It's not about HTC EVO vs. iPhone 4/3Gs

It's not about HTC Incredible vs iPhone 4/3Gs

I have a problem with the telecomm providers in the USA and how they go about building out their network infrastructure. Here's an exerpt from a Friendfeed conversation sparked by a Ping.fm post by @ChrisPirillo. I agreed with Chris' comment, but I'm sick and tired of the fanboi bashing in either camp.

My comment:

That's pretty much an apples to oranges comparison, and therefore I agree. It's a stupid comparison. I ditched my iPhone 3G on AT&T's crappy 3G network for HTC Incredible on Verizon's 3G EVDO network. I bet my Incredible gets better battery life than the EVO. I don't need (want) a 4G wimax (sucky tech) modem in addition to Sprint 3G CDMA tech crammed into a single device. No wonder the EVO is so big. How many radios does it have anyway? The EVO is an intermediate device that will be relevant until the *REAL* 4G LTE networks come online next year. I'll take Verizon 3G over 4G Wimax (especially for the price) any day (especially given 4G coverage vs. Verizon 3G. I'll also take the Snapdragon 1Ghz chip over my old iPhone 3G. There. That's my position and I'm sticking with it. Anyone want to buy my iPhone 3G?

The conversation thread: http://friendfeed.com/l0ckergn0me/a10d7582/people-want-me-to-compare-iphone-4-battery-with

BOTTOM LINE: I'm an UBER GEEK. I use whatever works best for me at any given point in time. Right now, Android on Verizon is making me a lot happier than iPhone on AT&T.

Right now, my iPad is working better than my old ASUS 1005HA netbook. I am using my iPad for more and more business purposes each and every day and I consider it to be an integral part of my workflow.

I have a Macbook hooked up to my 56" Samsung DLP HD set that I use for music streaming and watching Hulu and Youtube. I run a copy of Windows XP in VMware Fusion on this laptop. I keep all the books for my businesses on Quicken running inside XP on Mac OSX.

I have a Dell Vostro 3300 running Windows 7 with VMware Workstation 7.1 running an Ubuntu VM for active prototyping and development.

#suckitfanboys

However, each year, there is one single event that rises up above them all. While I've only had the privilege of attending one of these events, I can tell you with certainty, that Gnomedex is a special event. Chris Pirillo takes it to new levels each and every year. Now granted, there have been some controversial talks, and heated discussions in years past, but what he's put together over the past 10 years is truly special (has it really been that long?).

I was quite upset that I missed the opportunity to attend last year's Gnomedex event due to a conflict with my summer vacation. That said, I'm definitely going to be around this year, and look forward to attending.

The reason why I feel I deserve to Tungle with Chris is that I'm pouring every last bit of effort into getting my startup (StratusQ) off the ground. We are self-funded at this point, and our battle-scarred team of four are pouring every extra penny we can spare to grow the business. As such, it's harder and harder to hop on the conference circuit without having the backing of an employer or other source of funding to help subsidize costs. I'm not a serial entrepreneur, but I've been waiting patiently for over 10 years for this opportunity (see: The Art of Bootstrapping in 2010) and having the ability to network with other like minded individuals at an event like Gnomedex is what I live for.

I also happen to be a user of Tungle.me (see: http://tungle.me/brianeisenberg) , which hopefully puts me in a favorable position to win a free pass to Gnomedex. If not, I'll continue to save my precious pennies and maybe scrape up enough $$ to purchase a conference pass.

Kudos to Chris and the rest of the Gnomedex volunteers for putting together the 10th installment of this special event.

Respectfully yours,

Brian Daniel Eisenberg

@infinitelymeta

My dad (http://ischool.uw.edu/directory/faculty/detail.aspx?id=3116)  is the Dean Emeritus and Professor at the UW iSchool (http://ischoool.uw.edu). We were talking over dinner just last night about how to bring more of the entrepreneurial spirit and passion for innovation to the city. The iSchool is rapidly becoming THE premier school in the country for Information Science. My dad, and a colleague - Kevin DeSouza - (http://ischool.uw.edu/directory/faculty/detail.aspx?id=6894) are looking to put together an exclusive board/advisory committee focused on bringing in external players into the UW to help raise $$$, fund scholarships and endowed chair positions.

I told them that I thought you might be an EXCELLENT candidate for such a position. This could be just what you are looking for, judging from the recent press regarding your attendance at the Tech Flash event last night. I really think you might enjoy transitioning from the commercial side of things and putting your energy into helping support growth and expansion of innovation and entrepreneurship in the PacNW.

I would be happy to broker a meeting between you and my dad and others at the UW if you are interested. Please let me know if you are interested.

Regards,

--Brian Daniel Eisenberg

@infinitelymeta

206.227.8535 (mobile)

I've come to the conclusion that while I don't like what they are doing one bit, I do see the genius behind it.  I don't have a problem with them making my information public, as I post a LOT of my data across a wide range of social networking sites like Friendfeed and Twitter. I also share  many of my online accounts on my Google Profile.

Where I think Facebook crossed the line is their strong arm tactics, opt-out strategy, and move to begin monetizing the social graph. They are essentially forcing me to make my profile, interests, and other personal information public by linking to public pages from my profile. If I choose otherwise, they remove those sections from my profile altogether.

I see this as move as a re-incarnation of Beacon, a brilliant monetization and brand-marketing strategy, but completely wrong due to the privacy implications. The average Facebook user is probably not even aware of the fact that simply stating you like something on a public page, in your profile, or "Liking" something in your news feed is an implicit product/brand endorsement.

