Classic.....some irate non AT & T customer has had to wait hours to get their phone activated...
"It's like I got a Teddy Ruxpin and had to wait a day for the battery delivery," harped one user on the www.engadget.com Web site. "It's annoying that everything is crippled until activation is complete."
Sounds like a lot of customers have been up and running in minutes though. Will be interesting to hear feedback as the weeks unfold, and to see the market get flooded with iPhone accessories.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Word on the street
David Pogue of the New York Times has had an iPhone in his pocket for the last two weeks.
His favorable review of this new space age device highlights a few key things. AT & T's network is really slow - they are charging $US20 a month for unlimited internet - probably about as much as they can get away with! Imagine your vodafone 3G card when it reverts to 56kb - thats what viewing webpages is like. Luckily in WIFI hotspots it rocks.
No flash player is installed on the iPhone. My predicition is that this will come really soon. Theres no reason it can't be done after all the phone is running OS X - or is it? Apple has a pretty strong partnership with Adobe so I'm pretty sure they will be damn keen to get flash running on the device. They have You Tube so appear to be converting to the videos to their H .264 fancy format.
The development community is slowly discovering (via Flex) you can code an elegant interface with nice animating panels, fading messages etc in a handful of lines of mxml compared with a lot more in javascript/css . With the caching of the core UI components being built into future flash players I think this will push flash content ahead of AJAX style content and be especially usefully on low speed network powered devices .e.g. the iPhone.
Kudos to Apple for simplifying the signup process for the iPhone through their iTunes software.
This device can only get better and better. It will be really interesting to see if other Tech companies can keep up with the Apple innovation. As phone CPU's become more powerful overtime the elegance of the core OS will give Apple the flexibility to add some really cool things to this phone (I know the OS is becoming irrelevant on the desktop but on the phone it will add some core things that current phones just can't do). Imagine the phone running a webserver - I can think of some great applications straight away.
Will they do a nano version of the phone - I can't see why not unless the footprint is already stretched as it is. A smaller screen would have to be cheaper but I guess with a decent cpu, ram etc you may not save much money.
I can't see it being hard at all to crack the phone so it can run on any other GSM network - without the awesome visual voice mail though.
His favorable review of this new space age device highlights a few key things. AT & T's network is really slow - they are charging $US20 a month for unlimited internet - probably about as much as they can get away with! Imagine your vodafone 3G card when it reverts to 56kb - thats what viewing webpages is like. Luckily in WIFI hotspots it rocks.
No flash player is installed on the iPhone. My predicition is that this will come really soon. Theres no reason it can't be done after all the phone is running OS X - or is it? Apple has a pretty strong partnership with Adobe so I'm pretty sure they will be damn keen to get flash running on the device. They have You Tube so appear to be converting to the videos to their H .264 fancy format.
The development community is slowly discovering (via Flex) you can code an elegant interface with nice animating panels, fading messages etc in a handful of lines of mxml compared with a lot more in javascript/css . With the caching of the core UI components being built into future flash players I think this will push flash content ahead of AJAX style content and be especially usefully on low speed network powered devices .e.g. the iPhone.
Kudos to Apple for simplifying the signup process for the iPhone through their iTunes software.
This device can only get better and better. It will be really interesting to see if other Tech companies can keep up with the Apple innovation. As phone CPU's become more powerful overtime the elegance of the core OS will give Apple the flexibility to add some really cool things to this phone (I know the OS is becoming irrelevant on the desktop but on the phone it will add some core things that current phones just can't do). Imagine the phone running a webserver - I can think of some great applications straight away.
Will they do a nano version of the phone - I can't see why not unless the footprint is already stretched as it is. A smaller screen would have to be cheaper but I guess with a decent cpu, ram etc you may not save much money.
I can't see it being hard at all to crack the phone so it can run on any other GSM network - without the awesome visual voice mail though.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Thinking different
I was just having a quick look over the posts on Y Combinator when I came across an interesting blog post by Paul Buchheit - he's the smart chap at Google that created Gmail.
