E-Reading, or Nooky

With the terrible move and everything it would be safe to say that life's been rough this past couple of months. So to cheer me up my parents bought me an e-reader. It's a black and white Nook which is just the reader I wanted. Natively handles more (and more common) formats than the Kindle, has the long life and daylight reading screen that I so desired and the page turns are quite fast with the most recent OS update. I'd say I've been enjoying it thoroughly for the past week or so.

And then I plugged it into Calibre. And now I'm in love. And now I shall count the ways.

First of all, there are the Calibre plugins. Floating out there are a set of plugins for Calibre that will remove the DRM from the following formats: epub, pdb, pdf, kindle. That means with Calibre I can buy books from damn near any book vendor and free it. I have finished a book that I originally bought from Amazon on my Nook and that is a beautiful thing. It means my e-books are as versatile as my paper ones. But I knew about that going in.

My pleasant surprise is that Calibre is damn good at converting a standard digital comic book (cbr/cbz) to a perfectly formatted epub. I can transfer my comics from my computer to my Nook in just a few clicks and the pages are sized down and converted to black and white. The pages are a bit small but the display is so sharp I can read the text fine on the comics I've tried so far.

And then there's just the simplicity of it all. It's like what iTunes should be doing for music (but doesn't); it easily takes my books and lets me do two way transfers between my laptop, desktop, phone and Nook.

This isn't a post pushing the Nook over other e-readers. Like all tech, each device has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. The Kindle is better for certain things, the iPad for others and an Android phone for other things. What is amazing is how some free software can make the e-book environment as convenient and open as it should be, despite the best attempts by book sellers at locking libraries to branded tools. Now, rather than lending a Barnes and Noble book to someone once for a week I can lend anyone an ebook until they finish it. That moves my ebooks from being a crippled digital gimmick into the realm of being a real alternative to a paper and glue edition. And it's great.

Windows Mobile 7

Windows Mobile 7 is coming out soon and it looks to be a huge departure from all WM up through 6.5.  Up until Android hit the market a few years ago Windows Mobile was the most open a phone could get other than an actual linux phone but name me one person who owned one of those.  There was no unified place to buy or even brows apps (they were called applications back then).  There were tons of different handsets running WM ranging from all screen to non-touch screens with hardware keyboards.

That's all changed.  Now Microsoft is setting incredibly strict rules for the hardware.  Standard buttons, in house testing, a hard set market for apps.  You know what all this seems like?  The iPhone.

While I saw this coming and have written about the coming of the iPhone-ish WiMo as a reason I jumped to the open Android I don't look down on Microsoft for this.  It's obvious by now that they have been edged out of a market that they essentially ruled not too long ago: a professional smartphone that's not run through the Blackberry servers.  As soon as there was competition Microsoft lost the battle.  Their artillery was great as long as it was the only option.

I honestly think this is a positive change for Microsoft.  I think they need something like this.  I would have  gone with a more radical change in strategy, not imitating an existing method but creating a complimentary modular system.  But that's just me.  Hopefully this works because the more options out there for smartphones the better the competition gets.  Android wouldn't be what it is today without iOS and the 3rd party upgrades are standing on the shoulders of stock Android.

I'm eager to see where this goes even if I don't hitch my wagon to it.

Searching for a Cell Phone or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Open Markets

Sometimes being an educated consumer can be a pain in the ass. Here's my adventures in cell phone shopping.

Here's where I started: AT&T, 2.5 year old Windows Mobile HTC Tilt, known outside of AT&T as the Tytn II. My usage is probably around 90% data, 8% voice, 2% text. I'm tied onto a family plan with my father. In fact, we were originally on Sprint and signal strength at his house alone is what made us move to AT&T. It cost me my original Pittsburgh number but was better than going off on my own contract.

So that's what I had. Now let me tell you what I wanted. Smartphone. On AT&T that pretty much cut me down to WiMo again or the iPhone. This may come as a shock to those who know me but I latched on to the iPhone when it was first released. You see, I wasn't just looking for a good piece of hardware. While hardware is probably my number one priority, once you spend a couple of years with WiMo you realize that interface is a much closer second than you might have originally thought. And then the iPhone came out. It was shiny, it was usable out of the box (I run SPB shell on my Tilt) and it had what no one can deny Apple: a fantastic interface experience. I was sold.

