging revolutionized communication.

I don’t think that it was the technology itself that failed. I believe it was the way in which Google released it to the public. I think Google made a big mistake by unveiling the product so early in its life cycle. The product was first released to developers – in hopes that the development community would take the technology and run with it. Despite a lot of good work from a lot of good developers things simply didn’t happen the way Google expected it to. There was a lot of excitement among people – even those aren’t very tech-savvy when the product was first launched. The problem was, most people couldn’t use the product because it was pre-alpha in its maturity thus Google – and rightfully so – drastically restricted the number of invites. As time passed, the momentum gained from the initial launched began to dwindle.

Later in the year, Google released a bunch of new invites, opening up the product to tens of thousands more and giving those people a set of invites to distribute amongst their friends and colleagues. This is when I began to get my hands dirty with it. After I sent out numerous invites to friends and co-workers, the stage was set…let the waves begin!!! [Insert cricket noise here]. Unfortunately, I, nor did anyone with whom I associated knew exactly what to do with this thing. Sure it was nice – you could embed videos, maps, play games, but it didn’t quite fit into everyone’s lives. People did not flock to the product, leaving behind their precious IM clients, e-mail inboxes, Twitter and Facebook accounts – well maybe Facebook after the privacy debacle but I digress.

Sure I participated in a few conversations here and there but didn’t get any real value from it. Perhaps it was because there wasn’t enough integration from other vendors. After all, for most people, if you wanted to participate in a wave, you’d have to navigate there, pull up the appropriate conversation and begin typing. And it only really shines when there are other people involved at the same time. This goes against the way people communicate these days. Everything is asynchronous in nature: leave a comment on my wall, I’ll get back to you, mention me in a tweet I’ll respond later, tag me in an embarrassing photo I’ll go justify my behavior via comment (or untag) later. Wave was pushing synchronous communication in an asynchronous world. That’s not to say there wasn’t anything good about wave.

After a while, Google began to push Wave as more of a collaborative tool. This fit in nicely with the synchronous communication that really allowed Wave to shine. As a result, organizations and groups of people were targeted – companies, people looking to collaborate on some type of work such as planning committees etc. And for a while, it looked as though Wave had found its niche. Again, this was not the case. For reasons that will probably be debated for a while, Wave never took off.

Let me just say that although the product known as Google Wave may be ending this does not mean the idea of Wave is going away. Google has opened Pandora’s Box. I’m sure we’ll see similar products in the future that build on and perfect the concepts and ideas upon which Wave was built. In addition, Google has mentioned it will continue to utilize the technology to extend other projects. In whatever form we see this product reincarnated we can be sure that it will help to shape the way in which communicate for a long time.