The Problem of the US Gadgethead

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I am a gadgethead. Unfortunately, I am a somewhat pathetic gadgethead, because I don't make enough money to truly indulge my passion.

Now, that should not be construed to suggest that I don’t have a fair number of gadgets. Let’s see…cellphone, PDA, UMPC, MP3 player (though I gave it to my son), DSLR camera, laptop, and desktop computer. Sure, I could have a few more, but it isn’t the number of gadgets that get you the label of gadgethead. No, it is the yearning in your heart that marks you as a gadgethead.

Can you identify all the following acronyms without looking them up?

PDA, UMPC, PMP, MID

If you answer yes, then you might be a gadgethead.

So, I have a new gadget that I lust after. If you are a follower of this blog, then you might have seen this post…I Think I'm in Love. Well, this post is a good example of the problem of the US gadgethead. Please note the date on that post, February 2009. It is now late December of that same year, and the Toshiba TG01 has not yet reached any US cellphone carrier.

It’s enough to make me cry.

Well, maybe not. See, I found a new love.



This is the HTC HD2. It has an even larger screen than the Toshiba, 4.3 inches. I still haven’t managed to replace my PDA and Cellphone with a smartphone, and if I had my wish, it would be this one.

Of course, that is if the darn thing ever reaches a US carrier. I would prefer that it be Verizon, since I am already with them, but I might consider switching for this phone, and a CDMA version isn’t out yet (bonus points for knowing what CDMA is).

I have waited nearly a year to see the Toshiba on these shores and now there is something new I would rather have. But, of course, I cannot afford to buy an unlocked one, so I have to wait to see who gets it and when.

And, it isn’t just cellphones, UMPCs, PMPs, and MIDs are also in the same boat. There are these incredible gadgets being built out there, in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere, but it takes forever for them to reach the US, and when they do there is usually something even better that has already been released elsewhere. You would think we were some backwater country, based on how devices get delivered across the world.

Makes me wonder if I wouldn’t be happier living in Europe.

What Do I Really Want for Christmas?

What Do You Really Want for Christmas?

Though I doubt it was intended, this Gizmodo contest got my mind wandering down an old path. What do I really want for Christmas? Now, in keeping with the intent of the contest I started to think about things like a larger wide-screened iPhone on a different carrier. And yes, I want that but I find it doesn’t really come close to what I REALLY want for Christmas.

When asked what I want for Christmas, I always think of my childhood, which is longer ago than I really want to lay claim to, but what I always remember is the toys.

What I really want for Christmas is toys.

The problem is that the toys I like now are way too expensive. They require lots of planning before the purchase and that sort of destroys the idea.

Several years ago, my wonderful wife found a way. She made me a robe. It was a tremendous robe. It was heavy, thick terry cloth. It was like wrapping yourself in an enormous towel. I wore it until it literally fell apart.

But, as great a gift as the robe was, my wife took it an extra step. After putting the robe on I reached into the pockets and found something. I pulled out several tiny die cast metal airplanes.

I am not sure that I can adequately describe how it made me feel. Even now, as I write this I am tearing up. It was as if I was suddenly ten years old again. I still have some of them. A few got into my son’s hands and did not fare too well, but even that was okay because he got as much fun out of them as I would have at that age.

So, what do I really want for Christmas?

I want to be ten years old again, with a pile of Matchbox and Hot Wheels and Legos under the tree, and to be on vacation from school without a single bill to pay and or deadline to worry about. Even just for one day.

That would be my perfect Christmas gift.

What's Wrong...

Page Two: Not Rocket Science

This voices an opinion that I have felt for a long time. There are others that have said the same or similar things, and if I can find them, I will link them here. I thought about writing my own version of this, but I doubt I could do better.

In case you are wondering why I put this under technology...

It is my opinion that part of the problem is the internet. We sit in our little cubicles and read everything and then spout venom that we would never do face to face. The internet gives us a degree of anonimity behind our usernames and avatars, and so we say things we would fear to give voice to where others would see our faces.

