Jun 2007

More on the rise of the podcomputer: YouTube, Safari, Facebook and iPhone

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Okay, so I get all psyched to write this post, and then Cringley basically steals my whole idea. Oh, well. Great minds….

For the rest of us, here’s a little insight on where we are, right this moment, in technology history. To put it briefly, there’s a lot of paradigm shifting and disruptive technology emerging this summer—more than anyone can afford to ignore, because it is likely to affect your future computing life. You just might not know it yet.

First, let’s back up to the beginning of the month and recap Apple’s WWDC. The biggest news leading up to this event was Apple TV’s addition of YouTube video access. I blogged about this earlier in the month. Then, in the Keynote speech/demo by Steve Jobs, Apple announced two very significant things. First, the iPhone would open up Safari for web application development, meaning that web developers would be able to write web apps for iPhone. This wasn’t necessarily the news software developers wanted to hear (they wanted access and an SDK for the iPhone version of OS X), but it was extremely significant nonetheless. Second, Apple released a beta of its Safari Web browser for Windows XP and Vista. Crazy? Why reignite the web browser wars now, you might ask? Well, stay with me here a little but longer.

This past week, Apple announces some significant upgrades to the final iPhone hardware spec, and sneaks in a new application. And what do you know, it’s YouTube on the iPhone. Thanks to Google and Apple, viral video is now mobile. It’s not hard to imagine this taking web video to a whole new level. But beyond video fun, Safari for Windows, Google and the iPhone signal a paradigm shift for software. Web distributed applications are starting to make their play for the mainstream—and the platform is increasingly mobile. This has the potential to displace established software applications and operating systems. Apple recognizes that Safari on Windows means more use of distributed applications and web 2.0 application development that will reach beyond the PC to their mobile platform.

More evidence of this can be seen outside of Apple and Google. On May 24, Facebook launched the newest version of the Facebook Platform with APIs and services that allow outside developers to create apps for the burgeoning Facebook social networking site. Marc Andreesson, original founder of Netscape, posted an excellent look at the new platform on his blog—recommended reading. The Facebook platform, like Google’s distributed apps, represents web-based software in an increasingly web 2.0 world. Now think about Facebook and Facebook apps on the iPhone. Safari’s already there, ready and waiting—now on both ends of the PC vs. Mac dichotomy.

And as I predicted back in August 2005, prior to iPhone, and again in January of this year, the new mobile platform iPhone represents is evolving toward the podcomputing concept—and web 2.0 will be the source of the killer apps of tomorrow. See how Cringley pegs this from his column this week:

“Remember that a key component of iPhone marketing is that the device will run a version of OS X, making it more computer than phone. When the iPhone finally ships and some techies have voided their warranties and torn the thing apart, they'll probably find it uses a processor running at a gigahertz or more -- by far the fastest processor ever put in a mobile phone -- a processor more powerful than that in my Mom's PC. With all that power locked inside, of course some users will want to imagine their iPhone AS their PC, which Apple -- at least for now -- would rather not enable because it might hurt Macintosh sales.”

How long will Apple wait? My prediction is long enough for the software paradigm to complete its shift.

Fascinating times, these.

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Classic rock like you’ve never heard it before

Friday, June 22, 2007

I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard at any time in the past few years as I did when I watched a few of these “Legion of Rock Stars” videos. And maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help myself. Here’s my favorite so far:

Four others that had me ROTFLMAO: Journey, The Rolling Stones, Jim Croce and Tears for Fears.

I know your probably asking, how’d they do that?

To really appreciate this, you have to understand the process involved. A “super” group of barely passable musicians get together to play and record a classic rock song live. They accomplish this by each wearing noise-cancelling headphones that only pipe through the original version of the tune. So, each performer in the band can’t hear them self and can’t hear each other at all. They call the diabolically ingenious new recording process, "Pure Pleasure."

I think you’ll agree, some of these songs have never sounded better. Here’s a YouTube link to a page full of these musical gems paired with the original band/artist videos. Thanks to Zack Lind of Finding Rhythm for unearthing this unique new art form.