But all techies know that there is a fundamental choice with new tech. Option one is to early adopt. That's when you get it as soon as it comes out and that comes with a big wow factor. Option two is the prudent revision two. That's when you wait for the early adopters to complain and for the company to release the second version, which is usually what the first version should have been. Essentially you let the early adopters test it for you. It means waiting anywhere from months to a year, which in terms of technology is an excruciatingly long time, but you'll most likely end up with a stable product. I wanted to jump right in but this was an entirely new platform. Would there be enough applications (now called “apps”) released? How was performance on these new handsets? And what's the deal with this new touch screen that can't do handwriting recognition? So I figured maybe waiting for a software update would be a nice compromise. But there was a problem. It wasn't a lack of apps. It was the process of getting apps.

With Windows Mobile there was no consolidated app store. You went around online to individual pages and found apps. You downloaded them and installed them. Microsoft had no hand at all in the process. Apple, in their ease of use and closed system style, made a walled garden of apps. And only the apps they liked made it in. Up until this point there wasn't a lot of restrictions on smartphones. WiMo handsets could be flashed with different OS updates by hand. You could install whatever you wanted. Apple changed that. It turns out that the wall around their garden was very high and the bouncer at the gate was very strict. And sometimes arbitrary. I did not like this. With WiMo I was the gatekeeper. With the iPhone one needed to hack their handset to become the keymaster. Suddenly the iPhone wasn't usable out of the box anymore.

The longer I waited the worse the iPhone looked. That's not strictly true. The iPhone still looked great. It was the Apple infrastructure/baggage that it came with. With each OS update gaining complete control of the iPhone seemed to become more of a hassle. I didn't want a phone where being up to date meant owning a crippled product. If I didn't care about complete freedom I would have taken the iPhone plunge then and there. For some people root access isn't an issue. For me that choice being taken away at the moment of purchase was a deal breaker.

So I waited. A few more WiMo phones came out but nothing all that impressive. It was just more of the same and all things shiny and new were frolicking in Apples fields. But every now and then came a whiff of hope. Palm, a player that had been essentially dead to me since high school, was coding a new phone OS from scratch. And there was talk of Google making a phone. Probably a pipe dream but who knew. And like behemoths of fantasy epics I bid my time and waited.

Suddenly things became exciting. The Palm OS, WebOS, garnered fantastic responses from tech testers. And the G1 came out. The G1 didn't impress me as a phone but as proof of concept it was downright thrilling. I'm a tech-head. It was thrilling. I managed to push down my excitement and recalled what happened last time I felt this way; Apple started to fight its own customers and they broke my heart. I didn't want that to happen again.

Palm kept looking good but it didn't seem for me. It was more interface than OS for my taste. I wanted something better than the the WiMo UI but I do like the option to get my hands dirty in the system when the mood strikes me. The WebOS simply felt... hollow to me. But Android... Android was wooing me with a vengeance. Open source, an app store with the option for 3^rd party installs. An interface worlds beyond Windows Mobile, though still no iPhoneOS. I was set. And then AT&T broke my heart.

The problem became my carrier. They have an exclusive deal with Apple to carry the iPhone. They don't want to introduce competition that would scare away their biggest cash cow. Suddenly people who had hated, and still hated, AT&T were flocking for contracts. Sure, the were carrying new WiMo phones but I didn't want more of the same. I had seen the future of user interaction and hardware. Windows Mobile was not part of that future. So my father and I considered shopping another carrier.

But like that traffic jam in Office Space, you can never be at the right place at the right time. Once we started to shop around two things happened.

1. Windows announced the next WiMo.
2. AT&T announced that they were getting a number of Android phones.

The next Windows Mobile was to be called Windows Phone 7. It was going to be coded from scratch. In fact the whole thing felt like a Sci-Fi channel original movie: assembled from the cast off gimmicks of a number of recent blockbusters. Like Palm, it was to be coded from scratch and focus on a fresh interface designed to stream data to your home screen. Like the iPhone it was to cut open system multitasking and be app store only for installs. In fact, it was pretty much the worst features of the iPhone without the benefit of Apple's wonderful interface or established market. Suddenly Windows went from my safety choice to a non-option. So my father and I looked at the AT&T Androids. And that's when AT&T broke my heart again.

