Staying connected just got easier

I have a number of different wireless devices. When I travel, I usually carry either a laptop or Netbook, and a wireless phone. I take my laptop into other companies' conference rooms and need an Internet connection. The problem is, I don't want to pay for multiple 3G dataplans for my multiple devices.

That's why I am so impressed with MiFi, an ultraportable WiFi hotspot recently announced by Novatel. As you can see in this photo, MiFi is very small. It's the smallest portable WiFi unit I have seen. (Photo credit to Engadget, where you can find a great consumer products column by Ross Rubin). Read the Engadget story about MiFi here.

With MiFi, you'll pay a wireless carrier for a single 3G dataplan, then use it to connect whatever laptop or netbook you happen to be using. This will save me a ton of complexity. I have laptops that support PC card, and others that support Express, which means I can't easily use a single 3G datacard. And, I don't like having to launch the connection application. Simply switching on a WiFi hotspot will be much easier, and give me the added benefit of being able to share the connection.

By the way, having one of these in your backpack will provide a bonus benefit to iPhone fans. As you know, many iPhone functions are restricted to WiFi only connections. MiFi will give your phone a WiFi connection wherever you may be, using 3G as its backhaul. So you can download iTunes songs, for example, or watch videos on the Television app.

My email service, email client, and smartphone come from three different companies. But I still expect it all to work together perfectly.

As a marketing guy, I have been thinking lately about the merits of “systems” vs. the finer attributes of “best of breed.” What am I referring to? Well, in “systems”, you choose who you want to do business with in advance, and then get everything from them, on the promise that it will all work great together. With “best of breed” you choose different offerings from a variety of providers, getting exactly what you want in each category, but then potentially face the hassle of cobbling it all together.

With cars, I’m a “system” guy. When I make a decision to buy a car, I’m also in effect deciding that their dealership will also be the ones to do all of the service on the car. I only use factory audio in a car, because, well, I just like that it is more integrated. Factory floor mats? Absolutely. I have even gone so far as to have the dealer replace my tires. One throat to choke, as they say. To be clear, I’m not defending that this is a good idea. It may be a very bad idea. But it is what I do, nonetheless, simply because I prefer it. Are there product categories where you prefer to buy into a “system” and then stick with it? I’ll bet there are.

But I’m also willing to bet that for most of us, we prefer to buy the best-of-breed in most categories. When I do this, I feel that I still have a right to get mad when it doesn’t all work seamlessly together. So do you. Companies who rely on you buying everything only from them, just to get an adequate experience, aren’t thinking about you, the consumer, the way they should.

I’m feeling this way about Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) right now. Windows Live Mail doesn’t support IMAP, and they only support email forwarding if you pay them for premium mail, which is darn hard to figure out how to do. I wanted my Windows Live mail to be readable from within my gmail account, for a number of reasons, including gmail’s superior integration with the iPhone. Well, you can’t do that. You can’t use an alternative offline client very easily, either. Basically, your choices to access your mail (and keep it in sync, which rules out POP access) are… 1) the Windows Live Mail client (which, thankfully, I love), and related Microsoft mail clients, 2) the Windows Live web service (which I don’t like as much as gmail), and 3) Windows smart phones. That’s pretty much it. I think their idea must be that if they make it really hard to use any email client other than their own, you be a more loyal customer, and not switch away. That is a crazy amount of absurd and it just makes me mad. I love my Windows Live mail and I also love my iPhone. I expect them to work together more easily than they do.

Sometimes companies who are selling a “system” make it obvious with their advertisements, which try to convince us we're better-off buying everything from them. Sony and Apple are two companies that each spend a significant amount of effort trying to convince consumers to buy their own products across-the-board, under the promise that it all works best together. And generally, it does. But at what cost? Premium prices are an acceptable cost, but to me, being trapped in a closed system by underlying proprietary technology isn’t worth it. I view Mac’s this way. I love some Apple stuff, but I feel that Apple tries to trap Mac users into using only their stuff (shouldn’t they have put in HDMI, and not mini-DisplayPort, into their latest Mac’s? My point.). This is the value of working within the most broadly adopted standards. With enough openness, the really popular products should eventually all work together very well, if their makers have the consumer’s best interests in mind.