He basically says that with any new product ideas you can put them into three categories : obviously good ideas that are hard to implement, obviously good ideas that haven't been done yet and bad ideas.
So we can take from that is it best to stay away from bad ideas....wrong!
"Instead of endlessly debating whether an idea is good or not, we should find faster and cheaper ways of testing them" (Paul Buchheit)
He gives an example at Google where they dismissed an idea as bad (video upload) when in fact it was a really good idea. He thinks, at best smart people only have a 50% chance of getting it right. I tend to agree.
So with most people staying clear of your particularly bad idea why not just build it and show that your idea actually has merit.
As they say a picture is worth a thousand words but a working concept can bring a "bad idea" to life.
I've been mucking around with Fireworks CS3 and Flex Builder 3, getting familiar with the typical workflow of putting together a very rapid prototype. As I'm getting more and more used to how MXML (the Flex markup language) works I am thinking that the cost of producing a beta product has got even cheaper, so not only can you show that your bad idea is actually good, you can have a working prototype linked up with a database and your business logic in next to no time.
So can we do even better? Well I know for fact that Flex Builder 3 is going to make this even easier in the next few months when they introduce the database connection wizard with CRUD tools (thats create, update and delete pages for the non acronym aware folk). So if you are just starting out your career or better still are at school or uni then start learning Flex 3 today.
At the same time as learning Actionscript 3 (which is based on ECMA script , so is Javascript 2) and MXML you can actually have some fun building stuff that works. Having a simple real world problem to solve is great while learning and you may find your "bad idea" pays your uni fees once you go live with it. At worst I predict you will have learnt one of the most sought after technical skills in the 2006-2010 workplace.
He basically says that with any new product ideas you can put them into three categories : obviously good ideas that are hard to implement, obviously good ideas that haven't been done yet and bad ideas.
So we can take from that is it best to stay away from bad ideas....wrong!
"Instead of endlessly debating whether an idea is good or not, we should find faster and cheaper ways of testing them" (Paul Buchheit)
He gives an example at Google where they dismissed an idea as bad (video upload) when in fact it was a really good idea. He thinks, at best smart people only have a 50% chance of getting it right. I tend to agree.
So with most people staying clear of your particularly bad idea why not just build it and show that your idea actually has merit.
As they say a picture is worth a thousand words but a working concept can bring a "bad idea" to life.
I've been mucking around with Fireworks CS3 and Flex Builder 3, getting familiar with the typical workflow of putting together a very rapid prototype. As I'm getting more and more used to how MXML (the Flex markup language) works I am thinking that the cost of producing a beta product has got even cheaper, so not only can you show that your bad idea is actually good, you can have a working prototype linked up with a database and your business logic in next to no time.
So can we do even better? Well I know for fact that Flex Builder 3 is going to make this even easier in the next few months when they introduce the database connection wizard with CRUD tools (thats create, update and delete pages for the non acronym aware folk). So if you are just starting out your career or better still are at school or uni then start learning Flex 3 today.
At the same time as learning Actionscript 3 (which is based on ECMA script , so is Javascript 2) and MXML you can actually have some fun building stuff that works. Having a simple real world problem to solve is great while learning and you may find your "bad idea" pays your uni fees once you go live with it. At worst I predict you will have learnt one of the most sought after technical skills in the 2006-2010 workplace.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Capital Gains Tax
Just read an article about the Reserve Bank proposing capital gains tax on property investors in today's newspaper. It is all based on the problem of housing affordability in New Zealand.
The crux of the problem is down to the fact that take home pay for the average kiwi is too low and current house prices are now way too high for young people to get into the property market or those in the market looking to step up the ladder.
Its kind of ironic that the Kiwi Saver scheme is potentially going to make this worse. I think middle age working kiwis basically fall into two camps, those that are already well placed on the property ladder and those that never jumped on board. The latter group are probably those that will get into Kiwi saver as they can't afford a house deposit and want to try and save something.
Westpac economist Dominick Stephens raises a good point in the article, saying the first thing Kiwis do with a bit of spare money is buy a house - if they started a business they would be employing people.