First Impressions of Dragon Age: Origins

Well, I pre-ordered DA:O from Amazon with the special shipping that gets it to you on the day the game appears, and so I got mine on Tuesday evening. My son almost immediately went nuts. He has been looking forward to this almost as long as I have. We have both played Neverwinter Nights, both 1 and 2 and enjoyed them. Unfortunately for him, his grades suck at the moment and he won’t be playing it real soon.

The installation takes a while, but that is understandable, for such a large game. In the box, there are codes for two different add-ons for the game, a Shale creature and the Dragon Blood Armor. Interestingly, the Dragon Blood Armor is also going to appear in Mass Effect 2. If the pictures seen in the DA:O box are correct, the Mass Effect armor will look radically different from the other armors in that game. In fact, the Mass Effect armor looks a lot like a full suit of historical plate armor, but stylized and modernized.

And yes, I know enough to make statements like that. I spent nine years making replicas of medieval armor. Check out Red Dragon Armoury.

Now, back to the game.

Character Creation is a fairly long process, if you don’t use some of the time saving presets. The character creator is more like Oblivion than like Neverwinter Nights or Mass Effect. It is a bit more advanced than Neverwinter Nights 2. You can change dozens of features, which is cool, but it is much harder to make a grotesque character than it was in Oblivion. It is easier to get back to the defaults, and the changes seem to have less effect on each other.

One cool feature is that DA:O creates a portrait for you based on the character appearance that you create, and then you can alter the portrait. You can change the background, the position of the head, and the expression, then lock everything down and start the game.

I chose a Human Noble as my Origin story, and I have only played one character so far, so I cannot comment on the others, but where you start the game depends on which Origin story you choose. That is a somewhat cool idea that will keep the game interesting on replays, and it gives you an immediate impact on the story based on your choices, which is exactly what an RPG should do. This is also different from Mass Effect where all the character background choices are in the past, but they have an effect on the story later on. I will be watching for quests and content that refers back to the Origin story.

So, I made it through the first battle, which happens even before you leave home. I won’t give away more of the story, but it gets you started slowly, which is a good thing, because the controls are totally different, different from Neverwinter Nights, different from Mass Effect (PC), different from Oblivion, different from any game I have ever played. The game uses W and S to move forward and back, but you turn rather than backing up and instead of using A and D for side to side movement, it uses Q and E, and when you use any of these, you turn and run in that direction in relation to where the camera is facing, no side stepping. You can run and turn your character with the mouse, but it requires that you press and hold the right mouse button. You can also right-click on the ground, and your character will move there. You do a lot of things by right-clicking, which can get a little confusing, especially since some places you have to left-click.

I might write another review with information about the skills and spells system, but that is all mechanics which don’t really affect my enjoyment of the game. The one thing I will say is that it is not like Oblivion, where you advance your skills by using them and then that causes you to raise levels. DA:O uses experience points (XP) and you get a lot of XP from killing monsters, but you also get XP for finding items, completing quests, unlocking things (just one example) and I assume there will be more ways to gain XP. I really liked the system in Oblivion/Morrowind, but it does lead to the abuses. You won’t gain levels in DA:O by jumping off cliffs or sneaking along behind people. I cannot say yet that I really like the system. I haven’t tried it out enough yet, but it isn’t bad, so far.

Finally, the story, so far not too bad, but more than a little predicable, I foresaw both of the major plot turns in the story. I won’t give them away, but to me at least they were pretty obvious, especially if you think about what RPGs usually tend to do. First, they like to give you something personal to fight for. Second, they tend to like to cut you off and make you search for your allies and friends, and of course treachery tends to be a common theme.

More later, when I have played more.

A New News Paradigm

The True Significance of the Tablet

This blog post and the comments about it have provided me with a great deal of inspiration. This is actually the second essay inspired by it. The first was the previous post about the music industry. It was not directly related to the post, but it serves as a foundation for what follows.

When I was young, America got its news from two sources, its local newspaper and Walter Cronkite. Now, I say that somewhat tongue in cheek, but it really was true. I grew up in the age of TV, and Walter Cronkite really was that important. I am not old enough to speak to the importance of radio as a source of news.

