The Iron Yuppie

If only I could think of something... bizarre? crazy? fanciful? foolish? insane? nonsensical? preposterous? unreal? wild? Wait... the comments will solve this for me:

Here is what is absurd. How often you use that term "absurd". Google search on your site for the term absurd. Thats absurd! FYI if you are running out of absurd try the ebay link on the right.

Indeed it is Chooky. Indeed it is. I always worried about having a writing style that lent itself to a specific element. I know one was that I used to always end blogs with questions or single words; Chooky has caught another... my overuse of a certain word. I will now endeavor to avoid in the future. Anything else that annoys you, my reading public, feel free to pass it along. I'll feel free to ignore it.

D

I was browsing through some clippings and came across a great piece from the NewYorker titled "One Billion". Basically, they look at the number that constantly gets thrown around at the Oscars about how a billion people supposedly tune in. But the number is just absurd! Daniel Radosh goes through some great basic math... the number basically assumes that 15% of the world's population watches (equivalent to the % of people who watch here in the US). But he quickly goes on to show that the most generous world wide audience figure could only be about 2 billion (number of TVs, number who can get broadcasts, etc). 15% of that number is only 300 million. And even further, there's no reason to think that the Oscars has anywhere near 15% of the world wide audience... we're not unique in our worship of celebrity culture here in the US, but we certainly lead the pack. One can pretty safely assume that everyone else has less than 15% viewership (the article quoted that of China's huge population, only 1% tuned in).

I would like to request that reporters begin to call anyone who says this stuff on it. It's so simple! Just say "where did you get that figure from"? When they stumble around, you can quote them as stumbling around, and, presto, great story.

The Colbert Report is absolutely brilliant. In fact, it's so good, that I think it's going to fall into the area where it's so satirically right on, that people are going to start treating it as real. I hope he starts taking on controversial issues... here's a little template for him

Who is Bill O'Reilly Talking To?

blinkx

I've used a hundred thousand of these different desktop search tools. On the Mac, I was a huge fan of Sherlock... today, I think the best one is X1, because it prunes as you types, highlights terms and would not fall over when dealing with Outlook (namely, continually run into the "Outlook.PST is still in use" bug).

But I've switched back to MSN Desktop Search because it scales so well. X1 was starting to really suffer perf issues, and MSN Desktop Search just keeps chugging along. I really like the deskbar integration but it's still not perfect... not until you get prune as you type and highlighted terms is it going to be really great. As a reminder... here's what I want:

• Search as I type with full previews (deskbar is nice, but not perfect)
• Unlimited listing of all items I search for
• Better and deeper previews of what I'm searching for ... render tough docs correctly
• Highlight search terms

Many many thanks.

Man I love this idea. Basically, it's a wrist watch that measures how you sleep, which you can then download to a computer. I've always wondered what I look like/move like. But the best part about it is that it'll wake you up depending on what phase of sleep you're in. For example, you set the wake time to 6:30 and a wake interval of 30 minutes. It'll then wake you around that time... maybe earlier, maybe later, depending on your phase of sleep. It measures this based on how much you're moving.

I think this is brilliant and I'm totally going to get one... eventually.

Sleep Tracker

D

iPod Tax

Wow. This is basically the biggest and stupidest mistake Apple could make with the iPod. Stupider than charging $1.99 for a day old version of a show which I could record for free. Why does Apple hate everyone else? MS on the other hand would not only make connecting to their devices (should they have any) free, but they would probably pay or subsidize special device makers to build stuff. Apple is in such an amazing place with the iPod, you think they'd be doing anything they could to avoid screwing it up. Oh well.

D

Ah the fast of repentance and atonement...

Skinner: [on the phone] I know Weinstein's parents were upset, uh, superintendent, but, but -- but I was _sure_ it was a phony excuse. I mean, it sounds so made up: "yom kip pur".

This is the one time of the year I feel like I have an excuse to not watch TV or do anything electronic. Have you ever really tried doing it for a while? No electricity whatsoever? It's damn hard. I let my self use just my laptop and, then, just for writing a journal. Nothing else, not even Free Cell.

I just love it. It's such a nice forced break. So, expect no blog from me tomorrow during the day, I'll be atoning for my year of sin. Tomorrow evening, you'll find me a new man!

D

P.S. Boy, Blogger really needs to work on their spell checker. No "Yom". No "Blog". Not even "atoning"!

I know, I know, you're probably saying WHAT? Lack of marketing?

Man, I'll tell you, it's not that they don't market. They do! But because they try and be all things to all people, they frequently miss key audiences or over simplify or just generally can't fit it all in. An example is the following:

Command Line Defragging

What an incredibly rich little utility all built in a couple of lines of code. I remember the first time I did this on Linux and thought it was awesome. But here it was the case Windows could do it the whole time. That's the one thing that I think webservices like MSN and Google will always lack... it just doesn't seem like they're going to have the ability to have that random little script pulled together that does just what someone wants and no more. I just wish MS (and others) would talk about all their cool little features.

D

Great article in the NYTimes a few weeks ago (did I mention I was busy and catching up?) interviewing the creators of Lost. Thanks to the NYTimes stupid archival policy (so you're telling me that news, which is relevant today, is worth less to me than archived documents?), I'll copy it all here.

Despite the efforts of Mr. Lindelof, Mr. Cuse and the rest of the creative team to keep the show from "juming the shark," ultimately the biggest challenge may come from their very success. Unlike J. K. Rowling, who can take comfort in knowing the Harry Potter series will wrap up after seven books, the "Lost" producers do not have such a luxury; as long as the ratings are good, it will run.

