August 2, 2008
Hulu on the Nokia N95 via Skyfire
Maybe there is another way to do this, but with the slightly more open beta for Skyfire for Symbian I now have a way to watch Hulu on my N95 -- even over 3G networks. It's simple: just use Skyfire and load up the hulu page. It works quite well and can be zoomed. The video is a little choppy, but I also had JoikuSpot running in the background using some bandwidth, so I'm not entirely sure where the choppiness was coming from. However, since they both ran together things can only get better.
Pretty cool stuff. This combo is already largely better than broadcast mobile TV. Why bother with that when you can basically get on-demand TV and movies -- for free?
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(0)July 21, 2008
Another Game Down
I finished another game last night. This time I finished Portal. I had heard good things about it so I rented The Orange Box for the PS3 from Gamefly.
Portal didn't take me very long to complete (just a few hours) and the story was engaging. The main mechanic of the game was definitely original. It did leave me wanting more of the puzzle challenges, although I'd prefer they be thinking challenges rather than ones that require good timing or other "platformer" like gymnastics. I now understand the hype about Portal 2 at E3 last week.
Now, of course, I'm playing Half Life 2. I haven't played a true FPS game in quite a while. This is interesting because it doesn't really push you along in any particular way -- but there is only one way to go. I'm getting used to that and it's also how Portal went. I haven't played any Half Life game, so starting with Portal probably means I missed some "in-references" (although a couple were obviously such things).
I don't know if I'll actually spend the time to play through Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two (and I don't quite get the naming scheme yet). So far, though, the story as I'm interpreting it is interesting enough. We'll see. I am still paying Oblivion, after all.
July 16, 2008
Android, Google, and Openness
There is an article over at Ars Technica about Google giving updated SDK releases to the winners of the Android Developers contest from a while back. The open question is where or not this is a bad thing and whether or not this is an open thing.
First, is it bad? I would guess that it's not bad. Google may be making experimental changes or changes that just aren't ready for mass release. They are probably just trying to get feedback from developers who they know are using it. That same group of 50 developers just got a small chunk of money from Google for Android development. So why shouldn't Google request they look at releases before they are made public? Why wouldn't Google want a smaller group to get feedback from on certain releases? A wider array of developers would likely just get frustrated with constant changes being made. No, I don't think it has to be bad.
But is it open? Not really. If Google had made it clear that finalists in the ADC contests would get access to pre-release builds of the SDK and a clear market advantage by having this access, people would have known and would have weighed that value in with the cash payments. For some companies, going after tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars just isn't worth the legal overhead of all of the agreements and deals and contracts. (In fact, Google is one of these that often sees it that way -- they usually make a paid product free after they buy it -- Picasa? Check. Blogger? Check. FeedBurner? Check.) However, having even earlier access to the SDK, less stable or not, could be extremely valuable to some companies -- far outweighing the value of the cash from the contest. I don't think Google is being open right now, but ultimately the platform will either be open like it's supposed to be. Or failed. Will the rest of the Open Handset Alliance allow that to happen? Probably not as many are hardware companies and may have more capital invested than even Google.
If everything about Android is truly open, developers should be able to grab the entire source code to the SDK from some site (Open Handset Alliance?) and compile everything themselves to be able to use nightly versions of the SDK -- or even modify it themselves.
Will this hurt Android in the long run? Probably not. We just have to hope that the 50 ADC developers are giving good feedback to Google.
July 14, 2008
Is SMS Pricing by-the-byte Fair?
There has been a recent trend of showing SMS prices as if they were a byte-charged service to compare them to unlimited data. Is SMS really just another data service that should be included in your unlimited data plan? After all, instant messaging on your computer doesn't seem any different and it's included with your broadband. Or is SMS something completely different?
As it turns out, SMS is different. My understanding of SMS on a CDMA network is that it goes over the public channels in the same way a call origination will hunt down a handset. Since the data is short, by definition, this the only packet that goes out. The problem is this uses up one of the channels available for connecting a voice call to a receiving handset. The channels are a very limited resource as there are only a limited amount of them per tower. This limit increase the value of the channels to the carrier. I believe this is handled similarly on a GSM network.
It's also interesting that SMS became popular in Europe, before the US, where it wasn't uncommon for each message to cost the equivalent of 25 or 50 US cents. If I also recall correctly, the first SMS in the US was billed at similar rates but that was too expensive for us Americans. So, the carriers kept lowering rates until, finally, adoption started increasing. For a while it was even extremely cheap or even free to receive SMS messages. That was replaced with bulk and unlimited plans, though, and receiving returned to the same price as sending.
Now that SMS is so popular, the per message prices are increasing. However, the bulk and unlimited plans are still around. To me, this means that the carriers are trying to get more people to sign up for the recurring charges of the plans rather than reduce usage. If SMS usage is clogging up the public channels and causing an increase in busy signal and connection failures, they may actually want to reduce the usage until they can build out their networks better.
So, I think there are multiple possible reasons why SMS pricing has been increasing again in the US. It may not be fair, but I also don't think it's fair to say that 20 cents for a 140 byte message is like paying $1,500 per megabyte since it's a completely different service. What do you think? Does the technology behind SMS matter when the user is billed for its usage?
July 12, 2008
Gmail Tip: Rapidly Label Items
I use Gmail online as my primary email client. Gmail retrieves mail from all of my accounts, even other Google hosted domain mail accounts. This means I spend a lot of time on it and organizing email with it. I came across a neat little trick, though, for rapidly putting items in to folders, er, I mean "labels".
In order to use this tip, you must have keyboard shortcuts on. Using the keyboard shortcuts is a great way to get things done quickly in Gmail and many of the shortcuts are shared with Google Reader. Google has implemented something interesting with their keyboard shortcuts that you don't often find on web apps (keyboard shortcuts aren't all that common to begin with): multi-key shortcuts. In Gmail, you can hit "g" then "i" to go to your inbox.
This tip doesn't technically use a Google multi-key shortcut, but by following this you will have your own for putting email items in to filters. And it's simple:
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