In the TV age, we got our news from the TV, both local and national. Newspapers continued to be an important source of news. The newspaper was local, but through the AP, UPI and other news services it carried stories from across the nation and around the world. As the broadcast TV of my youth (yes, I can remember a time before cable) changed into cable TV, we were offered more choices, but the news paradigm remained unchanged. Instead of the nightly network news, we may have watched CNN, but the format and delivery remained familiar.

But, we have moved beyond the TV age. Yes, we all still have TVs and some of us still watch the network news. Newspapers are not faring as well though. We have entered the Internet Age, and many of us get our news through the new medium.

In the comments to the blog linked above is a reference to newspapers as a news aggregation. News aggregators are common across the web. But I think that many have failed to recognize that we have, to an extent, become our own news aggregators. Most of the people I know get their news from many sites.

It might be because we like CNN over MSNBC but it may also be (and in my opinion more likely) that we do not get all our news from one site. And, it is not just that we use more than one news site, but that we use specialized or focused sites. I don’t go to MSNBC or CNN, I go to Fox sports for sports news and Gizmodo for techie news and then I check the formula one site, and…

I think you get the picture. I don’t rely on any one site for my news. I browse several sites, grazing here and there finding what I want and consuming it.

And I think that many of you are like me.

This change, which I think has already occurred, has had and could have several far reaching effects. One will be discussed in a future essay, where I will be working together ideas from this essay and the previous one.

Now, back to Fakesteve and his idea that the tablet will be tied to some “…entirely new way to convey information…” I think that he too has missed something.

It’s already happened.

Well, that’s not completely true, at least not the way that Fakesteve is thinking about. Many sites already include video when they can. Gizmodo is a good example. We have moved well past the old standard of news, from a few aggregators to hundreds or thousands, from generalized to specialized, and from single media to mixed media.

No one knows what the next change will be, but I believe it is a mistake to think that there will be one new way to convey information and to bind yourself to one “format”, or to withhold a product waiting for “it” to appear.

The future is diversity. I am not sure that there will be a single new standard for conveying information. There may not be a new equivalent to the newspaper or TV.

The iPhone did not succeed at changing the landscape alone. Without iTunes and the Appstore, the iPhone would be just another cellphone.

The tablet, whether Apple’s or Courier or any of the existing tablets are going to change the landscape only when content providers and programmers start to create content and apps formatted and aimed at tablets.

Maybe Steve Jobs can pull that off, but I think that the change will come, even without him.

The New Music Paradigm

Before tearing into the heart of today’s topic, I want to say that this is the first in a set of related essays. They do not follow a single topic, but they are built on one the other. This essay sets a foundation for the next.

The New Music Paradigm

What can we learn from the plight of the music industry?

First, let’s look at the past.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I own an enormous quantity of vinyl. Well, I suppose it isn’t that much, but I do have several hundred LPs.

Back in those days a group put an album about once a year and an LP cost about $3-4. Most LPs had 8-10 songs. Out of those, a couple would be great (hits) and a couple more would be good and if you were lucky, the rest would be okay. 45s went out of vogue while I was in junior high. No one I know bought them. I bought 1 (for a B side).

This was the modus operandi of the music industry for decades. Most bands weren’t (and aren’t) good enough to produce an album with nothing but winners every year, for every Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) there were probably a dozen LPs with only a single really good song.

Now, the switch to digital music and the proliferation of file sharing, and through it music sharing, may have turned things down a different path, but the ultimate truth is that the path was taken and where we find ourselves today is vastly different from my youth, when we got our music on vinyl.

Today, we buy songs, not albums. And yes it is still an album, even when it comes on CD. An album is a collection. A collection of photos is an album, and so is a collection of songs. But, enough of that aside, back to the topic at hand.

Today, we listen to music on MP3 players, not record players. We buy songs, not albums. We use iTunes or Napster or Rhapsody and we don’t buy as many CDs. We won’t pay a band for the mediocre songs they write to fill out the album. We don’t hear them when we see the band live and we don’t want them on our MP3 players. We may never again see the sort of album sales that were common in the 70s and 80s. I am waiting for the first band that really gets it. I am waiting for the first true internet band.