In our household, we’re more PC than Mac. I much prefer Windows to OSX, probably because I am so familiar with it. I’m the IT guy in our family, and I look after about 8 PC’s and one Mac. But all of our networking is Apple. I prefer Apple’s configurability and I’m a huge fan of Airport Express for whole-house music distribution. We use mainly iTunes for music and video. I have been impressed with how easily Apple products (iTunes, iPod, Airport, TimeCapsule) integrate into a mostly PC environment. Quite simply, they are writing some of the best PC software out there, which ironically, is one of the reasons I have little interest in switching to Mac’s. In this sense, they are less of a closed “system” purveyor than some would say.

Ripping DVD's just isn't worth it. And with their intransigence on the issue, the studios are handing even more power to Apple

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to rip all of my DVD's. The thought was, I'd have my library to enjoy wherever I go. Or more specifically, my kids would. The killer app here is the ability to view the movies you own on a portable device like an iPod.

Well, it didn't work out. Put aside the obvious issue that, despite a tradition of "fair use" in our copyright laws, most agree that ripping DVD's isn't legal in the U.S. Since I wasn't planning to share my DVD's with anyone digitally, or rip rented DVD's, I wasn't deeply worried about that. The larger issue turned to be that since the studios aren't cooperating (yet), there is simply no consumer-acceptable solution today. I tried Handbrake, 1Click DVD copy, and Movavi as the video converters, and DVD43 and DVDDecrypter as the DRM removal tools. My verdict? Not worth it, not even close. It takes two apps (a decrypter and a copier) to rip a DVD, and they have to work in concert. Some disks fail to copy entirely, others take up to two hours even on a fast machine. And, there doesn't appear to be a setting that will both look good on the big screen TV, and play back on an iPod, which means that each disk must be ripped twice. So I uninstalled the apps and gave up. Have you had a better experience?

Instead of new DVD's, I have started to buy more movies from iTunes. They automagically play on our family's various iPods, don't cost all that much, and look (barely) acceptable on the big screen. So if my case is typical, then the studios have, through their total insistence that nobody be able to copy DVD's, handed even more power to Apple. Haven't they been watching what is happening to their friends (and affiliates) in the music business?

I have been watching Real Networks' dispute with the Studios with interest. Their proposed product, RealDVD, would be the first mass consumer legal DVD ripping software. The idea is that a single application would backup your DVD's to your computer hard drive, and then make them available for playback on up to five computers (and perhaps other devices), while still respecting the DRM. The product reviews were good and I am anxious to personally try the product when, and if, the dispute is resolved. In certainly agree with the insights (simplicity, portability) that have apparently driven Real's product.

From the McGyver files...iPhone docking in the car, and how it totally changed my usage pattern

Why am I writing about something as mundane as an iPod dock in my car? Because it totally transformed my usage of the device. More on that below. But first, I'll share my docking method.

I'm not a big fan of the Frankenstein look, when it comes to technology in the car. So I didn't want the phone-dock-in-cupholder-with-lots-of-wires thing. I looked and looked for an elegant and low-cost solution to dock my iPhone in my car. My simple requirements:

• Not ugly
• Powers the phone
• Lets me see and control the phone
• Undocks easily, 'cause I get in and out of the car a lot
• Pipes the phone's audio to the car stereo with a decent connection, for listening to music, podcasts, Internet radio, etc. from the phone.

This last requirement was made harder by my car, because despite being a late-model Lexus hybrid, it doesn't have an AUX jack (which is pretty hard to understand).

I shopped all around, and found no product that fits the bill perfectly. What happened to capitalism? Am I the only one with this list of requirements? Is this not now the best-selling phone in the U.S.? And people go around in cars, right?

