The xPod

December 8, 2006 at 7:12 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

I listened to the Dave Winer / Peter Rojas / Jason Calacanis on their ideas for a podcast player (from CalacanisCast Beta 7).

Several points (as a follow on to my previous post):

• I better grok why DRM kills this project. It just isn’t necessary for a podcast receiver, the complexity is too heavyweight, etc.
• I think I’m coming around to the “no synchronization” approach. But only if the device can get all of its own content directly. If your desktop machine has to be a conduit for it; then synch is a necessary evil. That said, I would hate to have to use the device to enter feed URLs. Better would be to address a web server on the device with a UI that you can access from your desktop (or your smartphone) — of course, this opens up a whole different can of worms.
• Dave Winer calls this device the xPod. I like it. Of course, Apple has shown that they won’t allow products with the word “Pod” in them. Why not call it the xRadio? Dave Winer says that this is like an Internet radio afterall. Or how about myRadio?

There was some discussion of the economics of the cheap device versus the powerful versus the right device. I’m with Dave Winer on this one. We want the right device, but I think that comes down to the software.

So, why worry about the hardware right now? Why not first write the software?

Here is what I think:

1. Choose the existing software platform. Probably Rockbox, but also could be WM5 or Palm OS or Mobile Linux.
2. Build the player and recorder software on this platform.
3. Let hardware geeks get this to run on their existing devices.
4. Then (and only then) revisit making a hardware reference platform and then (possibly) getting involved in manufacturing.

Like Peter Rojas says: Rockbox could use a champion. These 3 guys could easily be it. Spec out the software for this, get it written (for money or by open source contributors). People will adopt it.

This is one case where I think if you build it, they will come.

Tags: Calacanis, iPod, myRadio, Podcasts, Rockbox, wWM5, xPod, xRadio

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A better audio device

December 3, 2006 at 9:26 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

I’ve been following (fellow ex-Gang member) Jason Calacanis on building a better iPod.  This concept strikes home for me because I’m the kind of “power-user” geek that doesn’t own an iPod because it isn’t flexible enough for me.  In the past I looked seriously into other products and decided that nothing out there would handle the things I wanted.

Jason says his key features are:

1. Open source software.
2. Wifi
3. No DRM
4. Removeable media (i.e. Compact Flash)
5. Preloaded with three shows from the top 200 podcasts

My key features are:

1. Open source software.  Because I think only a community of audio geeks can create something flexible enough for me.
2. Great tagging support.  I am an “album oriented rock” kind of guy.  I want my music to play back in the right order; and more elusively, I want my albums to be sorted in the right order.  After all, Magical Mystery Tour came out after Sgt. Pepper’s.  Not the other way around.  Tags (specifically ALBUMSORT) can solve this problem.
3. Full synchronization between the device and a desktop player.  I want playlists, ratings, tags, tracks, etc., to flow between the two.  Of course, this means that there needs to be “don’t sync” and “smart sync” options for tracks / albums / tags so the desktop player isn’t constantly flooding the device.
4. Recording function.  Podcasts on the go.
5. Bookmarking podcasts.  It should remember your position in a track even if you play something else and then go back to it.

What I don’t care about:

1. DRM.  Let there be DRM.  I see that Dave Winer is out if there is any DRM, but I don’t get why DRM kills the project.  I honestly don’t care because I’ll never use it.  The iPod doesn’t force you to use DRM.  The iTunes store does.  I know everyone wants a DRM-free online purchasing experience.  I am not voting for DRM and I don’t desire it, but I don’t see it as a player issue.

Nice to haves:

1. Wifi.  Yes, it would be cool for synchronization through Wifi.  Sharing podcasts through Wifi cool too.  A must?  Nah.
2. Removable media.  This would be cool.  I imagine Jason is talking about additional storage (so, it comes with x Gigs, but you can add additional storage with a CF card).
3. Preloaded with podcasts is a cool marketing idea. 
4. It is also a PDA phone.  OK, kind of a joke, but I really only want one device.  This begs the question: is new hardware necessary?  How about just a killer mobile app running on WM5?  All storage on removable media (not cheap, but dropping in price all the time).

Anyway, this is really fun stuff.  I just love gadgets.

Tags: Calacanis, DRM, iPod, WM5

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Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Trumps Vista

December 3, 2006 at 9:10 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

One of the things I thought I’d get to this weekend is to upgrade my laptop to Vista again.  It is a pretty easy background task and with Norton Ghost is quickly reversable if need be (as it was the last time I tried).

Unlike some (e.g., J. LeRoy who thinks XP is adequate), I really want the new UX and (the promise of) faster power state transitions, among other things. 

But, before the installation I need to be sure of two things:

1. Support for the VPN at Digipede (and the networking software required on my laptop).  This is no longer reported as incompatibile in the Vista Upgrade Advisor.  So, this is worth a shot anyway.
2. Support for Visual Studio 2005 (not to mention 2003 which I still use occasionaly).  I looked into this more today and while Vista may support VS2005, it won’t support the coming SP1.  I really want the fixes in SP1 so I have to choose between sticking with XP or sticking with the pre-SP1 VS2005.  A blocker.

Of course, Visual Studio 2005 SP1 trumps Vista, but I’m not happy about it. 

J. LeRoy (AKA, Cousin Jim) recently posted on What Color is your Vista? with a terrific quote:

So when Microsoft says that they “deliver the right balance”, that’s not your balance they are talking about.