No record deal. No CDs. Play live and sell your songs on your website. A few are starting that direction. Muse has at least a dozen songs that you can listen to, in their entirety, on their website. No need to hope that their album is good, or buy a song based on a 30 second clip. Listen to the whole song and then decide. This is a step in the right direction, but Muse is an established band. I think it will take a new, unknown band to break though. Maybe one already has and I just haven’t heard of them.

But, I think that this new paradigm may have an effect beyond music, but for that you will have to wait until I post again.

A Long Held Dream

More than 10 years ago, I bought a paper organizer. I did not have the money for a laptop, or even a PDA, but I wanted to get more organized. I used to print out pages for it, I bought special papers, and all sorts of stuff. It was the medium size, using pages that were approximately 6.75” x 4.25”. Overall, it is a little smaller than a hardback novel. I really enjoyed it.

It was at about this time that the first eBooks were coming out. I don’t even remember their names, and I am sure that they would seem terribly primitive today if compared to the Kindle or the Sony Reader. Thinking of these eReaders, and that paper organizer, an idea started to form for a combination electronic book and organizer.

I love the idea of an eBook, and I truly believe that they are the wave of the future. In another 50 years, paper books will be a luxury that most people will not be able to afford. Most of us will be reading off some sort of electronic screen. I am not saying that paper publishing will entirely disappear, but as more and more people read off a screen, books will sell less and less. Especially, if anyone ever figures out how to actually put a library online, where for some sort of nominal fee you will be able to check out a book onto your eReader.

But, I already have too many electronic devices. I have a cell phone, a PDA, a TABLET (Samsung Q), a portable (Dell XPS 1530) and a desktop. I do not believe that we will ever get it down to one, but I am already trying to figure out how to reduce the number of devices I have around. The first two to converge into one will be my cell phone and PDA. My next cell phone will be a smartphone, if I can figure out a way to pay for the data plan (I already pay too much for three cell phones in my family). I am not sure how many of the others I will be able to compress into one, but I intend to work on it.

So, I think that is a long enough aside, so let me get back to that device that I dreamed out 10 years ago (or it may have been closer to 12).

My paper organizer (though the organizer itself isn’t paper, you get the idea, I hope) is 8 ¾” x 5 ¾” x 1 ¾”. I felt, and still feel, that this is a very good size. Small enough to carry about, though it won’t fit in a pocket, small enough to hold in your hand and take notes on, and yet large enough that you can read easily.

My idea was that you open the organizer, and there are two LCD screens. When you want to read a book, it looks like a book, two pages at the same time. When you “flip” a page, you go from the bottom of the right screen to the top of the left screen to continue reading, just like a real book. At the time, I was fascinated with the version of Microsoft Encarta that came with Office 95, and I imagined reading through a encyclopedia article, clicking on a hyperlink and having it open on the opposite page of my electronic organizer. I imagined reading a book, and clicking on a word and being able to open a dictionary on the opposite page, or even write notes or add annotations. Imagine a book where the footnotes would be hyperlinks that would open on the opposite page.

It was a wonderful dream. Since them, I have owned three portables, two PDAs, and several desktops, but none has ever filled in completely for that electronic organizer that I dreamed of. I own a Samsung Q1U, which I like very much, but it does not do, or at least not easily, what I envisioned in that electronic organizer. I love my PDA, but the screen is really too small for a lot of what I would like to do. The Samsung Q is a little too clumsy. It is a little too large to wrap my hand around comfortably (I am a big guy, and I can do it, just not completely comfortably), and it is too clumsy to carry around all the time and jot down notes on.

Over the years, I had sort of forgotten that dream. I have looked at dozens of Tablets and Netbooks and they all have flaws. If I had the money, I might try one of the smaller tablets, like the Viliv S5, but I don’t really think I am going to have the money anytime soon. Some of the smaller Netbooks are a great size, and the folding design makes them a little easier to carry about, since you do not have to worry as much about damaging the screen, but they are just tiny laptops, and being a big guy, I prefer a big laptop. I would rather use a touchscreen then a tiny keyboard.

But, Tuesday everything changed, when Microsoft announced Courier. Go watch the video. The software involved is pretty cool, but it was the hardware design that got me excited. Here, more than 10 years later is what I dreamed of, and from the demo, they seem to understand the value of the device as an organizer.

I want one.