When you compare house prices overseas relative to incomes, NZ's prices are way too high. I don't think anyone wants to spend the bulk of their income on mortgage repayments but in NZ it is the current reality.
I believe the current prices will be sustained unless, CGT is introduced. Any other investment gets taxed so houses need to too. The property investors honeymoon will finally be over and hopefully more kiwis can enjoy a higher standard of living in the future, creating more productive workers and fueling growth in our economy by more funds being channeled into business growth.
Anyone beg to differ?
The crux of the problem is down to the fact that take home pay for the average kiwi is too low and current house prices are now way too high for young people to get into the property market or those in the market looking to step up the ladder.
Its kind of ironic that the Kiwi Saver scheme is potentially going to make this worse. I think middle age working kiwis basically fall into two camps, those that are already well placed on the property ladder and those that never jumped on board. The latter group are probably those that will get into Kiwi saver as they can't afford a house deposit and want to try and save something.
Westpac economist Dominick Stephens raises a good point in the article, saying the first thing Kiwis do with a bit of spare money is buy a house - if they started a business they would be employing people.
When you compare house prices overseas relative to incomes, NZ's prices are way too high. I don't think anyone wants to spend the bulk of their income on mortgage repayments but in NZ it is the current reality.
I believe the current prices will be sustained unless, CGT is introduced. Any other investment gets taxed so houses need to too. The property investors honeymoon will finally be over and hopefully more kiwis can enjoy a higher standard of living in the future, creating more productive workers and fueling growth in our economy by more funds being channeled into business growth.
Anyone beg to differ?
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Adobe opens up
The Flex 3 SDK beta and Flex Builder 3 beta are available now from Adobe Labs. As Adobe is moving Flex to open source they have now opened access to their bug tracking system and full roadmap for Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3. This is great to see, especially for setting a benchmark of quality standards.
One thing that impresses me alot with Adobe lately is their constant flow of new developments. These guys get software development, they get marketing and now they are starting to win some big numbers of developers over. With a significant swing of users moving to an Apple OS and some moving to Ubuntu the Flex platform will become crucial for software developers to master. Adobe are the first to admit they have to make it easier, and with the recent Fireworks CS3 and now Flash CS3 they are letting designers skin and build components in their favourite/familiar design environments and easily import them into Flex Builder.
I guess I was thinking optimistically when I got my hands on the first Flex Builder beta a few years back, shocked to see it didn't have the rapid CRUD tools that have come standard since the mindblowing Dreamweaver Ultradev (back in 2000-01). Adobe are finally putting this into Flex Builder 3, not in this beta but looks like it will be implemented in the next few months. Thats super cool because it means a whole lot more people will be able to build Flex applications rapidly.
Apollo has been renamed to AIR, not sure if Adobe are the next Nike but it looks like they are "just doing it" pretty well at the moment.
Forgot to mention the caching now available in Flex...about time, now apps can be as small as 50KB.
One thing that impresses me alot with Adobe lately is their constant flow of new developments. These guys get software development, they get marketing and now they are starting to win some big numbers of developers over. With a significant swing of users moving to an Apple OS and some moving to Ubuntu the Flex platform will become crucial for software developers to master. Adobe are the first to admit they have to make it easier, and with the recent Fireworks CS3 and now Flash CS3 they are letting designers skin and build components in their favourite/familiar design environments and easily import them into Flex Builder.
I guess I was thinking optimistically when I got my hands on the first Flex Builder beta a few years back, shocked to see it didn't have the rapid CRUD tools that have come standard since the mindblowing Dreamweaver Ultradev (back in 2000-01). Adobe are finally putting this into Flex Builder 3, not in this beta but looks like it will be implemented in the next few months. Thats super cool because it means a whole lot more people will be able to build Flex applications rapidly.
Apollo has been renamed to AIR, not sure if Adobe are the next Nike but it looks like they are "just doing it" pretty well at the moment.
Forgot to mention the caching now available in Flex...about time, now apps can be as small as 50KB.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Kiwis cranking in Cyprus
I have been keeping a keen eye on the relatively new RS-X Windsurfing class (the new Olympic fleet). Barbara Kendall is leading the womens fleet after the first day. Jon Paul Tobin is doing ok as well. Good to see the kiwis up there with the best in the new fleet.