This new strategy effectively  allows Facebook to take their ad platform to the next level and begin monetizing the social graph through implicit product/brand endorsement. Just because I "Like" a picture or post that contains a product/brand name doesn't mean that I endorse that particular product/brand.

This is not what I intended my personal data to be used for.

With over 400 million users, I certainly understand that Facebook has every right to try and push their agenda, but this time I think they've gone too far. Others seem to agree as evidenced by this post last night on Friendfeed, this post on the EFF site, and this petition just launched by Moveon.org.

As a result of these changes, I'm decided to strip my profile down to a bare minimum for now and may go so far as to deactivate it altogether.

Am I wrong in being concerned about what Facebook is doing with my data and social graph? Let me know what you think in the comments below or join me in the conversation on Friendfeed or Twitter.

Rather than relying on external sites, services and aggregators, I'm going to try and use my blog as the dumping ground for the meta I speweth into the river. I realize that there is no silver bullet or perfect solution for this, but I'm hoping that with a few new tools, APIs, services, and techniques, I can piece together a reasonably complete archive. Once I have the archive, I can continue work on the LifeSplicing Engine I conceived a few years back.

Just an early sketch from a couple years ago.

To start, I'm looking at the Lifestream WP plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lifestream/) to see how many services I can pipe in for free. For services, sites, and data sources that don't readily make themselves available, I've got a few ideas I want to try using some RSS/ATOM/OPML trickery to normalize the floe.

This is likely going to be a very messy, noisy, and disruptive exercise. Please forgive any unwanted noise I spill into the river and remember that you can always block/delete me from your social graph if I become too much of an annoyance.

The Atom and Ion processors are game changing chips helping to fuel this (r)evolution. I believe the Intel Atom, Moorestown, and Medfield processors will be as important, if not more important than the original Pentiums.

I've been hacking around with netbook class hardware for about 9 months and have a multitude of netbooks, nettops, and I just recently completed the buildout of 5 new Atom-based desktops that each cost $191. The Intel N280 chip that is powering the Asus Eee 1005HA that I'm typing this on is an amazing chip that only consumes 2.5 watts of power. Pretty cool to see my battery meter say "10 hours" of life left. This is also made possible with innovations in energy efficient backlit LED technology.

I see this as the beginning of a new wave of innovation in software, hardware, and computing in general. It opens the door for developers and engineers to rethink the traditional Human Computer Interaction (HCI) patterns. In the coming months and years, sw and hw platforms like ChromeOS, Windows 7, Atom, Ion, and Medfield will drive more pervasive computing models helping bring access to more and more people and an entire new class of small, powerful, smart, always-connected devices.

With announcements recently from Nokia about plans to use the forthcoming Intel Moorsetown and  Medfield processor line for its next line of smartphones and similar mobile devices, it's only a matter of time before the floodgates open to a whole new class of smart always-connected internet devices.

I'm very excited about using all this shiny new hw and sw tech to tackle some really hard problems.

- ∞ +

So what does this mean? It means that I've got a new arsenal of APIs, protocols, devices, browsers, and OSs to build the next gen HCI with.

I'm talking auto, home, mobile geekery. Embedded, wearable, you name it. Combine this with what's coming in the latter part of 2010 with the Intel Medfield line of 32nm Atom chips, and we are talking about some serious new classes of computing devices. Something in between the current generation of smartphones like the iPhone 3GS, HTC Hero/Ion and the size of my new 1005HA netbook. I'm with Arrington on this one. Screw software, I want to get into the HW biz and build cool new gadgets for specific use cases that are all in the $150 price range.

I just proved that you can build full featured Atom-based desktops for $191. If we can do that with today's generation of hw/sw, just think what will be possible with all this new crap.

That's why I'm so excited about things like Atom, Medfield, Wave, Android, Moblin, Jolicloud, Boxee, and now, Chrome OS.

Exciting times ahead I think . Onward.

Meeting this challenge required 4 near sleepless nights, working through the entire weekend and around the clock with a virtual team distributed around the globe.  While it was a pretty intense and tiring effort, we were able to put together an impressive demo showcase and I'm happy to report that the entire management team was quite pleased with our execution and delivery.

The demo showcase we built was delivered earlier today by Software AG CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich to German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at a VIP press & media event at the CEBIT conference in Hanover, Germany.

Here are some pictures from the event. You can see one of demo pages we built being shown on a 60" Flat Panel touchscreen monitor that was used to "deliver" the demonstration.

Image source: http://www.softwareag.com/Corporate/Press/photos_artwork/events/pg_cebit_2009.asp

Now that this mini-project / event is over, I'm going to try and catch up on some much needed sleep. It was a privilege and honor to work with such dedicated colleagues around the globe, with a near impossible deadline, to pull this off.  Now I can add a new line to my list of accomplishments on my resulme: "Built a demo for the Terminator!"

Hasta la Vista baby!

Major props to KtecK Labs for the WordPress hackery.

PS - I'm going to start using my IRC channel more, so be sure to come stop by:

Server: irc.wyldryde.org

Channel: #infinitelymeta

Duane just crafted an excellent blog post recapping the challenges we faced, the experiences we had, and the lessons we learned. This is in support of his new O'Reilly book "Web2.0 Patterns". I highly suggest that anyone responsible for building systems, managing software projects and cross-organizational initiatives check it out:

Forensic Architecture and other lessons from SOA land.

Long live LICFROG!