Their first Android was the Motorola Backflip. It was, in essence, a Sidekick for the new generation of smartphones. Except that it started leaking clues. For instance, the search provider was locked into Yahoo. Odd. Also the option to install 3^rd party apps was permanently locked out. It was a highly customized, highly crippled Android phone. Then AT&T let out the specs for a couple more, the Dell Aero and the Samsung Galaxy. Neither blew competing Android sets out of the water and then the news broke about the OS. They would all be locked down. And the provider for search and mail would be locked to Yahoo.

What AT&T did here was to insist that all its smartphone customers be treated like children. Be it Android, iPhone or Windows the user was going to have to go through app store only on locked handsets. In order to get a phone that met my requirements I would have to hack any of these. Suddenly it became obvious what the problem was. AT&T no longer had a single smartphone that was not going to be a downgrade to the freedom I had on my 2.5 yer old Tilt. The only free option would be to buy an unlocked Nexus 1 at full price and even then we're locked into the carrier because of the operating bands on the phone. We'd be paying hundreds of dollars to keep the same service and contract we've had for years. That's not appealing.

That is the point when you know a market is so far from free that it's locked up in a tiny box. There is no good reason that my “ancient” hardware should offer me options that no current phone can. Where's the competition to insure innovation? With systems this closed your only option is to strap in and try to enjoy the ride. If these were airlines you would suddenly realize that you can't bring your own music or books on the plane and there will never be the option to walk about the cabin no matter how clear the weather.

So we worked out a similar contract on Verizon (they have the phones we want and a decent enough data network. Sprint is still out until they improve coverage in our area). It turns out to be a bit cheaper which is nice. We got the HTC Incredible which has specs that should last us a while. The OS is open to 3^rd party installs and that means easily rooted once the Incredible ROM hits the net has already been rooted to custom ROMs are now an option..

Verizon may turn out to be a pain but let's be honest, what cell phone company is pleasant to deal with? In this case we came to realize that in AT&Ts zeal to keep Apple happy as the only feasible smartphone the devil we knew became so clearly the greater of two evils that we couldn't stay with them. When you stick with a service for years and the only choices they provide are more restrictive each time a new option comes out then it's clear that their system is broken.

AT&T, I hope you're happy. It's clear you can only make one customer at a time happy. And that customer's name is Steve Jobs. I wish you two the best. You certainly deserve each other.

EDIT It's been a few weeks with Big Red and the Incredibles (band name?). I'm satisfied and it looks like the iPhone is coming to this network, too. I guess there's no escaping Apple's legion of fan-boys anymore. Of course, the iPhone 4 seems to have more than its fair share of problems...

I like my tech like I like my ethics... without a morality clause.

So I just read a short article in which Steve Jobs, in all of his high holy Apple-ness, responded to someone asking about what is and is not approved.  Jobs said:

“we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.”

And that is why I will not buy an Apple product.  Ever.

I like my technology run the way I like my ethics; present but not forced upon others.  People should be ethical.  I prefer the companies I fund to be run in an ethical manner as well.  But I would not want an ethical person to force their cause of ethics on me.  For instance, if someone has a set of ethics founded on religious morality I can appreciate their ethical behavior but will fight them on their religious morality.  I hope companies are run with an ethical code but when they try to instill their morality on me I call it quits.

Jobs and Apple are openly happy pushing their morality down on users.  If they were just ethical in the app store I'd be fine with that.  An ethically run app store would insure that there are no spyware apps, no malware apps, that the programmers get a good cut of profit.  A moral app store will judgments based on what the company sees as truths and values.  A moral apps store would block porn and political opinions expressed in a way they are not comfortable with.

Apple, I don't want your morality and I find your treatment of all customers as moronic children offensive.

“Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.“

And if folks want to be able to exercise personal judgment on  what sort of content should be on their phone they should also choose Android.  Thank you for finally admitting that you want lifetime control over devices that you have sold and therefore no longer own.  And thank you for pointing people to a competing platform that will actually serve their needs.