For now, I solved it (almost literally) with duct tape and wires.

Here's the photo:

So, crazy as it sounds, the best solution for me turned out to be a plain old Apple dock, along with a Griffin iPhone car charger (black, hidden under the dock), and a cassette tape adapter (black, see wires, arrgh). And here's the McGyver part, I mounted it to the console with a commercial velcro-type of fastener called 3M dual lock (expensive but awesome stuff for all kinds of applications).

The cassette tape adapter plugs into the back of the dock discreetly, as does the car charger. I wish the dock was black, but well, that's Apple for ya.

Since doing this, a number of the commercial car docks have started supporting the 3G, so I'd consider them. The one that caught my eye was this one from Kensington. Still, it is a little higher profile and I don't have an Aux jack so I'd still need the cassette tape thing. Seems like a tad more work to get it in and out of the dock, too.

The my phone's display is showing Pandora Radio, and outstanding website and web app. Pandora fits the "great consumer technology products" bill, so I'll write about it separately at some point.

Here's the main point. It turns out that the iPhone is an amazing Internet radio device. Who could have predicted that this would be one of it's major scenarios? And how many other people use it this way? The magic of the Internet, and therefore of Internet devices, is that everyone gets a different benefit. There are as many use-cases as there are people. So why are there so many fixed-function, walled-garden devices coming out, when people really just want the Internet? If the developers of iPhone hadn't realized this, I wouldn't be able to listen to Pandora or NPR News or CNN (via Stitcher, another recommended app), or various other Internet radio things just by dropping my phone into a dock, and driving off.

I have live TV on my iPhone. Do you?

During the election season, I was glued to CNN. I needed to catch all the commentary that went along with every stop on the trail and every move in the polls. That meant watching TV in strange places. No device is better for strange-place TV watching than your phone. The problem was, I had recently switched to my shiny new iPhone, and was pretty mad that that I couldn't access my Slingbox from it, while Apple and Sling duked it out over whether the Sling app would be released (still no updates, which can't be good). Well, I got it too late for the election season, but now I'm using Orb and it really works. Success!

Here's the deal. You need to have a computer in your house, with a TV tuner installed on it. Many desktops have been shipping with tuners for years, so your computer might have one even if you aren't using it. If not, it's easy enough to get a simple USB external TV tuner. Ideally, this is the one computer that you leave running. Once your TV tuner is installed in your computer (again, it probably already is installed), connect your standard cable-TV coax cable to your TV tuner.

That's pretty much it. Now install Orb on that computer and install OrbLive on your iPhone.

Orb takes your live TV signal and streams it out over the Internet to your Orb clients, such as a laptop running Orb software, or your phone. You can access a program guide from your phone, choose a channel, wait a frustrating 15 to 20 seconds or so, and then poof, you are watching TV on your phone from anywhere.

Unlike the YouTube app, Orblive will display TV in either the portrait or landscape mode. I like this because I use Orb in the car while I am waiting on the kids, while my phone is docked. The puts the audio on my car speakers and the TV is viewable from my seat (no, I don't drive and watch TV, and neither should you).

OrbLive can also be used to access the photos, music, and other files on your home computer (or home network) from your iPhone. It found and categorized all of my music, and allows me to play it on my iPhone (except DRM protected tracks), just as if that music was in the iPod on my phone. In my case, this isn't much use because I have the same music locally on my phone. But, I do use this feature for photos. Faced with tough choices due to the non- expandable 16GB iPhone (would a micro-SD chip have been that hard??), I took all of my home photos off of my phone to make room for music and videos. With Orb, I have fast access to my entire home photo library from anywhere, already organized into folders just like on my home machine. I can flick through the photos just like on the native photo app. This is terrific.

I can also access files on my home computers, and open documents, using the file access feature in OrbLive. This has actually come in handy.