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Nikola Tesla in the home office

Friday, June 22, 2007

If you’ve seen The Prestige, then you’ve had a fictionalized taste of Nikola Tesla (courtesy of David Bowie). One of Tesla’s quests was to transmit electricity via wireless means—a feat he achieved in a cruder, more dangerous form. Someday it may be possible to get the earth’s power completely carbon free by beaming energy to the surface from an array of solar collectors in orbit, thanks to Tesla’s vision.

Well, this latest advance takes the idea right into your home. Wireless data transmission meets wireless power transmission in the home office. Say bye-bye to even more wires. I, for one, can’t help but think that lead-lined clothes still might be a good idea. But who am I to stand in the way of technological progress.

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Coming clean on the t-shirt

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

There are a million t-shirt businesses on the internet these days. However, I did stumble upon one that had some designs that made me laugh recently. By popular demand, here is the link to One Horse Shy t-shirts to get your mitts on the "nobody cares about your blog" t-shirt I posted in May. There are other, more tasteless choices available, so I can't give these folks a full endorsement. But here are three more of my favorites.

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Snappy new blog feature

Sunday, June 17, 2007

I've added Snapshots code to my blog entries--after messing around with how to make it work for a few weeks. You may notice new pop-ups emanating from the links or a little bubble icon next to each link. Mousing over those will create a popup search engine preview of the linked page, if available. I hope this is helpful. I've liked it at a few sites I've seen it, and I'll try to keep the pertinent links to a minimum to avoid it becoming an reader annoyance. Also note, these are not a form of advertising. TSAWWT is an Ad free site (except for cool things I want to put an unpaid plug in for).
tour_motto

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I'm so Romantica

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Here's a full endorsement (unpaid). Pick up a copy of Romantica's new project, America. If the idea of Jim Orvis (pictured, left) drumming his heart out doesn't convince you, Ben Kyle's (pictured, middle) amazing and sweet songwriting should. This local act is on the cusp of much-deserved national success. Get on board for a unique journey in and through America.

The StarTribune's Chris Riemenschneider says, "This is the kind of record I can recommend to everyone. It's sweet and (truth in advertising) romantic, and the Irish-born Kyle is true to his roots with ample melancholy and poetic license. Kyle fares best in his most personal tunes, such as the up-tempo waltz 'The National Side,' about his family's migration to America."

Now available on iTunes.

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How a mouse really works

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Ever wonder? This picture should give you an idea of the analog technology underneath the digital marvel that is the PC mouse pointing device. If you're running Explorer on a PC, this link should take you to a working demo. Hilarious, yet coded without any thoughts for web standards, which ticks me off to no end. Sadly, you'll need a PC running Explorer to see this in action.

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Clarity, at last

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Thoughts on thesis, part 6
Posts in a series of commentaries on my thesis project for the Master of Arts in Communication.

My thesis prospectus is done, and handed in. Now, we pray.

But to tide interested readers over, here’s some new excerpts and commentary. I plan to use much of this post for a formal speech in class next week. I most recently read some works by Sut Jhally, a professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts. He cites Tibor Scitovsky and Dallas Smythe on commodification and consumer culture, paralleling Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice. (again, I'm thinking about this as it concerns the commercialization of the church):

Scitovsky observed in 1976 that as consumers, human satisfaction is derived from “novelty and stimulation” in consumption, which is made into a “homogenized experience” to serve capitalistic enterprise. The comforting experience derived from consumption is addictive, and like many addictions, provides diminishing levels of satisfaction as it ceases to be novel and stimulating. Adding to this, Smythe said that “mass media” produces audiences as commodities for sale to advertisers—and subsequently to product producers. This is exactly how TV, radio and newspapers function in our economy. But should the church now play this role, as well?

When viewed from this perspective, both the church itself, and the church consumer are commodified. The church is a product, and the congregation is transformed into a product—a quantifiable audience that can be delivered to a marketer.

Hollywood is catching on to this in new and ingenious ways. I recently took a web trip to ArkAlmighty, which is a Craigslist-type localized church charity tie-in to the movie, Evan Almighty. Now, there seems to be no downside to enlisting Hollywood in the effort to promote acts of kindness and charity throughout the church. There are aspects of it that are very admirable and right. But here’s the uncomfortable part: This whole endeavor also aims to deliver The Church (God’s community of people) as a commodified audience for a commercial purpose. It is ultimately intended to drive tickets sales in the hope of making Bruce Almighty the Billion dollar goldmine that The Passion of the Christ was.