Crossing The Line: Apple and the RI/MPAA

What is the last straw for you? What is the breaking point before you cut any ties to a company or organization and move on? I've been looking for this line in regard to some of the big businesses out there and it seems like the public just keeps pushing it back. There are two groups that I'm at the near breaking point for: Apple and the RI/MPAA.

Let's start with Apple. As a company I despise them. They champion the walled garden/closed system/big brother approach to everything and while this makes for a tight and stable product it is a system you are not allowed to interact with. Much the same way people say "At least Mussolini made the trains run on time," you can say that Apple makes a solid piece of software. The problem is anything that you run on a lot of their products is by their choosing. Sure, it may be nice but if it's not then it's already too late to look for competition. They have created a computer ghetto. It's a lovely community but you are stuck there whether it is to your taste or not.

The most recent slap in the face in terms of their operating procedure is the rejection of all Google Voice applications for the iPhone. If you were running Windows Mobile then you wouldn't notice what Microsoft thinks about an application; it's an open system that you're free to install anything you'd like on. If it was on Android (technically, it is since Google has their app in their own OS, but pretend we're talking 3rd party) then as long as it's not malicious is would stay in their app store. But with Apple they have this sliding scale of what can or can't be sold. If it's malicious it's out. If it's in poor taste it might be out at some point. If it duplicates a feature on the iPhone then it might be out. And if it produces competition to Apple or one of Apples partners then it will most likely be pulled.

Because Google Voice gives users many options that normal phone carriers don't it has been pulled. Apple says it's because it duplicates iPhone features but it doesn't. The iPhone has no feature that lets you switch numbers on the fly, send free text messages through your alternate number or transcribe your voicemail and forward it as an email. But since it has a number dialer it competes with the iPhone's dialer and that is forbidden. Bullshit. This is Apple trying to stifle competition for AT&T. With Google Voice you can jump carriers on a moment's notice and take your number with you without having to deal with a support line.

So now Apple is using the walled garden to stifle competition. And that's bad business. What's the motivation for improving products and services if you know that your user base is trapped. I'm not saying Apple is going to stop all updates but whatever they offer is clearly on their terms and not in response to demand. There's a demand for Google products. There is a freeze on the supply, however.

And now Google Voice is available for the iPhone free of charge but only if you have a jailbroken phone. I've been following the iPhone with a very close eye. Following the saying "hate the factory, not the machine" I recognized that the iPhone is an amazing piece of hardware run by a dictatorial company. With the iPhone 3GS I saw almost no reason to jailbreak other than for cosmetic purposes and came damn near close to getting one. But this has crossed the line. If a product has to be hacked and cracked and warranty-voided the moment you take it out of the box then there's something wrong with that product. In the case of the iPhone and Apple it's all software. But is that the kind of company you want to invest your time and money in? A company that will take out legal programs because it means more work to continue to innovate? A company that rather than participating in a creative dialogue with the user and 3rd party developers simply cuts the cord and forces its customer base to take whatever is doled out and no more? That is a broken system that will only breed dissent and stagnation. And that crossed the line.


Now we come to everyone's favourite villain: the RI/MPAA. The cartels that represent music and movies have taken the following stance:

"We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so."

What that means is they think it's unreasonable to expect their products to last forever. Sort of. If you re-read the above you may notice that the statement (made by the lawyer representing the RIAA and MPAA to the Copyright Office) tries to make the concept of "product" and "service" interchangeable.

"We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works."

No one is asking this of them. Books do not remain in print forever. Magazines close production or require you to renew your subscription. But what magazines don't require is for you to pay to keep access to the issues already delivered to your home. It's not a question of continued access to the creative works as intellectual property. It's the continued access to creative works in hard copy. Your music files should not expire after you have bought them. Your e-books should not vanish one you have legally purchased them.

