tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69517282024-03-12T17:55:03.064-07:00User Generated ContentRegarding things like User generated content, content in general, technology, and media.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.comBlogger998125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-13674366751833239062019-05-23T14:25:00.000-07:002019-05-23T14:25:00.708-07:00Sonos - Google Assistant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have been a huge Sonos fan forever. I had four devices in my home although recently one of them became damaged and I am now down to three. About a year ago I purchased a <a href="https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/one.html">Sonos One</a> and it has been the best individual Sonos device I have owned. I was very excited about the potential integration with Alexa and Google Assistant when I bought it.<br />
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The Alexa support came quickly and it worked pretty well although I have to admit that I tend to favor the Google Assistant devices since I am a die hard Android user. What I had hoped for in terms of Google Assistant support was a long time in coming! Fortunately over the last several weeks, that support has finally arrived!<br />
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Last week I did the software update on my Sonos and then added the device to my Google Home set up. All in all it was pretty simple and I felt like it is something most people could easily handle. Once I had everything configured it became very easy to control all my speakers by using the Sonos One device or using my Google Home devices to stop or start play n the various rooms in the house.<br />
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In general it has been my experience that Google Assistant voice support is slightly better than Alexa although in my case that could be because I use Assistant on my phone as well as a number of devices in my house.<br />
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The only thing that I would say has been a negative is that sometimes it seems like the Sonos device is a tad bit slower than my native Google Home devices. Not sure if that is an underlying hardware issue but my guess is that it is just that it is the first production build of the Google Assistant. I would suspect that it will get fast over time. I never really noticed any latency difference between the Sonos One and my native Alexa devices.<br />
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If you are a Google Home/Assistant user and a Sonos owner I am pretty sure you will be as delighted as I have been.</div>
Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-17157485692684952322019-05-21T20:19:00.000-07:002019-05-21T20:19:24.446-07:00Online Education - Vol. 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I recently wanted to do a deeper dive into some of the AI areas that we use in our technology stack. Specifically we do a number of things with machine learning, natural language processing, parsing, and use of chatbots and voice assistants. The first three items are more on the validation and processing side where the last two are more on the output/consumption side.<br />
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I spoke with a good friend who has spent a lot of time working on ML/AI at FB and he recommended checking out some high level coursework on <a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a> and some other services. I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical. I can't recall the last time I had set out to do something of an academic nature.<br />
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Throughout the various companies I have been involved at I would routinely go deep on specific books or articles around particular topics that were relevant to work. In looking at trying to understand some of the deeper AI topics, I would have to do some fundamental learning of Python as well as some of the overall topical information around AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning. While I knew specifically what I wanted to explore, I would have to lay some foundations to grasp the potential to apply some of my theories to these toolsets.<br />
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I started out doing some overview classes on Coursera by Andrew Ng and at the same time started taking an introductory class on Python. Both of the classes were well done and I found myself quickly going through them as I have had some long time ago experience programming and the topical stuff from Andrew Ng was very well presented.<br />
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These classes only left me wanting to go deeper and I am now working through some coursework using various tools to data mine Twitter and doing analysis as well as doing an overview of TensorFlow through a <a href="https://www.udacity.com/">Udacity</a> Course.<br />
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What has amazed me in the few weeks I have been grinding on this is that there are some really powerful resources available to take you very deep in a very short period of time. In addition to the high quality video lectures, there are Jupyter Notebooks with sample code you can modify and various Python scripts that can get you going very quickly. I actually now find myself at the point where I am trying to not figure out if what I want to do is possible but rather what is the best tool or tools for me to test my theories out as fast as possible.<br />
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I started out very skeptical about the value of taking the "online education" path to gain new knowledge and I have to say that right now I am pretty blown away by what is available. Stay tuned for more as I go a little deeper in the coming weeks.<br />
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Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-90702380470282518312019-05-20T19:01:00.001-07:002019-05-20T19:01:02.295-07:00Game of Thrones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It was a great 8 year run. I can totally understand the frustration with the rush to a conclusion this last season but I think if you look across the great episodes over time, the good ones made the wrap up worth it, even if it wasn't anywhere near as good as we would have hoped for. Two consolation items. First, the books are still to come and we are certain to see a different outcome. Second, there are multiple spinoffs coming. Can't wait to see where those take it. While it wasn't the best series or end, on balance it was one of the most amazing TV experiences I have had.</div>
Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-22069661217894798432017-01-11T13:24:00.004-08:002017-01-11T13:24:51.556-08:00Mobile Industry Trends 2017<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I had a chance to opine on what I thought the trends would be for 2017. Check it out in Forbes <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/eladnatanson/2017/01/11/mobile-industry-predictions-for-2017/#c76b6cc2b9d5">here</a>.</div>
Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-84716856002213201542016-12-13T15:45:00.000-08:002016-12-13T15:45:34.958-08:00Google Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For my birthday this year I received a trio of Google products, the Pixel phone, the Google Home device and the Google Daydream headset. I have been spending a lot of time with each and have been pretty happy with them all. Previously I wrote a bit about the Pixel. Today I want to talk about <a href="https://madeby.google.com/home/">Google Home</a>.<br />
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So first off, I have to say that I am totally bought into the Google ecosystem and that this starts with Android which I have used since it debuted on the G1. Everything else here should be viewed through that bias.<br />
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My father in law has had the Amazon Echo for two years now and my kids love asking it the same goofy questions they would ask Siri or Google. I toyed with getting the Echo but I always felt that my need for weather, traffic or some random information was pretty low at $150. Around my birthday the price for the Home was dropped from $139 to $100 so I figured at 50% of the cost, what the heck!<br />
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The device has a great low profile. The speaker for the system is pretty good. The ability for the device to hear commands from anywhere around the room is downright scary...even over other noises.<br />
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So here are some high level thoughts...<br />
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The Bad -<br />
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Ecosystem - Not much set up for the system yet. The Echo has a 2 year head start on the ecosystem development so the Google command set seems really limited. I suspect this will rapidly change now that the Google Actions and Assistant API pieces are opening up to developers. I suspect it will grow as quickly as the Android ecosystem did once it got rolling. I bet what I am calling a Bad today will quickly become an awesome.<br />
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Sonos Integration - I have 3 Sonos speakers in the house. It kills me that there is no integration point with Google Home. While the Home speakers are good, they are not of the quality you have with Sonos. I really hope that Sonos decides to do some kind of integration.<br />
