Tech Introvert

Who is Going to Buy the Apple Tablet? We Are.

Tech Introvert — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:48:03 +0000

I’m sure the scene above is not uncommon. Apple products abound in many technophile households. Now consider that this picture above was taken by another iPhone, and you start to see the point. The justification for me buying an Apple tablet is very small. It really boils down to “bigger screen, but not as big as the MacBook”, or “because it’s cool”. Tough sell at $600-$800.

So who is the target market that Apple is aiming this (still alleged) thing at? Maybe the eReader crowd, hoping this becomes a Kindle killer. Or maybe their banking on people who have yet to invest in an App Store related device like an iPhone and/or Touch. (Side note- With the addition of a tablet, the Touch is really looking like a 3rd wheel, isn’t it?)

I think it’s probably aimed directly at people like me, who thus far have been rendered utterly powerless by Apple’s supercool device designs. Once we see this beautiful thing sitting in the Apple store, all slick and blinky, we’re screwed.

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Google Reader: From Hell’s Heart, I Stab at Thee

Tech Introvert — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:37:44 +0000

The picture above is not my email inbox. It's the last 30 days of my subscribed RSS feed traffic in Google Reader. Each of these items was pulled into Reader, marked with BOLD, and added to an ever-growing unread count. Each received a small amount of my attention to scan, assess and read/delete. This backwards way of gathering information is causing me stress. On busy days I find myself worrying about how much is backing up in my Reader, just like I worry about managing my email inbox.

Right now you may be thinking "why don't you delete some feeds, fool?". Well, you might be right. I like variety in my blogs. My main interests are tech news, programming discussions, music, electronics, design, and oddities. Even a small sampling of my favorite blogs from each category adds up. The problem is that the most popular and feature-rich RSS readers are modeled after email apps. Worse, they're modeled after BAD email apps- MS Outlook has specific features to make handling 300+ items a day easier. What does Google Reader have? "Search by magic".

So screw this, I'm killing my Google Reader. What I really want from an RSS reader can be boiled down to these basic features:

No Unread Count
I don't get paid to follow news or trends, so I don't need my attention called to every single item. I need to be able to catch the important stuff while letting the rest flow past. Sure I might miss some good posts, but if it's something that's causing a buzz in the tech world I want to be sure that I'll catch it.

Multiple Views
I want to be able to view items by chronology or topic i.e. latest posts, latest posts from Engadget, all posts in Electronics, etc.

No Dupes
When you follow multiple tech blogs, you get a lot of echo. I follow a couple of Apple blogs so any Apple-related news usually ends up on all of them, plus at least a couple of the more general tech news blogs. It would be nice to be able to group or filter these dupes, and if I want to drill into each blog's take on a topic then I can.

Mobile Access
I do a good chunk of browsing on my iPhone, so my RSS reader has to have a usable mobile website or native iPhone app. Note this is in addition to having a decent browser-based non-mobile site as well which I can monitor during the day.

Sharing
Need to be able to share to Twitter and Instapaper without having to jump through hoops.

No Limitations
Support for keyword search and presets are fine, but I want to also be able to specify my own feeds. Not just keywords, but the actual feed URLs themselves.

Given the above, I've started auditioning several services. It's been a tough search. Netvibes is slick but violates several of my rules above, as does iGoogle and Bloglines. FeedDemon has unread items and is not browser-based. Lazyfeed and Thoora are more discovery engines and don't allow adding feeds by URL. My6Sense has some promise but is mobile-only. I was beginning to lose hope, until I found 2 services which came very close to hitting every criteria I had. One service was new, the other I had been using for quite some time.

Regator
Regator is one of the best blog aggregators I've used. It can function as a discovery engine using hundreds of predefined blogs, and can also allow you to create a reading list of your favorite blogs or keywords. It handles dupes well, gathering similar topics and placing them in a Related Stories section. Sharing is easy, the iPhone app is slick and there is no unread count. My only gripe is the list of available blogs, while extensive, is limited.

Twitter
Twitter is a great RSS feed reader. The amount of linked information flowing through the Twittertubes at any given moment is insane. There are a million different Twitter clients out there (mobile, web, etc) which means you can configure your reader however you want. With the addition of lists, you don't even have to follow all of your news sources to monitor them. The only limitation I've found is not every blog I'm interested in has a reliable Twitter presence, and there are dupes galore. But I may be bale to deal with that.

So those are the 2 current front runners. What about you? How to you get your information?

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My First Computer: Behold the Sharp PC-1500a

Tech Introvert — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:55:34 +0000

In 1985, or was it 1986, a box arrived in the mail from my uncle. My uncle was at the cutting edge of technology through most of the 80's. He had left our small hometown to go work at one of the largest software companies in the world, so when he sent packages they always included something cool. I rememeber one year he sent a small bag of ~ 20 circuit boards, which ended up being copied (pirated) Atari 2600 games. So naturally I was hoping for a fresh batch of illegal video games. Little did I realize that what was inside the box would end up changing my life forever. Inside the package was a brown, plastic case with a note attached. The note read "Found this in my office, it's a few years old but thought you might like it".

I quickly flipped open the case to find the epic Sharp PC-1500a Pocket Computer, shiny and unused, smelling of fresh electronics.

To me, the PC-1500a was like something out of Star Trek. I had heard about computers but had no idea "pocket computers" even existed. It featured a single-line 26-character LCD display, 8 KB of RAM and ran programs written in BASIC. There was no hard drive and backups were done to cassette tape using an external tape recorder. (By the time I was done with it, I had amassed 10-20 tapes consisting of nothing but the horrific screech of data backup). Also included in the box was the essential CE-150 Printer Module. The main PC-1500a snapped into this sucker, which featured a 4-color pen plotter. That's 4 little ball-point pens of different color that would scratch out characters and graph plots.