Of course no one expects electronic devices to work "properly in perpetuity". That would require your warranty to never expire! But you can expect to keep the hardware forever. My friend had a laptop who's cooling fan died. Instead of the unit expiring I cracked the case, peeled out the innards and made a wi-fi equipped 14 inch digital picture frame. When the battery dies on your cell phone you still get to keep the phone and replace the battery (unless it's an iPhone). Corey Doctorow lists a bunch of "creative works" of various ages that still work for him:

I've got 78RPM records from my grandparents' basement that play just fine today -- and I've got Logo programs I wrote in 1979 that I can run today. I own a piano roll from 1903 that I can play back if I can clear the space for a player piano. I've got books printed in the 17th century that can still be read -- and if they can't be read, they can be scanned and the scans can be read.

I personally do work arching documents and converting them to digital form. We've done legal documents, museum catalogues, technical journals… and they all still work. I've opened books from nearly 100 years ago and not a single one ever demanded that I authenticate the most recent purchase of the rights to read the text. They were bought and they work. End of story. Unless you have a closed system like DRM that treats the legal customer with distrust and possibly contempt. It is not the responsibility of the customer to prove their self to the product. It is the responsibility of the producer to provide a product that proves itself worthy to the customer. And that, MP/RIAA, is how you've crossed the line from producer to extortionist.


In both cases you have the huge, deal breaking issues that are made simply because the company in question treats the consumer as a child at best and a criminal at worst. And in both cases the fair option to regain your consumer rights falls in what is now legally dubious territory. If you want your iPhone to work like a real computer product you have to jailbreak. If you want your music to actually play on all your devices, as fair use dictates, then you need to pirate DRM-free tracks after you have legally purchased the music. Is that piracy? Is that fair use? Today it seems to be both.

So what about you? What company or group has crossed the line you've drawn in the sand? What company is getting close? Or do you keep finding that you push that line back inch by inch, giving away more of your rights and a consumer, only to be left with crippled products?

The check's in the e-mail.

The little voice inside the radio box just told me that 18% of people would feel something was missing, something fundamental and necessary would be missing from life, if they couldn't check their e-mail. That just screams ignorance to me. That number should be a lot higher than 18%.That's not me being a technophile. That's me being a realist. How would you feel if you didn't get US mail anymore? Bills didn't come. Invitations to weddings and family reunions. Holiday cards, catalogs, report cards, junk mail and pay check receipts. You'd either feel like you were cut off or you'd be a paranoid shut-in who didn't get any of those things anyway. Now? Now some people get that in their e-mail. Why should that be less of a connection to the world than paper? It's faster, it's more pervasive. Bills come over it. Junk mail. Invitations. And only 18% of people think that having that cut off would be pulling a serious part of their life's communication away? Or are only 18% admitting it?I know not everyone uses e-mail to that degree. But its taken over a large portion of casual contact between people who don't see each other daily or weekly. It's the new mail. Not a gimmick, not a supplement. For a lot of communication it has replaced mail. And that's not a complaint or a sales pitch. It's what's going on. Should e-mail be regarded more warily than other types of innovation? It's a new tool so why are people so obsessed with putting it in a basket labeled “silly”, “addiction” or “fad”. Why is it an addiction when there are other tools that we are so used to and couldn't live without that aren't considered addictions to be broken? Cars. Go commute to your job without your car. It's not a right. Your drivers license is a privileged that can be taken away. Are you addicted to your car? Or try applying to a job without a telephone number. The telephone is a service you pay for. It's not provided as a right by the government. Are you addicted to having a phone number? I mean, it's just technology so it can't be needed. It can't be a necessity.See the hypocrisy? I do. Why is it that people who use the internet on a daily basis aren't lauded as being on top of responding to people. Why aren't they accused of being addicted to attention and communication? They're told they are addicted to the internet itself. There are people who need to just surf. They do it as a casual activity but need it to feel complete. It's close to a low level of OCD, just something casual and simple to complete their day. But e-mail? People, if you're responding on a daily basis to e-mail you're fitting your communication in with other people's schedules. That's something that should be applauded. And why do media seem so intent on making the tool of communication something that should be regarded with a wary eye? Television, radio,phone, mail, even news weeklies are all forms of... communication. Is it just a fear of the new? A retaliation against anything that comes along as different? A sort of technological xenophobia?Most likely yes. Just because it's a newer form of getting in touch with people doesn't mean it's not important. I think that's judged by usage. I mean, the phone wasn't intended to be in every house and yet here it is, usually at least one in every house and soon in every pocket. E-mail? Well, that was intended to somewhat supplement standard mail, now called snail mail (or was in my day). If you define addiction as “being considered necessary to function” then you have a very small and narrow view of the world. There are so many things in that definition that no one thinks of as an addiction. Transportation. Food. Water. Education. Do we think that anyone who strives to put any of those into their day has a problem? How about responding to people. How about contact and timely responses. That's not addiction. That's functioning in life. Just because e-mail is the newest guy at work doesn't mean he's still the new guy. He's been around long enough to have tenure. If you don't invite him to the next office party then you're a dick.