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Language interaction - While I don't have any extensive experience with the Echo, I bet that it has a similar problem. The Home wants some pretty specific commands to interact with you. I was struggling mightily to get the Nest interaction down right. Now that I know how to do it things are easier but new interface interactions are going to always have a learning curve in the near term.<br />
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The Good -<br />
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Design - Low profile. Good sound quality. Creepy good listening.<br />
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Nest integration - Love this. I had a bit of a hard time working out the commands but now that I do it is killer to tell the Google Home to warm the house up or to cool it off.<br />
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Pixel integration - When you call the action word - Ok Google, both devices respond. If there is an interaction it comes on the louder Google Home. The two devices appear to work seamlessly together although I know that there are some occasional hiccups with that.<br />
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The Future - Being totally bought into the Google ecosystem I know that the future holds the ability down the road to search through my old emails, update my calendar, read me a particular document etc. The creation of an "App store" like framework for developers that can be used for things like Android phones and Chromecast devices has some killer potential for home automation and interaction.<br />
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Bottom Line - If you are a Google centric user, save the money and grab a Google Home. It is not at the same place as the Echo in terms of support currently but my guess is that it will get there in the next 12 months and accelerate beyond the Echo. If you are not a Google user and you want to experiment I am guessing the Echo dot might be a good call. I haven't looked into it yet but I believe that you can get one solo without an Echo. I suspect voice interfaces are in for a lot of great developments in the coming year.</div>
Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-9496467399235133202016-12-01T16:10:00.000-08:002016-12-01T16:10:31.651-08:00Google Pixel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Over the last few extended weeks of my birthday celebration, I managed to get 3 gifts that are from the current Google lineup. I wanted to share some brief thoughts on them. Today is the main one, my new <a href="https://madeby.google.com/phone/">Google Pixel</a> phone.<br />
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I have been an Android user since the first Google phone the G1. Along the way I have repeatedly updated my phones as the newer version have come to market. In many cases I have had a later model iPhone as well as a testing phone for the various companies I have been at over the years. While I know many of my friends love iPhones, my favoring of Android has never let up.<br />
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Over the last 6 years I have exclusively owned Google Nexus phones. While I know a number of people who enjoy the Samsung and other variants of Android devices, I have always preferred the stripped down software on Nexus devices and I have enjoyed having early access to the latest flavors of Android.<br />
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My most recent phone until the Pixel has been the Nexus 6. I recall at the time it came out I was very disappointed that I only had one option to buy a gigantic phone. Over the two years I used it I definitely became comfortable with the size and all in all it was a pretty outstanding phone.<br />
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The Pixel for me is a move back to a smaller device which I am generally excited about. I think I could have easily gone with the Pixel XL as well but it was nice to switch back to a smaller device.<br />
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There are a number of great sites that have comprehensive reviews of the Pixel so I am not going to try to cover much but instead wanted to highlight a couple areas that are either very interesting or very disappointing. Before I do that I have to say that I really love this new phone so any issues are generally minor.<br />
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The Bad...<br />
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GPS - My GPS has something crazy going on. When using Maps or Waze, the Pixel occasionally looses precise location tracking. This has resulted in some annoying freeway announcements from my phone as well as literally getting lost in a residential neighborhood while trying to pick up a kid from a friends house. I have contacted customer support and sometime in the next few days will try to take the steps that will fix it. Unfortunately I don't think the steps will work but we will see.<br />
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Speaker - The speaker on this phone is just bad. I cringe at the thought of using this phone for conference calls in speaker phone which was something that was stellar on the Nexus 6. I am dumbfounded on why you would go cheap on a premium phone in the speaker department.<br />
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USB C - Guess all my old chargers are obsolete now. The upside though is that the charging time is amazing.<br />
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The Good...<br />
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Software - Clean new Android software with lots of good bells and whistles.<br />
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Camera - Probably the best camera I have had on a phone.<br />
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Speed - Everything is lightning fast.<br />
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The Awesome...<br />
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Google Assistant - While this is not where it needs to be today....it is light years ahead of Siri and is a big improvement on the Google Voice / Google Now services that I have grown to love on the Nexus 6. Google will be granting API access of some sorts for Assistant in the coming month and I am sure that there will be some great development in that arena. I especially like the way Assistant interacts with the <a href="https://madeby.google.com/home/">Google Home</a> device. I will chat more about that next.<br />
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<a href="https://vr.google.com/daydream/">Google Daydream</a> - Wow. That like the Google Home will be it's own topic but suffice to say it has been the first wow moment I have experienced with virtual reality.<br />
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Back soon with comments on Google Home and Google Daydream.<br />
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Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-22912282441615895832016-11-29T12:44:00.001-08:002016-11-29T12:44:26.439-08:00ScoreStream - User Generated Sports Photos<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In addition to the great videos we get each week, we have been getting some amazing photos from the crowd like these from last week:<br />
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<div class="scorestream-widget-container" data-ss_widget_type="gallery" data-ss_widgetid="12874" id="scorestream-widget-container">
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<script async="" src="https://scorestream.com/apiJsCdn/widgets/embed.js"></script></div>
Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-3098085560443073952016-11-23T11:38:00.001-08:002016-11-23T11:38:59.547-08:00ScoreStream - User Generated Sports Clips<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This last year has seen our company get to a point where each week we get some amazing amount of photos and videos each week. Here is an example of last week's nationwide Top 10 clips:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ax3krPXKDdQ" width="560"></iframe><br />
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The volume and quality of content that users can create when given a platform never ceases to amaze me. If you want to see all 14 weeks you can find the full playlist here:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/54BIaVESSN4?list=PLZ-frcHYi6kiret04uTQwSBlKnWZjeI6V" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-4628650137427125882016-11-22T16:50:00.001-08:002016-11-22T16:50:05.131-08:00Medium?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Haven't been here in forever. I have been contemplating dusting off the keyboard and giving it another go. Seems sad to leave the old diary behind but maybe a fresh start is a good thing. In any case...will see if I can do this for a few posts at least and then make a call. I have been spending more time with other tools as well so maybe something will stick naturally....</div>
Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-63411649628097956912013-01-10T13:50:00.000-08:002013-01-10T13:50:26.372-08:00My Top Music from 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Around the holiday break each year I try to spend some time listening to the best music from the previous year and I spend the first month or so trying to come up to speed on what was new in the last year of music. While many of my friends think there has been no good music since Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, I would beg to differ.<br />
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So for those friends who want to put down the cassette tapes and try something new, I humbly submit that these were some of the best artists making music in 2012 in no particular order other than loose groupings by take of music:<br />