I am dead keen to have a go on a RS-X board, although with my 3 season old hollow NT98 and RS4 10.6 it's like comparing a BMW to a Toyota in comparison(or so I think). I think the RS-X would be quite a nice board to sail, with a high comfort factor, although a bit weighty and no where as stiff as the NT. I suspect in the light airs it trucks upwind. I remember the day I learnt to rail my Diamond 67, all of a sudden pointing 20 degrees higher in the lighter breezes. Same designer for the RS-X as well I believe - Jean Bouldaires (spelt right?) - he did the old AHD Diamonds.
There has a been a trend for light wind slalom to become popular again so I can't wait to have a go on a modern 130 litre board with an 2008 8.0 or 8.5 V8 when they come out. Nothing like trucking upwind to the airport and down Evans Bay and around to Oriental Bay in a steady 15 knot Southerly. If this gear goes upwind ok then I'll be able to launch off our boat ramp in a southerly which is a big bonus. Only 3 more months of Winter!
I am dead keen to have a go on a RS-X board, although with my 3 season old hollow NT98 and RS4 10.6 it's like comparing a BMW to a Toyota in comparison(or so I think). I think the RS-X would be quite a nice board to sail, with a high comfort factor, although a bit weighty and no where as stiff as the NT. I suspect in the light airs it trucks upwind. I remember the day I learnt to rail my Diamond 67, all of a sudden pointing 20 degrees higher in the lighter breezes. Same designer for the RS-X as well I believe - Jean Bouldaires (spelt right?) - he did the old AHD Diamonds.
There has a been a trend for light wind slalom to become popular again so I can't wait to have a go on a modern 130 litre board with an 2008 8.0 or 8.5 V8 when they come out. Nothing like trucking upwind to the airport and down Evans Bay and around to Oriental Bay in a steady 15 knot Southerly. If this gear goes upwind ok then I'll be able to launch off our boat ramp in a southerly which is a big bonus. Only 3 more months of Winter!
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Cheap calls to landlines are here
Take a deep breath.......
Throw away the handset
Skype Pro has launched. Unlimited toll calls to landlines for about $NZ3.40 a month (10 Euro for 5 months) using Skype. Just checking it out now
UPDATE....Ok its awesome over Paradise Cable...just tested calling the folks....no lag at all...so I can now talk from my laptop and not have to hold a phone to my ear. Super convenient, super cheap for calling grandma in Nelson and friends in Auckland.
So for those of you that pay $5 a month for unlimited calls to a friend that doesn't have a broadband computer, its now cheaper using skype and quite possibly a whole lot easier if you have a microphone in your laptop.
For business tolls this is insanely cheap. Anyone offering outbound national phone support around NZ, your bills just got a whole lot cheaper.
So the only thing NZ is missing now is local Skype numbers and unlimited rates to cell phones from Skype and of course 111 dialing...anyone know why that is?
Throw away the handset
Skype Pro has launched. Unlimited toll calls to landlines for about $NZ3.40 a month (10 Euro for 5 months) using Skype. Just checking it out now
UPDATE....Ok its awesome over Paradise Cable...just tested calling the folks....no lag at all...so I can now talk from my laptop and not have to hold a phone to my ear. Super convenient, super cheap for calling grandma in Nelson and friends in Auckland.
So for those of you that pay $5 a month for unlimited calls to a friend that doesn't have a broadband computer, its now cheaper using skype and quite possibly a whole lot easier if you have a microphone in your laptop.
For business tolls this is insanely cheap. Anyone offering outbound national phone support around NZ, your bills just got a whole lot cheaper.
So the only thing NZ is missing now is local Skype numbers and unlimited rates to cell phones from Skype and of course 111 dialing...anyone know why that is?
No more cables
At last, someone has come up with a way to do away with power cables. In the last few weeks we have seen things not slowing down at all, with surface computing, street view maps and now appliances that can be powered or charged wirelessly over a distance of around 4 metres.