Exactly (and I know I’m taking his point completely out of context).

Tags: .NET, Microsoft, Vista, Visual-Studio, VS2003, vs2005, VS2005-SP1

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HPC event in NYC

December 1, 2006 at 8:13 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

John and Nathan will be presenting at a Microsoft event in New York City this coming Wednesday.  The event targets fHPC for financial services companies. 

John and Nathan will . . .

. . . present information on how the Digipede Network integrates with and adds value to Microsoft’s entire technology stack, including the new Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS), Visual Studio 2005, .NET, Excel 2007, SharePoint 2007, and more.  (They’ll) run through some real-world examples of how our financial services customers use the Microsoft / Digipede solution to make more money by dramatically improving application performance and scalability.

One of our customers will also be a speaker at the event. 

You can read more about this (and find registration information) on John’s blog (here: HPC event in NYC).

Tags: Digipede, finance, financial-services, grid, Grid Computing, HPC, Microsoft

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What a Splenda day

November 21, 2006 at 11:07 am · Filed under Miscellaneous

Thanks to Adam Curry I just received 6 boxes of Splenda.  I like my coffee black without sweeteners, so I don’t know if I’ll like this stuff.  I do like Coke with Splenda, so I’ll certainly give it a try.

I promise I won’t allow this to bias me in any way. 

In fact, it won’t impact my pre-existing biases whatsoever.

Thanks, Adam!

Tags: Adam-Curry, Gillmor-Gang, Splenda

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Marc Benioff & Hybrid Hosting

November 17, 2006 at 4:46 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing, Web 2.0

Marc Benioff was special guest in the recent Gillmor Gang (VIdeo Gang Parts I and II).   After getting through the initial discussion on SalesForce.com earnings we moved on to talk about the SaaS business and their application platform.

Mike Vizard led off the questions about ApEx with a good one: how will SalesForce get developer traction for their language / environment / form?  Marc enumerated several things they are doing about that.  Most of this is kind of “business as usual” for those building a developer community, though I do think that one of their strategies is pretty innovative: rent out cubicles to developers in a building devoted to ApEx development (this is happening in old offices of Siebel — this would be ironic if it weren’t intentional).  These developers get everything they need to build apps on the SalesForce platform.

This may turn out to be of great value to those who are already interested in the platform.  Of course, the drive for developers to build applications on ApEx will come down to one thing: is there a viable marketplace for the applications they build? 

Clearly Marc and SalesForce understand this fully.   They are not pushing the “build it and they will come” mantra; instead, they have built an application exchange (i.e., the AppExchange) to enable a viable marketplace.

On a slightly different tack, I asked Marc to talk a little about their hosting capabilities for third party applications sold through the AppExchange.  Without getting into too much detail about the different kinds of applications that support the ApEx (native, client, hybrid, etc.) there is a class of applications that requires external hosting.  These applications take advantage of the SalesForce.com APIs yet are not built on the ApEx platform.  As a result, these applications are not hosted by SalesForce.com. 

I grok why they choose not to post these hybrid applications.  Doing so requires a different hosting model: one that is application-specific possibly supporting different hardware requirements, different OSes, different staff, etc. I can only guess that they have made the decision not to do this in favor of their “pure” ApEx strategy.  Certainly the “pure” strategy is a lot cleaner, more focused, more repeatable,  more like an “product sale” instead of an implementation sale . . .

However, lets go back to the earlier point of developer adoption.  Wouldn’t it be easier to get developers to adopt ApEx and AppExchange and the whole concept of SaaS if you were able to provide a hybrid hosting solution?

This reminds me a little bit of .NET.   One of the key features of .NET is support for COM.  If users had to throw out their legacy code to begin to adopt .NET in their organization, .NET would have had a much slower adoption rate.  They don’t. 

It sound likes an ApEx developer who wants to take advantage of the AppExchange has to either start everything from scratch or provide their own hosting solution.

So I wonder, would SalesForce be able to ramp up developer adoption rates with a hybrid hosting strategy?

Tags: .NET, ApEx, Benioff, Gillmor, Gillmor-Gang, SaaS, Salesforce

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PowerShell 1.0 Released!

November 14, 2006 at 1:14 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

Releases are coming like crazy out of Redmond.  Congratulations to the whole PowerShell team and specifically to Jeffrey Snover for getting this done.

I guess this means we should finish our PowerShell CmdLets for the Digipede Network.

Tags: Digipede, Microsoft, PowerShell

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And now Windows Vista RTMs

November 8, 2006 at 3:48 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

I thought it would still be a couple of weeks, but it has happened.  I wonder when it’ll be on MSDN.  Anybody know?

Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Windows

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The AT has a new design

November 7, 2006 at 11:04 am · Filed under Attention

New site design at the Attention Trust. 

http://www.attentiontrust.org/

Good job guys.  A little too much Latin, but that will get sorted out. 

Looks good. 

Tags: Attention, attention-trust, AttentionTrust

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.NET 3.0 Ships

November 6, 2006 at 10:11 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

Office 2007 RTM’ed this morning so I’ve been looking throughout the day for news on .NET 3.0.

And, yes, it came out too.  Here.   

I got what I wanted: the release of .NET 3.0 has been decoupled from Vista.  Of course, Vista is in escrow and will RTM within a few weeks so it isn’t that decoupled.

Anyway, congratulations to the teams for getting this done!  

Tags: .NET, .NET3.0, Microsoft, office, Office2007, RTM, Vista

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