Over the next year or so, I taught myself some simple BASIC and wrote some silly little games. They were mostly text-based adventure games like Pirate Cove, though mine were really nothing more than choose-your-own-adventure stories. I was very proud of a wrestling game I made which allowed you to execute moves and calculated the remaining health of you + your opponent. It was a ton of fun. I'd move on to other PCs; a DOS based monochrome AT&T desktop, then a slick Hyundai PC running Windows 3.1 which I used to first access the internet in the early 90's (go CompuServe), etc. Eventually I'd follow my uncle and also go to work at one of the largest software companies in the world. But I'll never forget that little Sharp pocket computer.

So what was your first computer?

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The Ouch of Google Chrome Extensions

Tech Introvert — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:27:18 +0000

Ouch is right. This is with only 1 tab open and a couple of extensions I like (Feedly, Google Reader Checker) removed.

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I Hate Streaming Media Because the Cloud Sucks

Tech Introvert — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:32:49 +0000

Today TechCrunch broke a story on the launch of MOG, an online subscription-based streaming music site similar to Pandora/Rhapsody/Napster etc. MOG is a cool service with tons of potential. It boasts a great interface and excellent sound quality, and I highly recommend signing up for a 1 hour trial. I was very excited to try it out, but after using the service for a few minutes I remembered something…I hate streaming media. I refuse to move my music library to the cloud for one reason- the cloud sucks.

Can you tell me what the problem is with the picture below?

Only 5 of 12 songs are available for Deerhunter's "Cryptograms" album. The title track is unavailable for Pete's sake. I'm not going to post the results of my Fugazi search (hint: zero). And this is why I hate streaming media: the price of instant access is limited selection.

I don't mean to pick on MOG. I like their service better than Pandora or Last.FM. Go check out the selection of movies on Hulu or NetFlix Instant Queue. Go ahead, I'll wait…Yeah, pretty bad huh? It's like the damn $5 DVD bin at Walmart.

I will gladly pay a subscription fee for online streaming media. I'll let go of my racks of CDs and drives filled with MP3s and move everything to the cloud. But not as long as the cloud is filled with partial albums and crap movies.

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Customer Support via Twitter Actually Works

Tech Introvert — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:58:44 +0000

I’ve openly bitched about products + services on Twitter at least 4 or 5 times. In every case, someone from that company has contacted me to provide an explanation or offer assistance within 24 hours. In fact with many products/services you can send tweets directly to the support staff, developers, or even the executives + creators. And get responses quickly.

That’s an unprecedented level of user accessibility.

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Live Music Friday: Warpaint, Explosions in the Sky

Tech Introvert — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:49:25 +0000

Warpaint – Krimson

Explosions in the Sky – Birth and Death of the Day

Tech Questions to Baffle Your Under-30 Friends

Tech Introvert — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:15:50 +0000

With a heavy dose of nostalgia, and a light dash of pretentiousness, here's a list of tech questions which are virtually unanswerable by those under the age of 30.

Feel free to add your own!

What are the notches on a 5 1/4 floppy for? Why are there sometimes two?
What is a CD-ROM caddy?
What does a cassette tape backup sound like?
What was so unusual about CompuServe email addresses?
What does GOSUB do?
What types of files were commonly uuencoded/uudecoded?
What is Archie used for?
What did Hayes Microcomputer Products make?
What was Progman.exe used for? What was it replaced by?

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The Next Android Phone

Tech Introvert — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:44:04 +0000

Manufacturers are realizing that slapping Android on their devices is a sure fire way to bump up the buzz/interest/geek cred of their devices- no matter how lame and uninteresting the hardware was before Android.

Photo thanks to The Gunslinger: http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2009/11/future-is-now-10.html

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Kindle for PC: Almost Useful

Tech Introvert — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:12:25 +0000

Today Amazon announced the release of Kindle for PC, a PC-based version of their eBook reader (Mac version soon to follow). The reader itself is very Acrobat Reader-esque, easy to use, and synced with your Amazon account (no Kindle necessary). It displays an uneditable/unselectable version of the books in your library and allows you to adjust font + page size.

I don't actually use a Kindle. I've read books on my iPhone and actually like it, so I've been considering buying more. One thing has held me back though- some books just don't work on a phone. Programming books, for one, aren't the greatest. It's tough to scroll through lines of code on a tiny iPhone screen. I thought Kindle for PC would help solve this problem, and I could pop open my laptop (or eventually MacBook) if I wanted a richer reading experience. Unfortunately, Kindle for PC is very bare bones at the present time. It works…but that's about it. Which is actually pretty disappointing.

Three things that cripple the app-

1) While you can view notes/highlights, you can't actually create notes on your PC. This is listed as a known feature request on Amazon, and I hope they get to it quickly. Also, now is the prefect time to address the ability to export notes. This is a must-have for the Kindle platform.

2) Can't adjust background color. On the iPhone I have options other than the standard retina-burning white page w/black text. Not so on Kindle for PC.

3) Cannot select/copy/paste. This is a huge limitation with Kindle's DRM and has no quick fix. How cool would it be to be able to copy/paste a code example directly into you IDE? Since enabling that would also allow you to copy/paste it into a PDF and sell it for $5, this will never happen. Worse, you can't even copy a word or group of words and Google them, or save a neat little quote for personal inspiration.

I love the Kindle, I love the ebook selection & 1-click purchasing on Amazon, and the cloud-based library. But when the DRM rears it's ugly head, it's enough to make you look into other options like Safari books.

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