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Hillbilly / Country / Yalternative<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/mumford%20&%20Sons/1/">Mumford and Sons</a> - Not only did the sell a ton of music, it was a ton of awesome music. In my 20s, if you told me that I would be vaguely listening to hill billy music I would have laughed. Somehow, here I am. I blame the Grateful Dead. Mumford and Sons followed up their last awesome effort with an almost as good follow on. This is a must have.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/avett%20brothers/1/">Avett Brothers</a> - I don't like them nearly as much as Mumford, but they have a great sound and I find that the more I listen the more I like.<br />
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Hippie<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/edward%20sharpe/1/">Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros</a> - Not as good as the debut but still full of a lot of hippy 60s good lovin.<br />
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Blues and R&B<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/jack%20white/1/">Jack White</a> - Jack White is amazing. Whether it is The White Stripes, The Raconteurs or any of his other projects, he is always top notch. I am sure we will look back over time and he will be thought of as one of the top notch artists of our time. Blunderbuss is an AMAZING work. Buy it.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/alabama%20shakes/1/">Alabama Shakes</a> - My neighbor and camping buddy Dave turned me on to them and while it took a bit to get used to the voice the first go around, it really grew on me and I like it a lot. It is consistently on a ton of top 10 lists all over the place.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/the%20heavy/1/">The Heavy</a> - Following up from the work that had "How you like me now?" from the movie The Fighter, this one continues in the rocking tradition of music that I swore was James Brown. I recommend What Makes A Good Man.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/frank%20ocean/1/">Frank Ocean</a> - AWESOME album. Not something I would normally listen to but really infectious. Pretty much a consistent top 5 on people's year end list and if you listen you will get it.<br />
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Electronic / Indie / Experimental<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/mndr/1/">MNDR</a> - Ok, it is my sister in law, but I swear, check out this <a href="http://youtu.be/AIYug0LjEFM">performance</a> from The David Letterman show. Her debut work had a ton of great tracks and I can't wait to see what she does next. Great remixes on Hype Machine too...<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/santigold/1/">Santigold</a> - The artist MNDR is compared to a bunch. The band has a great sound that is really catchy and puts them at the forefront of what is happening in dancehall electronic etc.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/passion%20pit/1/">Passion Pit</a> - Loved the last one and love this one too. I Take A Walk has got to be the happiest song of 2012.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/alt%20j/1/">Alt J</a> - Eclectic and very listenable. It is one that grows on you and drives you to obsession.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/the%20xx/1/">the XX</a> - One of my favorite bands of the last several years. Wonderful, rich, haunting music with a voice to die for.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/bat%20for%20lashes/1/">Bat for Lashes</a> - New to me this year like a couple of others. Really well done though with lots of great tracks.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/of%20monsters%20and%20men/1/">Of Monsters and Men</a> - I am still not sure about the whole record but I am still in the early part of this growing on me and might even throw it in the same grouping as Mumford.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/gotye/1/">Gotye</a> - I don't like most of this one. I do love the big track Someone I Used to Know. That sounds just seemed to play all year long last year and I still like it...<br />
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Punk and Rock<br />
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I will admit that I didn't get to spend as much time this last holiday break digging in the crates for my fill of what is truly my bread and butter music, but these three jumped out and even hit the mainstream to some extent...<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/the%20mars%20volta/1/">The Mars Volt</a>a - I was dying for the new record and it didn't disappoint. Unfortunately it seems that the At The Drive In reunion might have taken them off the circuit for touring in support of this one but nonetheless it is a great addition to their discography.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/japandroids/1/">Japandroids</a> - Holly crap, these guys hit it out. I loved the track Art Czars from their last go around but this whole record is rocking and awesome and on a ton of top 10 lists all over the place. Must buy.<br />
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<a href="http://hypem.com/search/titus%20andronicus/1/">Titus Andronicus</a> - Not as strong as the last one, but still a rollicking fun punk rock kind of record.<br />
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All the links here are to Hype Machine, my hands down favorite music discovery tool. You can play songs from all the artists there but I highly recommend you click to the blogs who wrote about the bands and find some more awesomeness of your own.<br />
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Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-3546518425159683732012-07-11T15:42:00.000-07:002012-07-11T15:42:30.450-07:00Google+ for iPad<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I want to like Google+. Seriously. I am an Android user on mobile even though I use Apple everything else. Mac, Ipad and AppleTV (both of them). Google+ highlights the value of "the conversation" for me. For most of my friends and family, the conversation is on Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter. Since that is the case for me, Google+ is like talking to myself, in a weird room where only <a href="https://plus.google.com/s/robert%20scoble">Robert Scoble</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/s/bill%20gross">Bill Gross</a> post. Good stuff though for what it's worth. The most valuable thing for me so far has been Google+ contact integration in Android and hangouts.<br />
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Hangouts are a really good collaboration tool and to me it kicks the shit out of Skype. When I have to talk to more than one person I always use Hangouts. <br />
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Google came out with a new iPad version of<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/google-app-for-ipad-available-now-in.html"> Google+ today</a> and while it looks great and does all the stuff you would expect of a higher end tablet application, it is Hangouts that has me excited. We did a 3 way conference call at work this afternoon and it was amazing. The iPad seamlessly handled all the audio and video and was drop dead simple to use. The best part for me was the nice switching between the various speakers during the conversation. If you do remote collaboration and have an iPad I would highly recommend using it.</div>Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-15757497438841939612012-07-10T15:27:00.000-07:002012-07-10T15:27:26.162-07:00Random Things I Am Using<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Started using two new applications in the last couple of days and thought it might be fun to share some of the stuff I have been playing with that is new/cool.<br />
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Voxer - I had this on my tech to do list for a long time but couldn't really figure out why I would want to use Push To Talk Technology (PTT). One of the fantasy football leagues I am in insisted that we all use it so I signed up and overnight had something like 70 messages where two guys were going back and forth about how awesome they are and then talked about all kinds of nonsense. You have to love starting out with Spam. Aside from that though, it is a really cool tool for doing asynchronous group messaging and once we get the other guys to figure it out I am sure it will be frequently used.<br />
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Google Drive - Saw the Fred Wilson post on Dropbox vs. Drive and installed the Mac client. So now I have Dropbox, Drive and Pogoplug. Interestingly Pogoplug is the only one that I think really helps me with anything as the others have such a small size ( 5 gigs) and the main use for me is to do things like archive photos and movies which require 10s of gig.<br />
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Waze - Waze rules. I am not even going to tell you what it is, you just have to get it. There. Just kididing. Waze is a crowd sourced navigation tool that does really cool stuff like tell you where the cops are and where there are accidents etc. The speed trap finding capabilities and the smart traffic routing when you are driving in places like LA make this a very frequently used app for me.<br />
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<br /></div>Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-54860390295812192352012-04-23T10:36:00.001-07:002012-04-23T10:36:30.874-07:00My new company - ScoreStream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I just recently started a new company called ScoreStream. I posted our first post <a href="http://blog.scorestream.com/">here</a>. Please take a look and check out our application <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scorestream/id514772744">here</a>.</div>Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-82777023170380930152011-10-20T15:24:00.000-07:002011-10-20T15:24:34.834-07:00Theme: Personal Automation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is the first in a series of posts about technology themes that I outlined in my last post. This post is about Personal Automation.<br />