Since your home computer can act as a DVR using Windows Media Center, you can also access recorded shows seamlessly via OrbLive. When I installed it, there were some conflict issues when Media Center wanted access to the tuner at the same time Orb wanted access to the tuner. I understand they have fixed this issue, but I've never gone back to check. I simply turned off the Media Center TV functions and never looked back. Now, I use that computer's TV tuner only for Orb.

Want to know why? The truth is, I don't use DVR functionality that much anymore. I gave my Tivo to my Mom (It's a version 1, from about 1999, and she loves it -- that says good things about the quality of Tivo's initial design, doesn't it?). I don't use MCE either. Once in a while, if I really want to record something, I use the one built into my cable box, which gives me the added benefit of High Def recording (minus hassle).

Here's why. Internet media has changed everything. Who could have guessed, just a year ago, how much commercial TV content would be freely and legally available on the web today? Now, shows are posted to the web just a couple of hours after their initial airing. And the Web is the ultimate DVR, because you don't have to be hassled with recording anything. If I want last night's The Daily Show, I simply go to Hulu, type "The Dail" and before I'm done typing, there it is. Why record stuff anymore? I have a lot more to say about Internet media, because I have dedicated the last year of my professional life to the topic with my start-up. That's another post.

This is a blog about "great consumer technology experiences," which begs the question, does Orb qualify? No, not really. It is still way too geeky. You have to like to tinker to keep a PC running as your TV server. Eventually, the Internet media future should make a solution like Orb totally unnecessary. We'll all have to wait a little longer.

Meantime, tell me about your experiences with live TV on your iPhone. But please, leave out the details of the "strange places" where you watch...

Have more than one computer? Then you NEED this.

I'm ga ga about Microsoft's Live Mesh. It is one of the coolest things to come out of Microsoft in a long time (and I should know). I have been using it for a few months, and it has come along far enough that I am ready to recommend it (whole-heartedly) to my fellow man.

If you have more than one computer, or are interested in accessing your computer's data from someone else's computer, or need to access your stuff from the road on a mobile phone, then you need Live Mesh. Have a PC and a MAC? Two PC's? Two MAC's? You need it.

What is it? Live Mesh is software for your devices that keeps all of your stuff in synch. You put the software on each of your computers, designate which folders and/or files you want to share or "mesh" between your devices, and let it do the rest of the work. All of your designated files and folders automatically replicate themselves on each of your computers, and are stored locally in mesh folders on each computer's desktop. The best part? Each time you change a file, no matter where you change it, the file is automatically updated on all of the computers. They are local files on those computers, so they are available to you offline, and they load fast like local files should.

In addition to being stored on each of your computers, your stuff is also automatically stored in a "Live Desktop" in the cloud (Internet). That means your stuff is accessible to you from any Web browser. So if you are using a borrowed computer or a mobile phone with a browser, you get access to all of your stuff, automatically.

Here's how I use it. I have Live Mesh installed on my laptop, and also on the main desktop computer in our house. Traditionally, I have used my laptop mainly for work, while the desktop computer (which is shared with my wife) has most of my personal stuff. Now all of my work and personal stuff is available to me on both computers. I chose the relevant folders in my Documents area on each machine, right-clicked on each of the folders, and selected "Add folder to Live Mesh". Its that easy. Right away, the same folders appeared on the other computer and all of the files began to replicate and synch-up. And they have stayed in synch ever since, with no more effort on my part. No more editing documents and then emailing them to myself, using memory sticks, or other crazy methods to get my files from machine to machine. You can do this with several computers, and you can even share files among multiple users, with varying levels of permissions, if you want to.

In addition, all of the Live Mesh folders are available online, and accessible via browser from a borrowed computer. That's because they also synch to a "Live Desktop" in the cloud. The Live Desktop will currently support 5GB of storage for free. But there is no limit to how much data you can keep synched between your computers, if you choose not to also synch it to the Live Desktop.

Live Mesh also includes a remote access feature that works as well, or even better, than some of the others I have tested. From any device in your mesh, you can access and gain full remote-control of the other computers, and even transfer files between the computers.