The implications for story telling are enormous. "If we knew this series was 88 episodes, we could plot out exactly where all the pieces of mythology were going to land, and we could build very constructively to an endgame," said Mr. Cuse. "But we don't know and we can't know. For ABC, this is a very financially successful enterprise, and righfully their goal is to have it go along as long as they can have it go along."

Mr. Lindelof quickly interjected: "It's the equivalent of, if you get the ratings back for Episode 4 of 'Roots' and you call up Alex Haley and go: 'Look, this is doing huge. Does Kunta Kinte need to be free? Can he be freed in Season 3, or even 4 or 5?' "

YES. I could not agree more. Authors, journalists ... in fact EVERYONE gets to say when something can end. Yet TV is one of the only things where there is no sense of closure. Horses are ridden until they die. I was trying to think of a counter example of this for television and the greatest example is sports. You have 17 or so "episodes" of Sunday football, then the playoffs and then the Superbowl. It's easy to script the marketing, advertising, etc ahead of time because you KNOW how important everything is going to be. And there's limited overhyping random less than meaningful games, which happens all the time, because you know at some point in the future there actually WILL be an important game.

Imagine if TV execs just said, we're going to give this 88 episodes and then be done. Imagine how much better it would be! One could optimize and pre-plan how much salaries, spend, marketing would go on at the start of the series and set it all in motion. And the creative types would love it, because they wouldn't just randomly have to come up with two extra episodes of filler because they don't know what's going to happen next season. Plus, then one could repurpose those creative types and give people something new... which, if I'm not mistaken, is always a good thing. New = positive. If it's still a ginormous hit, make a movie out of it.

While I'm talking about mass media stories, please please please go see Serenity. It's getting 81% and it's really good. And I'm really sad but if it doesn't gross ~$60 M or more, it's probably not coming back. Maybe if the DVD goes nuts.

Ack! I'm sorry I've been gone so long. I've been busy... I mean really busy. But that's no excuse! Anyhow, I'll try and restart.

Let's jump right in with a favorite topic of mine, Google. I was reading the COO of Sun's blog earlier and, maybe because I'm in marketing and I am extra sensitive to this, but jeeeez it reeked of marketing BS. Check this out:

Two of the internet's most valuable brands have clearly achieved that status: Java and Google. Could you imagine a PC that couldn't access Java services? Or how about a browser that couldn't get to Google? My view, either would be a tough sell. Other programming, such as Macromedia Flash, Firefox and OpenOffice are in the same league - along with services such as Yahoo.com, eBay, or AOL.com.

Nice! Google? Totally necessary. Everyone in the world wants and uses them. Java? Not so much. I've done a reinstall on a machine recently (dead hard drive), and I have yet to come across a single site that required Java. I don't even have the Java Runtime on there. It's been over a month and I surf a LOT. In fact, I've only seen one site that did something using Java, and that could have EASILY been done with Flash/Shockwave. I'm not saying Java isn't the bees knees and doesn't have a hojillian people developing for it, but it's not a consumer product (by and large) and I think you're just fooling yourself.

Similarly, I like the comment about OpenOffice being in the same league. Come on. Be realistic. How about this, I'll withdraw my comment if you can point to one person who doesn't a) read slashdot DAILY b) work in the Massaschusetts government office that sponsored the adoption c) work at Sun or d) runs *BSD/*nix AND runs StarOffice. How can you even compare it to Firefox which which has massive popular support and has ads out in the NYTimes and could still only achieve 8% marketshare? Do you think that's going to improve once IE7 is out?

On the other hand, what they're going to do next DOES interest me. AJAX is amazing stuff... how that compares to click-once or Avalon or XUL I have yet to sort out. But Ajax is megacool. I didn't understand his comment about how rich clients is on its way back... doesn't that conflict with his AJAX point?

One other point comes via NetCrucible:Why is Microsoft Afraid of Google?

I have to agree with his point, and this is the biggest thing that people outside of the software industry don't understand. Let's steal this quote:

Let's talk about the "copying" theory first. Five years ago, Bill Gates shook up the industry by announcing a dual-pronged strategy -- all productivity apps seamlessly integrated into the universal canvas of the web, and the "web as a platform". This wasn't vapor, this was what I used every day. Five years ago, I did not have Office installed on my machine. I used an app that combined word processing, IM, telephony, and e-mail in a single universal canvas (with cool contextual side-menu), all running in my web browser. We decided not to ship it at that time, but it had nothing to do with product quality or feasibility.

Now fast forward to 2005. A bunch of people who worked on that project are now at Google, and rumors fly around about "bricking over" MSFT by shipping productivity apps on the web. At the same time, pundits run around talking about "web as a platform", ripping off Bill's 2000 vision wholesale without giving credit. Give me a break. Clearly what is happening is a bit different than Bill laid out in 2000, but the amount that is exactly the same is stunning (almost depressing; where is the originality and creativity?)

Another example is Google Earth vs. Virtual Earth. VE shipped slightly after Google Earth, but do people really think MSFT saw Google Earth and then "real quick like" copied the whole thing in a month or two? The company must really be invincible. Or take Messenger, which has been shipping new releases three times a year. Google just shipped their first version. Please don't say we pre-emptively copied Google.

Why does everyone think that you can just whip this stuff up overnight? Look at Apple's Searchlight technology. Great stuff! Look at Vista's search technology. Great stuff! Does anyone really think that Microsoft WAITED until Apple shipped before being inspired by the functionality and deciding to copy it? Is there any chance that they were both under simultaneous development and Apple, being better at scoping and shipping that Microsoft is, got it out first? Sometimes these opinions one runs across in blogs, articles and open comments about who copied who are just insane. It's like they're talking to hear themselves.