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To begin, what is personal automation? When I first think about personal automation, the first thing that pops into my mind were the "intelligent agents" people spoke about when the Internet was just coming into vogue. People would wake up and the news tailored to them would be delivered to them by programmatic agents that gathered things of interest to them. <br />
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Today there are no shortage of services that offer features like that, but when I think about personal automation I think about it at a more nuts and bolts level. By that I think of it as a fairly straightforward combination of programs, rules, notifications and web services. I will explain that more, but I think that this way of thinking about it is fairly broad and allows for personal automation on a broad scale and this also highlights how big the opportunity is. I plan on walking through a number of examples and services to illustrate the point. <br />
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Why does personal automation matter or more specifically what is the benefit? To me there are 3 key benefits of using personal automation. The first one is that you can adjust your technology or delivery of information based on context. Examples of that might be "turn my phone on silent between 10 PM and 6 AM", or "If I am home or at work turn on the wifi of my phone on and turn it off when I leave" or "If there is any new information about my fantasy football roster send me an instant message." Context is huge. At work or at certain times of the day I may want things sent to me or blocked based on the work context. <br />
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The second benefit to me is that you are able to shift off work into the background and allow your technology to work for you. I don't need to scour blogs for information on a topic. I can have them sent to me. I don't have to wonder what the weather is going to be like today, I can have my phone read my the forecast when I wake up.<br />
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The final benefit which is closely related to the 2nd is the benefit of set and forget. If I am willing to do some work on the front end, I can enable a variety of services to perform in the background and know that they will continue on unless I intervene to stop them. While that may not seem like a big deal to some, using these types of technology allows you to structure how you work and also allows you to protect yourself by giving you self imposed "time outs".<br />
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Ok, so lots of jargon speak. What EXACTLY are you talking about. I think the best way to do that is to walk through the services I use as an example. In general I am going to discuss this as it relates to web services, mobile devices and other devices.<br />
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<b>Web Services</b><br />
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Notify.me - A couple of my friends who are some of my favorite entrepreneurs started a service called notify.me that unfortunately they recently shuttered. I was an advisor to the company and I totally got the value proposition but unfortunately they didn't come to a clear business model and other projects ultimately led them to the conclusion that it was better to shutter it and refer users to other services. When it was up I used Notify.me almost every day over a 2 year period. The basic service allowed users to subscribe to a feed or some information source and then direct information to some communication output. The output could be email, SMS or instant messaging. In my case I used instant messaging which allowed me to not get text messages around the clock, only when I was at my computer working.<br />
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My three main use cases were A. Realtime fanatsy football news, B. Hacker News updates and C. Updates to a wide variety of music blogs I follow. In each case there was a different value proposition to me. Recency of information is an advantage in fantasy football. Hacker News is a good way to monitor real time tech stories and the music blog subscriptions was a serendipitous way to remember some great sources of music that I rarely visit. For other users certain use cases were stock prices, ebay bidding, craigslist postings and system administration notifications.<br />
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While I am bummed for the guys that it didn't work out, it was a great inspiration for me in thinking about how this sort of automation is valuable.<br />
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<a href="http://ifttt.com/">IFTTT</a>.com - When notify.me went dark, they directed users to two different services, one which wasn't live yet and IFTTT.com which stands for If This Then That. The scope of what they are trying to accomplish is much broader than what Notify.me set out to do. On the one hand, I think that makes the tool more powerful, it also creates a slightly higher bar for users to get up and running. To me this is driven primarily by the fact that the sources of data and output are so broad that it may be difficult for a casual user to get their head around it. One way that the founders address this problem is that they allow users to create recipes that are a blueprint for others to use the service. If you have any interest in the topic of this post then I highly encourage you to check out the service, it is super cool and very useful and the investment of time has a great payoff.<br />
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<br />For me, I sue the service primarily to replace the fantasy football aspect that I used with Notify.me. It covers off the exact same feed with the only difference being that the output is directed to a Google Talk client and not a generalized jabber client. Because it is Google Talk and I have an android phone, I get the messages on my phone 24/7 and not only when my computer is on. I am sure I can figure out a way around this but hopefully there will be a general solution that I can use later on my iChat or Adium client on my Mac.<br />
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Several other examples of tasks I have created are as follows:<br />
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If the forecast for my home is rain tomorrow I get a text message<br />
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If I send a text message to a certain phone number provided by IFTTT, a google calendar event is created on my schedule. In this case I can say things like lunch tomorrow at noon with Shawn and it works flawlessly. I also use Google voice recognition to send the text, sort of like what has been demonstrated with SIRI.<br />
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If the temperature at home tomorrow is going to be above 75 degrees I get a text message telling me that tomorrow will be a warm day.<br />
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If anyone I follow on Twitter posts a link to an article, the article is saved to Instapaper for reading later. I have to turn this one off alot and I also have been unfollowing some folks who overshare.<br />
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Finally if anyone new follows me on Twitter, I get a phone call to my cell telling me.<br />
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While not all of these are entirely important to me, the breadth of what they are doing is really impressive and if they can get the user up to speed quickly I think they will have success although I think a lot of the business model issues that notify.me faced will be similar but hopefully scale helps to solve that problem.<br />
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Originally I had intended to address several other services but in the interest in not rambling on I will just mention that I use Google alerts almost daily to track specific news items and topics and I also use Last.fm both to chronicle what I am listening to but also to check out what my friends are listening to as well.<br />
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<b>Mobile Services</b><br />
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The advent of smartphones has had a transforming effect on mobility from simple communication to full blown computing in the palm of your hand. In terms of personal automation the intersection of this computing combined with GPS and other device capabilities has created some interesting services and opportunities. I'd like to mention a couple of the services that I have found useful in this regard.<br />
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<a href="http://www.twofortyfouram.com/">Locale</a> - When Android debuted with the G1, Locale was without question the coolest application on my phone. While I have a Macbook Pro, and Ipad2 and an Ipad Touch, the ability for Android to run things like Locale in the background has kept me a die hard Android user since the beginning. <br />
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Locale has changed a bunch since I first started using it, but the first couple of use cases for me were to post a message to Twitter every time I arrived at an airport. This was pretty cool when you think about it because Locale would use the GPS to determine my location and then use the Twitter application to send a pre set message based on the airport I was near.<br />