Think laptop, cellphone, ipod...Very cool.
Think laptop, cellphone, ipod...Very cool.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Showering in the jungle
Really cool to see the announcement of Surface this week by Microsoft. Behind all the smoke and mirrors this new human computer interaction (HCI) is known as multi touch and is probably the biggest jump we'll see in HCI for quite some time.
Examples on the net show both horizontal and vertical surfaces being used, with multi user interaction on one surface or virtual interaction with another surface user elsewhere.
Most of us have only ever developed interfaces aimed for point and click and keyboard inputs. Having developed touch screen interfaces as well my experiences are single touch interfaces can offer improvements in workflow, customer interaction and engagement. I've had a dabble at mobile phone and tv interfaces as well which are quite dull in comparison. Multi touch takes human-computer interaction to the next level and makes what we do at the moment look rather old school so this is really exciting.
A few commentaries I have read have pointed out that this technology has been available for sometime. Popular Mechanics has some more in-depth coverage on the development by Microsoft. I'm not sure where Perceptive Pixel fit in, but check out their video of vertical multi touch panels which shows off some cool ways of using applications available today like Google Earth.
Microsoft Surface uses applications written using WPF / Silverlight which is available today. The underlying OS is MS Vista. Microsoft are focussed on the business sector initially (due to the $US8-$10K price tag and reckon we'll start to see these in casinos and retail shops later this year. There is some cool examples of applications developed for mobile phone shops, restaurants and hotels. Can't wait for our first bite with the iphone.
Our kids will just laugh when we tell them that optical mice were a huge leap over the trackball variety, just as disks were over tapes, ink jet over dot matrix, broadband over dial up, iphone over ipod. I ponder what will surpass surface computing?
The really cool thing with this is that computing is now being taken to the masses in everyday furniture and appliances. Kiwi kids gotta get that IT degree. I think they call it lifestyle computing. NZ needs to leverage this and make sure that F & P has the first consumer surface fridge that lets me order a top up of groceries by reaching for more milk or grapes. Imagine the wall tiles in your shower being a waterproof multi touch display, you'd be able to shower in a virtual jungle while scanning your news feeds and viewing some holiday photos.
Update - check out the ibar
Examples on the net show both horizontal and vertical surfaces being used, with multi user interaction on one surface or virtual interaction with another surface user elsewhere.
Most of us have only ever developed interfaces aimed for point and click and keyboard inputs. Having developed touch screen interfaces as well my experiences are single touch interfaces can offer improvements in workflow, customer interaction and engagement. I've had a dabble at mobile phone and tv interfaces as well which are quite dull in comparison. Multi touch takes human-computer interaction to the next level and makes what we do at the moment look rather old school so this is really exciting.
A few commentaries I have read have pointed out that this technology has been available for sometime. Popular Mechanics has some more in-depth coverage on the development by Microsoft. I'm not sure where Perceptive Pixel fit in, but check out their video of vertical multi touch panels which shows off some cool ways of using applications available today like Google Earth.
Microsoft Surface uses applications written using WPF / Silverlight which is available today. The underlying OS is MS Vista. Microsoft are focussed on the business sector initially (due to the $US8-$10K price tag and reckon we'll start to see these in casinos and retail shops later this year. There is some cool examples of applications developed for mobile phone shops, restaurants and hotels. Can't wait for our first bite with the iphone.
Our kids will just laugh when we tell them that optical mice were a huge leap over the trackball variety, just as disks were over tapes, ink jet over dot matrix, broadband over dial up, iphone over ipod. I ponder what will surpass surface computing?
The really cool thing with this is that computing is now being taken to the masses in everyday furniture and appliances. Kiwi kids gotta get that IT degree. I think they call it lifestyle computing. NZ needs to leverage this and make sure that F & P has the first consumer surface fridge that lets me order a top up of groceries by reaching for more milk or grapes. Imagine the wall tiles in your shower being a waterproof multi touch display, you'd be able to shower in a virtual jungle while scanning your news feeds and viewing some holiday photos.
Update - check out the ibar
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