That is what is so hard about deconstructing what is occurring in today’s church. Commercialization is becoming so sophisticated that church leaders must thoughtfully and critically discern the potential bad in the good. Where do you draw the line? Does ArkAlmighty bring enough community benefit that it’s worth the tradeoff of helping generate publicity for a product (the film). Maybe? What about Chrysler sponsoring a Gospel music tour in your local church? Would you put a plasma screen in your lobby with ads for Zondervan bibles if they helped fund for your food shelf ministry? How about ads for Toys ‘R’ Us in your Sunday school wing? Or a Starbuck’s coffee kiosk?

It’s not only the conflicts of interests that may arise between church teachings and the cultures of these commercial yet pseudo ministry enterprises. That’s just the surface. What’s much more alarming is what it communicates to people. They aren’t part of The Church anymore, they are an “audience” with a commercial value. Everything about the Sunday morning, event-driven churchianty so prevalent today reinforces that notion. People attend, consume and help financially support and build an enterprise. When the services and ministries of the local church are commodified through marketing and advertising, it’s just as easy to commodify the congregation. It many cases, the church has been doing this for several years.

There’s not that much of a difference between the temple environment that enraged Jesus in John 2:13-16, and what is happening in some Evangelical churches today. It just doesn’t look like dusty money-changers and merchants selling sacrificial doves and other religious supplies in the temple courts:

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a market!” (TNIV)

I strongly believe that our houses and homes of worship must return to the concept of sanctuary, and become places of refuge from commodification, consumerism and competition. Admittedly this is especially hard to do in a culture that we are called to remain within in response to our missional calling. Yet, I think there are old and new ways to do so—and that a new attractiveness of Christianity in today’s world may be found in helping create a commercial free context where people can rest in God’s presence, grace and the presence of each other.

Let’s call it: “commercial free faith.”

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I love being right

Saturday, June 02, 2007

It’s true. Who doesn’t? This week Apple announced two Apple TV enhancements that I predicted in January when the product hit the market. First, a much larger hard drive option—allowing people to go to from 40 to 160 Gb. Second, a software update in June that will bring the entire world of Google’s YouTube videos to Apple TV. Trek on over to the January, 2007 TSAWWT archive and read the post entitled Apple TV 1.0 reflections, to see my original prognostication or wish list.

If you think of Apple TV as a computer (it has already been hacked by hobbyists to run a full version of OS X), then think of YouTube content integration as Apple TV’s first killer app. The more I ponder this, the more I’m convinced. Most people have 50 to 150 channels of professionally produced television programming (okay, some of it is not quite “professional’ grade, but you get the point). At the same time, more and more people are logging into YouTube to watch user-generated content on small little PC screen video players. YouTube on AppleTV brings user-generated content into the television entertainment context in a big screen way, all navigated via the simple Apple remote. This will be a catalyst for a whole new TV experience. It will be huge.

So what was I wrong about? Two other features that we haven’t seen…yet. The first is a way to rip DVDs to your digital library the way iTunes does for music. I now doubt this will happen. Instead, I think Apple is interested in selling media directly through iTunes, since DVD content is less used than music for repeat playback and Apple can’t monetize DVD media people already own (ouch). The second is a USB camera with iChat capabilities for Apple TV. I fully expect this to happen when the time is right. Wait for it.

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That's no moon

Saturday, June 02, 2007

That’s a space station! Or rather, it’s a convention center and hotel complex proposed for UAE, of all places. I guess it kind of makes sense if you think of OPEC as some Imperial Empire. Wired.com just published this fascinating real estate news item, but I’m sure the real, super secret plans have been hidden safely in the memory banks of some R2 unit hoping to find its way to the Rebel alliance.

Sure, it’ll be a fun place to stay, until some farm kid in a rebel X-Wing fighter blows it to kingdom come.

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Mutual admiration society

Saturday, June 02, 2007

It's been a while since these two have done an interview together. In fact, they haven't appeared together in video form since the 1997 MacWorld when they buried the hatchet on the alleged Microsoft IP theft of MacOS for Windows and Microsoft helped save Apple with a $150 million infusion. So, here's a bit of Steve and Bill at the WSJ D:5 All Things Digital conference. Some great reminiscing and fascinating discussion.

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