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Locale events are triggered off of conditions. Default conditions include Battery level, a contact interaction, location, device orientation and time. Based on those conditions you can change settings for Bluetooth, screen brightness, ringtone, screen timeout, volume, wallpaper and wifi settings.<br />
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Currently I have a couple of settings enabled. My primary one is to turn wifi on at home and work and then turn it off when I am not in those locations. This saves my battery and also enables wifi calling for me at home as my reception with the carrier is not that good at home. The other main setting I use is that when my phone is face down on a desk, the phone turns to silent. When I set it face up it turns on again.<br />
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This is simple out of the box Locale. Locale also created a developer framework that has resulted in several hundred plugins for Locale to do things like send messages on Twitter, integrate with email programs, integrate with productivity software and do some cool stuff with a variety of the phones device capabilities. Bottom line with Locale though is that it is really simple and easy to use.<br />
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<a href="http://tasker.dinglisch.net/">Tasker</a> - Tasker and Locale share many of the same types of features and in fact support a lot of the same plugins. The big difference with Tasker and Locale is that Locale is like a Mac and Tasker is like Unix. You can do almost anything to your phone without a plugin if you can learn to program with the Tasker scripting UI. It is super powerful and really hard to use if you don't spend the time with it. It is, without a doubt, bad ass.<br />
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I have spent some time with Tasker and currently use it for the following:<br />
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My phone turns off the ringer, wifi and bluetooth everynight at 10 PM and turns them all back on at 6 AM.<br />
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At 7AM each morning, my phone speaks the weather forecast for my home.<br />
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I had Tasker doing some more of the wifi stuff but found that for some reason the GPS setting are more responsive on Locale. For the less technically inclined, Tasker has "profiles" which are like IFTTT recipes but you can download them to your phone and configure them. A ton of the coolest ones like turn on my bluetooth and go into car phone mode when driving (using your speed as the variable) were disabled by Gingerbread which made it impossible for non rooted devices to switch the GPS receiver on and off.<br />
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There are other cool mobile personal automation applications but these are by far the most noteworthy to me at this time.<br />
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<b>Other devices</b><br />
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There are a grab bag of other devices that I would consider personal automation and will briefly highlight a few of them including our chumby devices.<br />
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<a href="http://www.chumby.com/">chumby</a> - Why not start with my most familiar? ;-) I would argue that chumby is one of the most awesome personal automation devices in that it brings stuff to you like the "intelligent assistant" example at the beginning. More directly though I think there are some clever ways I use my chumby. My sister in law is a rock star and one of the ways we keep track of her is to subscribe to all the Flickr photos that are tagged with her name <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/MNDR">MNDR</a>. At my desk at work and in my kitchen at home we periodically get to see new pictures of her when she is out on tour.<br />
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I also subscribe to things like Foursquare on chumby which keeps me notified when people happen to be around in San Diego and it is a reminder to reach out. Others use chumby to wake up to Pandora or in some cases run things that monitor their home<a href="http://doghouselabs.blogspot.com/2011/02/another-infocast-app-preview-real-time.html"> power consumption</a>!<br />
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<a href="http://www.eye.fi/">Eyefi</a> - My friend Mike who is a professional photographer turned me on to Eyefi a while back. Eyefi is essentially a wifi enabled SD card for your camera. No more forgetting to transfer pcitures. Whenever my caemra is on and in wifi range, it starts automatically uploading the images to my computer. How sweet is that?<br />
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<a href="http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/">Time Capsule</a> - After one near epic photo-apocalypse, I became a devoted backup fan. Unfortunately until I had a time machine backing up actually meant remembering to back up. With Time Machine I have a hard drive at home and a hard drive at work that automatically keeps an up to date image of my laptop at all times.<br />
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Two last mentions to conclude. One is X10. I have three unopened boxes of X10 home automation devices that I can't wait to install in the house. Unfortunately I have had them for over 6 months and I can't seem to find the time to break them open. One day soon. <br />
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The last one is Google Power Meter / SDGE smart meter. My home has a smart meter and I apparently am the only person who used this service so Google has shut it down. the biggest drawback thus far has been that all of the data come to you several days later which sucks. You need the information real time if you want to get people to conserve power. Show me burning money on a bonfire pile and I will turn off the dishwasher. Let me do it from my smartphone on the road? Even better. There is still a long ways to go on smart energy but at least companies like SDGE are laying the foundations to make it possible.<br />
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Conclusion<br />
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This is only the tip of the ice berg. As computing becomes ubiquitous and embedded in all of our devices, we will be able to do some amazing things. Many of the sci fi scenarios from old movies won't just be possible, they will be a daily part of our lives. As a consumer I will continue to keep a close eye on this and keep on the front end of seeing how this develops. I would welcome any tips or pointers for other great services I might be missing in the comments.<br />
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<br /></div>Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-13170271033244459782011-10-13T11:20:00.000-07:002011-10-13T11:20:43.256-07:00Themes in Technology<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A friend the other day asked me what sort of stuff is interesting to me in technology right now. I said a ton of stuff and started rattling off a lot of things I use or things I am interested in. As I thought about it more it sounded like a scattered list of things but fundamentally there are some commonality and classification if I spent some time thinking about it. Actually one of the most articulate ways I have seen this sort of classification presented is on the <a href="http://www.foundrygroup.com/wp/themes/">Foundry Group VC</a> website where they talk about what they look at from an investment standpoint. Other VCs refer to this as their "investment thesis" in certain categories but I think Foundry does a great job laying things out and giving good examples of what the theme means and a selection of companies that represent the theme.<br />
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In addition to the conversation with my friend, I also realized that when Google + launched that I had some boiler plate about me stuff that represented what I was interested in back in 2004 and not necessarily what I am interested in in 2011. That is not to say that I am not still interested in those things, which in many cases I still am, it is just that with time and the change in technology I think a lot of those things have either been refined or have changed substantially. In any case, I have sort of hit the wall with the social networking sites and miss my blog so I thought it would be fun to share the themes that occupy my free thoughts and share some of the things that I either purchase or use on a frequent basis that are examples of those themes for me.<br />
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So going back to that old profile stuff from 2004, I think a recap is a good place to start. My blog description says "regarding things like user generated content, content in general, technology and media." Nice and broad I suppose. At the time there was an explosion of things like blogs and photosharing sites and the early SNS sites like Friendster and Ryze and Linkedin. I was certainly interested in those things and still find that with the exception of my blog, these things are still big powerful forces where I use the products or consume information from sites like that. Having worked in digital media and both the music and film business, I still find content very interesting and certainly am still very interested in media, both in the sense of media as something a consumer watches, sees, reads, etc. as well as media in the way of advertising and advertising technology.<br />