Limitations and wishes (Live Mesh team, can you help me?)...

1>> I haven't been able to get Live Mesh to reliably synch very large folders. That's too bad, because I'd really like it to keep my iTunes library synched between devices. I dream of being able to download a song or video on one computer, and have it magically show up in the iTunes libraries of all of my most-often-used computers. Live Mesh seemed the perfect answer, but alas, it just isn't working yet, for me. My iTunes folder is about 20GB, when I exclude some of my movies. Live Mesh tries to synch them, and then simply fails after a while (yes, I have "Never with this Device" selected for the Live Desktop). So, I'll wait for the product to continue to evolve (or for Apple to get their act together and make library synching a feature of iTunes). Do you have a solution to this? If so, tell me!

2>> I have no direct way to access my Live Mesh from my iPhone. I can't get it to work from my Safari browser in the phone, and there isn't a dedicated app. So, I have enabled Orb Live, (an app so good I'll write about it separately) to see my Live Mesh folders. Do you have a different or better way to acccess your Live Mesh files via iPhone? Leave me a comment.

Interesting (or not) side note: Orb is running on the media PC near our big-screen TV. And that computer is networked with the desktop computer in my Live Mesh. So, I'm accessing my Live Mesh folders via iPhone using Orb, even though the machine that is running Orb isn't on my Live Mesh. Since computers on my home network share their folders using Windows Folder Sharing (allowing me to use our main desktop as a sort of server), I can access my Live Mesh folders on the main desktop via Orb, even though Orb isn't actually running on any of my Live Mesh computers. In other words, a folder can be both in your Live Mesh, and shared with traditional Windows folder sharing. Windows folder sharing doesn't replicate files across machines like Live Mesh does. It's purpose is to allow you to remotely access a folder on a machine, rather than replicate the files and make them local. Inside our house with its fast networking, that's the approach I prefer. This allows me to store nearly all of the files in our house on a single computer, so I don't have to have any backup mechanisms for any of the other computers. Why not just install Orb on the main desktop that is on my Live Mesh?Because Orb is also about streaming your live cable TV out to your devices via the web, and the one computer near my HDTV is the best one for that usage of Orb.

3>> Live Mesh really swamps my machines. I have noticed a HUGE delay (like, 30 seconds) on my system's bootup routines. It even slows down the process of coming out of standby. The hit to performance is not acceptable for a production product. I tolerate it in the beta, because the benefits are sooooo good, but the team has got to get this fixed. Ain't Nobody has a right to slow down my bootups and wake-ups...

Overall, this thing is a gem and I'm in "tell everyone" mode on it.

Wind and Solar-powered stuff. Forward-thinking, or made irrelevant again by lower oil prices?

The other day we put a tiny solar panel on our roof to power some backyard lighting. It was a very small thing, and done more for convenience than principle (there's no outlet where I wanted the light). But I'll admit, even that tiny thing felt good.

Today I saw this article on MSNBC about solar-powered stuff, and thought about the issue of predicting trends. We're a fickle bunch, we Americans. Earlier this year, everything was about energy costs. With fuel exceeding $4 per gallon, and everything in our economy connected to fuel in some way, the issue was seriously top-of-mind. So we started seeing solar stuff and wind-powered stuff pop-up everywhere. Today, astonishingly, with gas back below $2, people are even talking about the return of the SUV, only months after it was declared dead. And in the past month, stocks of solar companies are getting hammered.

I think we'll find that the long-term trend toward more expensive carbon energy, and more viable renewable energy, will prevail. Most agree, yet here we are witnessing renewable energy projects in jeopardy due to lower fuel prices. Can't we use just a little more forsight?

There certainly is plenty of interesting solar and piezoelectric stuff being developed and introduced. This is a jacket with a solar-powered collar (photo credited to E. Zegna in this MSNBC article on the subject). It charges your mobile devices while you ski. Although this one is a little silly, its just one of dozens of solar devices popping up, feeding what is (or was?) an emerging consumer interest.