Oh, dear. It seems I've gotten my hands on more technology.

In short, I have discovered the new versions of a couple of browsers for my phone. One loads everything a desktop browser would. The other loads damn near as much and renders just as nice as Safari. I am posting this from my phone on the standard posting site for LJ. Fear. for on the road, out and about post will surely follow. (insert maniacle laugh)

Evolution and... hacking?

It's funny.  Last night I was just thinking about hacking and then the news totally busts a nut that humans are evolving at an incredibly fast rate compared to the past.  Not only that, but many scientists had assumed evolution was slowing down.  How's that for a turn-around?  Also, suck that creationists.

Back to hacking.  I don't mean to sound like one of those aging hackers that they tritely write into crime dramas on TV but the scene has changed sooo much.  I was there when the internet went retail.  My father has always been in the computer industry so we had internet before you could find it on every block.  The whole "AOL users suck" thing? That's because AOL originally didn't carry the internet.  They just made their own network which sucked.  Back when the internet first went non-military and non-academic (and text formatting was the most impressive thing out there) it was all just looked at as coding.  I think that's why there's a generation out there who look at everything on the internet as nothing but code to an extent.  Not that I can program in every language, but when the net went multimedia it was never a photo I was looking at.  Never a song I was listening to.  It was a file.

Now people just pirate and it's the norm because the industries for film and music suck so bad at respecting rights.  And to be fair, they were violated by the net.  But then people had a choice: to side with too much freedom or to side with legality.  And while laws can change, freedom is a binary situation.  On of off.  And as much as Bush doesn't want to admit it, as much as the MPAA and RIAA hate it, America was based on the idea of leaning towards too much freedom.  Innocent until proven guilty, all that?  That's to err on the side of too much freedom.  So now piracy is seen as an act of defiance by pirates and theft by companies.

That's not how it used to be.  It used to be that once something went digital it was a file and files weren't afforded the same protection as material copies.  Digital was just code and that's like trying to copyright a 1 and a 0.

What does this have to do with our newfound evolutionary speed?  Everything.  People have been talking about how fast technology changes.  The rate of technological generations is nuts.  Antique furniture has to be 100 years old.  An antique car is 20 years old.  A computer antique can be as recent as 5 years, usually closer to 10.  So I find it incredibly heartening to find out that the human genome isn't beyond humanity (I also find it heartnening that Bruce Sterling's column on this topic reads like watching a wall of TV screens).  Things are faster now.  Humans thrive on change.  The only reason we've survived is because our main advantage is our brains.  Our brains have led to our world moving and changing faster.  And?  And it's led to our genome following suit.  It's not just our minds that that are racing now.  It's our brains as well.

That's not to romanticize the issue too much.  Evolution is a harsh mistress, to rip off a classic The Tick quote.  Evolution is not interested in developing a better human, a smarter or faster human.  It's interested in a reproducing human.  It's quite feasible to imagine a situation occurring (sooner, now, than later) where evolution comes around and kicks us in the ass.  A situation in which we evolve to a point where we aren't able to produce enough skills or people to exercise the skills necessary to sustain us.  But you know what?  If there is a god then it (not he or she) has such a delicious sense of irony that god must be a hipster.  Irony because not only is our physical development possible too damn fast to support us, but so is our social and technological evolution.

As I said, it's not just our minds that are evolving.  It's also our brains.  And I never said evolution is in our favour.

posting test

Just a test to see if I can post images without a plus account.