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With that said, at chumby there is a lot of work that has been done with getting content onto interesting CE devices and also working with TV and TV related products. We are also working to create advertising opportunities for our partners and think that there are some novel and interesting ways to do that. In hindsight then, I really have spent a lot of time on the things I thought I would and hope to continue to do so.<br />
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When I stop though and look at what else I am interested in today, I see things grouped into a couple of categories that I think are worth sharing with my friends and others who might be interested. I hope over the next several weeks to write a couple of posts that walk through these in detail but for now I would like to highlight these themes that occupy my waking hours when I am not busy at work.<br />
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The following is a brief classification and explanation of those areas for me:<br />
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<i><u><b>Personal Automation</b></u></i> - There are a number of services and products that automate tasks and make my life easier. They range from online services like <a href="http://ifttt.com/">ifttt.com</a>, to mobile applications like <a href="http://tasker.dinglisch.net/">Tasker</a> for Android, to actual hardware devices like <a href="http://www.eye.fi/">Eyefi SD cards</a> and X.10 devices. Some of these are extremely powerful and I think that there will be an increase in new developments in this area as connectivity becomes more pervasive and computing becomes ubiquitous in devices below the traditional computing platforms.<br />
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<i><u><b>Quantified Self</b></u></i> - Not really sure how to describe this category other than to pay homage to the <a href="http://quantifiedself.com/">website</a> that hits the crux of this category. I have been using <a href="http://nikerunning.nike.com/">Nike+</a> since July of 2009. I love this service and even though I am not a fan of Nike shoes it has converted me into a repeat buyer. Other items like scales from <a href="http://www.withings.com/">Withings</a>, hear rate monitors with web integration and devices like <a href="http://www.fitbit.com/">Fitbit</a> are all at the front end of a wave of personal measurement for health and exercise related activities. As a power user I see a lot of opportunity in this category.<br />
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<i><u><b>Smart Parsing</b></u></i> - The proliferation of developer platforms and API access has created amazing opportunities for people to integrate on top of existing data-sets and social graph information. While gaming is huge, I am very interested in what I would refer to as "smart parsing". Examples of this are products like <a href="http://tripit.com/">Tripit</a>, which integrate Linkedin with an awesome tool that ingests information from a variety of sources, or<a href="http://expensify.com/"> Expensify</a> that takes credit card data and integrates receipt gathering from smartphones or <a href="http://instapeper.com/">Instapaper</a> which takes articles and cleans them for reading on devices like tablets. I think that there is an infinite amount of opportunity for people to create exciting and interesting derivatives that results from the free flow of data between applications and that the critical piece is how you use parsing to create a good end user experience.<br />
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<b><i><u>Post PC devices</u></i></b> - You could say tablets but I think that is a part of it. I use my Ipad every day. I also use a smartphone every day. I use an Ipod touch most days. As we move to using these devices more frequently, or also start using things like Chrome netbooks, there are a number of problems that need to be addressed that are created by theses devices. A big chunk of it falls into the "cloud" bucket, and I think that there is a lot to be done there, but there are also a lot of things that need to be dealt with around user experience and UI. Computing beyond the desktop is a huge opportunity.<br />
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<b><i><u>Productivity</u></i></b> - There are so many awesome services that I use every day that make me more productive. I use almost all of the <a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/">Omni Applications</a> products daily. People on my teams have used <a href="http://37signals.com/">37 signals</a> products at the last three companies I have been at. I use <a href="http://pogoplug.com/">Pogoplug</a>, <a href="http://dropbox.com/">Dropbox</a> and <a href="http://evernote.com/">Evernote</a> almost every day. As we increase the amount of information we consume and increase the various ways we consume it, relying on productivity tools to manage the flow is going to become more critical for more people and that seems like a big opportunity to me.<br />
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There are several other areas that are of interest to me, but I think that they are a bit more nebulous to me in terms of how I define them so I am going to skip writing something long about them them for now but will share what I think they are.<br />
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Sports and technology - As a fantasy sports addict there are a number of tools that make my life easier and yet them still generally suck. Lots of upside there. Also, with kids in sports there are some amazing tools like <a href="http://hudl.com/">Hudl</a> that allow us to go through gam film with my son that re really cool but really rudimentary at this point.<br />
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Identity and Privacy - This is huge, very difficult, and one of the biggest challenges the tech community faces. It is also still early days and one could write on this forever. It certainly is something I think about all the time but can't say that there are a lot of awesome services or products I am happy with right now.<br />
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Startup of 1 - This is really a mix of a lot of the things in the other categories but bottom line a person with a great idea has so many tools at their disposal that it is become increasingly easy to literally be a 1 man (or woman) show. Probably worth a post at some time, but not in this series.<br />
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Ok, so that is a start. Excited to start blogging again and can't wait to get going on the five areas outlined above. Stay tuned.<br />
<br /></div>Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-85940988174417570212011-07-21T09:36:00.000-07:002011-07-21T09:36:55.755-07:00Randy Lofgren, R.I.P.I just got back from a trip of the lifetime, rowing down the Grand Canyon for 6 days. While the trip was amazing, I climbed out of the Grand Canyon to get the news that my Uncle Randy has passed away while I was gone. It was sort of uncanny to me as we hadn't talked in a while but had a good long chat the day before I left on my vacation.<br />
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My Uncle was always around throughout my childhood. There were a bunch of years where he lived with us and with my real father divorced and usually out of state, and my step father almost always overseas, my Uncle was certainly a big impact on me as a father figure. He was a giant of a man around 6'4", who was liked by all and extremely friendly and outgoing. I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about my Uncle.<br />
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As a child I remember driving with my mom to pick him up from his Navy ship in Long Beach.<br />
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I remember the time when he had a full face cast from a bad motorcycle accident and he would scare the living shit out of me pretending to be the Gila monster. I must have been 4 or 5 back then.<br />
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He took me on my first camping trip up in Big Bear near the gold mines.<br />
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He took me on my first fishing trips.<br />
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He took me on my first motorcycle ride.<br />
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He was probably the first person to take me out shooting guns, and if he wasn't the first, we certainly did it a lot together.<br />
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He would discipline me when I was just about to enter my teens and my mom would try to spank me and I would laugh at her.<br />
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He took me to Vegas for the first time on a "fishing trip" to Lake Mead and my brother and I stayed up pretty much all night playing video games while he gambled.<br />
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I will never be able to listen to The Eagles, The Rolling Stones or the Beach Boys without thinking about times driving around in his muscle cars through the desert.<br />
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Simply put, he was a good man who meant a lot to me and even though I spent very little time with him over the last 20 years, his influence and impact on me has been with me through all of my years. My uncle was a big part in helping to make me who I am today.<br />
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I will miss him dearly, and will always hold those memories we shared deep in my heart.<br />