Piezoelectric products, which produce power by capturing the force from movement, have been much talked about this year. Check out this page full of articles on Engadget discussing the topic. Dance floors, subway floors, roadways, umbrellas (!), clothing (!), and other products are being envisioned, or even prototyped, which generate electricity by capturing the force of applied pressure or movement.

An emerging product that really caught my eye recently is called Windspire. It is a new design of windmill that is vertical, and much more appropriate for suburban settings. At 30' tall, it fits the restrictions of many suburban communities. It is also apparently very quiet, answering a common complaint of wind power. At my home in the greater Seattle area, we get more consistent breeze than sun, so the idea of Windspire (vs. solar panels) is very appealing to me.


Take a look at this YouTube video (above), which gives the basic overview. There are a number of these vertical turbine designs being talked about, and I really like the idea. The company claims that with a consitent breeze, averaging 12mph annually, Windspire can produce up to 2000 kwh, or about a quarter of a typical household's energy.

Another idea if find really appealing is integrated solar shingles, where the photovoltaic cells are built right into the roofing material, rather than being installed separately. As long as people are installing roofs, why shouldn't they be made of materials that would produce energy? I haven't stumbled upon a solution yet that really looks great, but the concepts are definitely out there. In this Bob Villa video, individual shingles are shown being installed. I think it would look much better if the entire roof was done in matching material, even if some shingles were dummies. You can jump around the video by sliding the timer bar at the bottom of it, if you are impatient like me. Or, check out a different approach in the video below:

This method caught my eye because it is made of such a thin film, it can actually be integrated onto shingle tiles (or in this case, metal roof panels). There must be so many different possible applications for thin material like this. The mind reels. Again, this isn't a great-looking roof, but the concept is emerging and I think we should keep our eye on the technology.

So what does all of this have to do with great consumer products? The most successful products play to the trends, and the trends can be particularly hard to read. As product developers, we place bets, and usually well before the situation is clear. In this case, the "SUV's-are-back" crowd are simply wrong and short-sighted. The long-term trend is toward high fuel prices, and renewable energy. I'm anxious to see what the Obama Administration does to further the trend. The companies that saw the trend coming have interesting renewable energy solutions already on the market today. They started development projects some time ago, and will have an early advantage to capitalize on the trend. What did they see back then, that others missed? What should we all be seeing today, to build the next great products?

It's nice to be surprised by a new gizmo, whether it merits the attention or not...

I saw this crazy little device on the web and I'm seriously considering getting one. The guys at Engadget gave it a (fairly) good review. What's it do? Helps you sit up straight. It actually attaches to you and then vibrates whenever you slouch. I'm not sure whether good posture really applies to people hunched over a computer, but I know that in my general man-of-the-town life, I really need one of these. It's like having your mother follow you around everywhere.

Photos are from the story on Engadget. Here it is: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/05/iposture-reviewed-aint-no-slouch/

How it got started for me

OK this is a short post and a quiz. This is a photo of the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1. It is the computer that got me started in computers.

True, before the TRS-80 I loved gadgets. We had gadgets in our house of every description. But they did their gadgety things however the gadgety people in gadget-land wanted them to. Now, suddenly, I could make a gadgety thing do stuff that I wanted it to. Incredible. Beats having friends, big-time. I mean, with real friends, if they start cheating at Dungeons and Dragons...(I'm just gonna stop here).

Back to gadgety gadgets: My TRS-80 Model 1 had 4K of RAM. 4K! And it had no floppy drive. My Uncle Gene had one with a floppy drive so he was one of my gadget heroes at the time. Mine used a good old fashioned casette tape as its persistent storage.

My other gadget hero was my grandpa, who seemed to have one of everything electronic, particularly camera and video stuff. But I'll save that nostalgia for another time.

Quiz time: When did the TRS-80 get introduced and enjoy its day in the sun as a prominent gadget?

photo credit: from a cool site I just found which is a virtual computer museum. http://www.mrmartinweb.com/computer.html