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Rest in peace dear Uncle.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-56955193758401745772011-03-23T10:55:00.001-07:002011-03-23T11:01:07.232-07:00The last one at the partyTechcrunch just posted this article <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/23/amazingly-myspaces-decline-is-accelerating/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29">here</a>. The headline says amazingly that the Myspace decline is accelerating.<br /><br />This absolutely isn't surprising and in fact makes total sense. One of the dynamics of community sites is the "empty room" problem at startup. Nobody wants to be the first one to the party and would be happening places have to figure out how to address that issue. Once you gain the "cool" factor then it is a race to the top. That is until you aren't cool anymore. Then it is a race to the bottom as nobody wants to be the last one at the party when the party is over. There was a good article about this I read several years ago that actually showed this with math and I think they used Friendster as the example. If I find it I will post.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-69032240922862750112011-03-22T20:30:00.001-07:002011-03-22T20:32:05.539-07:00The chumby8 is getting ready to ship!Did a blog post on the corporate website <a href="http://chumby.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/chumbys-new-big-brother-the-chumby8/">here</a>.<br /><br />Tech docs can be found <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/51352272/Cutsheet-updated2">here</a>.<br /><br />You can pre-order the new chumby8 <a href="https://store.chumby.com/">here</a>.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-22881473149457396542011-03-16T21:23:00.001-07:002011-03-16T21:42:22.019-07:00Cookbooks 2011<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUThk1IZ1MNoxn7crzgRYZlGRJJzIfgJxmwmoznkFEeGdbjrlAYKszyqFNp2r2PnKfCuwqm0i8WWNssJy-VHntaDEde7CEBVZaLImZDxrye1UYkRIsqnmIjhLhUqdmUyHvc01e/s1600/IMG_1234.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUThk1IZ1MNoxn7crzgRYZlGRJJzIfgJxmwmoznkFEeGdbjrlAYKszyqFNp2r2PnKfCuwqm0i8WWNssJy-VHntaDEde7CEBVZaLImZDxrye1UYkRIsqnmIjhLhUqdmUyHvc01e/s320/IMG_1234.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584901337824771058" /></a><br />At the end of the year each year I like to sample all the new music and spend time keeping myself current on "what the kids are listening to". In addition to this I also like to pick up a couple of new cookbooks that are either critically acclaimed or are in an area that I am trying to learn. I wanted to share the 4 cookbooks I picked up around the end of last year and the beginning of this one.<br /><br /><br /><br />The first book I am in love with is "Around my French Table". You can find the Amazon link <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Around-My-French-Table-Recipes/dp/0618875530/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300335938&sr=8-1">here</a>. This book was at the top of most of the food blogger lists this last year and having spent a month or two reading throughout the book, I can only say that this is the best French cookbook in my collection by far. While there are a lot of the crazy complicated French recipes, I would say that the vast majority are straightforward and very accessible.<br /><br />The second book I grabbed this year from the food bloggers was "Stir-Frying to the sky's edge". Amazon link <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stir-Frying-Skys-Edge-Ultimate-Authentic/dp/1416580573/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300336259&sr=1-1">here</a>. I decided this year that I was going to master wok cooking as I have become a master at seasoning pans and I am excited by doing fun things with vegetables. I received a very nice electric wok for Christmas so the whole seasoning a pan went out the window but I have had some fun getting ready to dig into the book in a big way. The book covers a great range of things you can do with Asian inspired foods in the stir fry tradition.<br /><br />The other two books were not blogging inspired but were actually the cookbooks of two of my favorite restaurants over the last year.<br /><br />The first book was from London based Wagamama. The cookbook I picked up was "The Wagamama Cookbook" and the link is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wagamama-Cookbook-Hugo-Arnold/dp/1904920233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300336479&sr=1-1">here</a>. This book was a best of cookbook selection from 2007. My office in London was right next to the Covent Garden Wagamama and I was always pumped to eat their spicy chili mein. As soon as I bough the book I cooked this recipe back to back over two days. This book is awesome and was a great companion to my other stir fry book, although this is less about stri fry and more about noodles and other things.<br /><br />The last book I picked up was "Kokkari: Contemporary Greek Flavors". The book is not available yet but you can pre-order it <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kokkari-Contemporary-Flavors-Erik-Cosselmon/dp/0811875741/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300336682&sr=1-1">here</a>. I bought the book directly at the restaurant as I believe it is by far the best restaurant in San Francisco right now and I try to eat there whenever I get the chance. I generally eat at the bar and usually eat a variety of mezes, which are Greek tapas style dishes. Their Gigantes, Asparagus, and Brussels sprouts dishes are to die for. I like it so much that this morning I cooked the sprouts dish for breakfast this morning as I am trying to perfect the dish. If you get to SF, eat here and if you don't get the chance, get this book when it comes out.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-86095742002707785412010-10-25T20:44:00.000-07:002010-10-25T20:45:03.330-07:00Chumby screen saverHaving a little fun with chumby as a software platform...<a href="http://chumby.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/a-little-retro-fun/">here</a>.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-49337422036295095562010-10-21T14:26:00.000-07:002010-10-21T14:28:01.360-07:00Blogging at workJust made my first work blog post <a href="http://chumby.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/toys/">here</a>. Will keep things mostly personal or unrelated to work on this place.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-11655660081169193172010-10-07T08:48:00.001-07:002010-10-07T08:58:21.158-07:00Androidboss website plagiarized my postMy post yesterday about the G2, was directly lifted by some guy named shadow at a website called Androidboss.com. Unbelievable. No attribution, no changing. They directly copied it and posted it as their own. I think this <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/">article</a> here is a good gameplan for people who face a similar situation.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-62943479634497936052010-10-06T09:42:00.000-07:002010-10-06T15:58:10.529-07:00My G2 reviewToday is the day most people can buy the new Tmobile G2 phone. I was fortunate to receive a device late last week and have had almost a week to play with it. As this is my fifth Android device (G1, Droid, Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy) I have a lot of experience with this mobile OS. For the purpose of this post I think there are 5 areas worth commenting on: hardware, setup, usage, HSPA and applications.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hardware</span> - The G2 is a hefty little device. I actually feel like having some heft is a good thing in a device. Of the devices I have had, the G2 weighs in as the heaviest at 6.5 ozs. I thought the Droid was actually heavier but it in reality is lighter at 5.99 ozs. Maybe the boxy industrial design gave me that impression. This is contrasted with the G1 which was 5.6 ozs. and the ultra light Samsung Galaxy device which is an amazing 4.59 ozs. For a non-Android comparison, the iPhone 4 is 4.8 ozs. It is interesting to me how close in weight the iPhone and the Galaxy are, but how much more solid the iPhone appears. As far as durability, I think the G2, Droid and iPhone all seem fairly similar in that regard.<br /><br />The G2 to me, looks a lot like a beefed up Nexus One. The faceplate appearance is a slightly more squarish version of the Nexus One, but that is where the difference ends. The G2 has an amazing spring loaded slide action that is as strong as what I saw on the Helio devices back in the day. Not quite a switchblade locking action, but a strong spring loaded slide up. The keyboard is gorgeous and most closely resembles the Sidekick 2 with slightly raised rubberized buttons.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Setup</span> - Like all Android devices, you need to be bought into the whole Google thing to experience the full range of the device. In my case that means I am a user of Gmail at work, I have all my contacts in Google Contacts and I use Google voice. With a simple login with your Google credentials you have a quick OTA update of the relevant services and before I knew it, my 1800+ contacts were loaded and ready to go. Two additional comments on setup. Thus far, I have had to load back every application when I set up a device. It would be great to have your application profile saved so that when you migrate from one device to the next you don't have to go back and redownload all the applications. iTunes has Google beat on this front in that an iTunes sync to a new device does all that the Google OTA stuff does but it also brings over your applications. I am sure that is either fixed and I don't know it, or it will be fixed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Usage</span> - The device works great. One of my big concerns was that the processor has a slower clock speed than the Nexus One with 800 mhz vs. 1 gigahertz. I am not sure if there are memory optimizations or other things that make the speed comparable, but I have yet to notice any speed differences between the two devices.<br /><br />One last thing on Usage, one of the primary things that I love about 2.2 Froyo, is the Car mode and how unbelievably amazing voice search and voice controls are when I am driving. I connect my phone with my Blue Ant hands free and basically toss the phone in the seat next to me.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">HSPA</span> - I can't say that I have any concrete comments about the HSPA network speed vs. my previous experience with Tmobile's network in general. I am sure that with time I will have a clearer perspective. Two things I have done to test out speed that are worth noting were traveling down the freeway at maximum speed limit and streaming NFL Sunday ticket this last Sunday morning between San Onofre and North San Diego county. I wasn't watching the video necessarily (wink) but rather was tracking the audio via my hands free as a means to listen to the game. I had zero interruptions over approximately a 30 mile drive while streaming video. I think that is a positive test. The second and less tasking has been streaming Sirius XM over the device over the last several days, which also has worked well.<br /><br />Applications - It is probably worth another post sometime as I use about 20 different applications frequently, but there are a couple worth mentioning now. Vlingo does a great job filling the gaps for me when I feel like Google Voice products don't quite do the job. Car Home is a noteworthy 2.2 application, providing an easy to use card dashboard for search, calling and navigation.<br /><br />Summary - Since I am not in mobile anymore, I was really hoping that the G2 was a phone I can use for the next year or two. After a week of putting it through the paces, there is no question to me that this phone definitely fits the bill. My only concern is that all the innovation by OEMs is going to make me want to switch sooner than I should. HTC has done a great job with this device and I am sure the other leading OEMs are going to do their best to one up them.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-25032741187166824442010-10-05T18:09:00.000-07:002010-10-05T18:10:19.335-07:00Some Nice PressLocal tech press did a nice write up <a href="http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2010/10/05/strategy-at-san-diegos-chumby-coming-to-fruition-under-new-ceo/">here</a>.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951728.post-21693092091906600452010-09-29T21:56:00.001-07:002010-10-01T09:48:52.782-07:00I am an AndroidAs the various smartphones have emerged in the last several years one of the interesting by products of the carrier model in the US is that the carrier that you do business with is a big determinant in the type of smartphone you own. ATT and you are an iPhone user. Verizon and you use the Droid. For me, I have been a Tmobile customer for something like 10 years.<br /><br />One of the advantages of Tmobile (and also ATT) is that you can use whatever unlocked phone you want. In the US, that is the exception as most people purchase subsidized phones. My initial phones with Tmobile were Sony Ericsson candy bar phones. I think that was the T610 and T635 if I recall correctly.<br /><br />As I went to Intercasting, I wanted to see where phones were going(unlocked) and became a fan of the Sony Ericsson P series of phones purchasing the P910 and later the P990. Man were those phones big! I have to say though that I loved those phones and even became fairly happy with Symbian UIQ at the time. Unfortunately for me, Sony Ericsson made the decision to go with Windows Mobile on the Xperia and I was lost to them. This of course happened around the same time that the G1 was about to come out. Per my earlier point, since I was a Tmobile customer, I was happy to be an early adopter of Android and was extremely pleased to get my first G1.<br /><br />Arguably the G1 paled in comparison to the iPhone. While I think that was true, I still loved the device especially the fact that it had a keyboard. During most of my time at Intercasting I was also a Sidekick user, spanning 3 different models of Sidekick before abandoning the devices as the product cycle times extended and much of the differentiation was absorbed by smartphones.<br /><br />I faithfully used Android/G1 up to the Good acquisition, which resulted in my change in focus from feature phones to smartphones as it related to an increased focus on enterprise mobility and thus higher end devices. For the last year, I have been using the last 3 versions of the iPhone, The Droid and the Nexus 1. Interestingly, while I think all three of those phones were outstanding, I was the biggest fan of the Nexus One. The Droid certainly had the best network with Verizon, and the hardware from Motorola was very hardy (I think you could bludgeon someone to death with it and it's sharp corners), but I found the keyboard very disappointing, which has been the case for me with most Moto QWERTY devices historically.<br /><br />Certainly the iPhone is an amazing device from a usability perspective and from a services perspective, but the lack of keyboard and some of the better features on Android devices leave me with more interest in that platform. I have to note that this is really only as it relates to smartphones as I use a Mac, have Apple TV, and love my iPad.<br /><br />The reason I write this is that on my last business trip with Good before coming over to Chumby was that I lost my personal Nexus One at Seatac airport my last week of work. I can't tell you how angry I was when that happened. I knew that Tmobile had rumors of the G2 coming out but I needed a phone immediately so I headed over to the nearest Tmobile store and bought a new device. At the time, the hot device for Tmobile was the Samsung Galaxy phone called the Vibrant.<br /><br />I think Samsung is an amazing company, and has amazing hardware, but I have to say that I was very disappointed in this device. There were 3 big issues for me. First, the GPS didn't work right. My two major differentiators for Android over iPhone are Google Voice (I was previously a Grand Central user) and Google voice related car functionality like Navigation, Voice search etc. No GPS means no navigation, no foursquare check ins, no Twitter location lookups. While it is true that the phone actually allowed me to call people, so did my old T610 and it was free.<br /><br />The second reason was the lack of Android 2.2, which isn't a total problem, but it did highlight to me the issue of platform fragmentation with the various OEM UI overlays. Add special stuff and it takes a while to roll out new versions of Android to make sure that the are no integration issues.<br /><br />The 3rd issue, which is relatively minor was hardware related. This one is sort of a mixed bag for me because there are both highs and lows on this. The high is that the screen on this devices in unbelievable. The low is that the device is super lightweight to the point of almost seeming flimsy.<br /><br />Bottom line though is that I think that the Galaxy line is a great product but the GPS piece was a P1 bug for me that is not the sort of thing I would expect from Samsung given their general commitment to some of the highest quality devices across product lines.<br /><br />With this in mind I decided to return the device and went searching through my closet for something I could use to cover the time between the return and the eventual release of the G2. The best answer for me was to dig out an aold N97 that a friend at Nokia had given me.<br /><br />Before I trash this device, I want to say that the N series of phones are among some of the best devices I have ever used. Both my N95 and N85 are among my favorite phones in terms of reliability, battery life and industrial design. The N97 on the other hand is clearly an example of how Nokia completely lost track of the competitive landscape of the smartphone business.<br /><br />Instead of editorializing some of the hardware specific issues, I would rather focus on my experience as a user. On the good side? The battery life is in another world compared to all other smartphones I have used. Where Nokia made the investment on top shelf items there is no comparison (the camera). Long battery life = good. Good camera = good.<br /><br />Software. Aaargh. I hope that Nokia gets it right eventually with Ovi, but if you compare the experience of setting up an Android device, with setting up a Symbian smartphone, they aren't even in the same league. I think I spent two days setting up the N97. Worse yet, I ran out of memory on the core device early on in the process. This was tragic because the device is loaded with memory, just not on the primary device where all the software goes to in default. <br /><br />Once I got a decent configuration set up with some reasonable synchronization between services I use, I was left with two other things worth commenting on. One, the navigation was top notch, but not up to snuff compared to Google Maps and Navigation. Close but the lack of workable voice support was a big miss for me. Second, the lack of applications really stands out as a gap when compared with iPhone, Android and RIM. Nokia will have to address this somehow.<br /><br />While it is easy to see how Nokia is in a precarious position in the smartphone space, I will only add that there market share in devices below smartphones is impressive and I am a huge fan of Maemo/Meego as a potential way out of darkness for Nokia. I am an owner of both the N7790 and N800 and love the devices although they too have a shortage of software. I would love to get my hands on an N8 but since I am not in mobile anymore, I don't see me buying one anytime soon. :-(<br /><br />All of this is a long way of saying that I am hooked on my Android devices and can't wait to share my thoughts on the brand new G2 device that I am playing with this AM.Derrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02932146541502550011noreply@blogger.com2