TechBait

I recently bought a Motorola DROID smart phone on the Verizon Wireless network.  The phone seems to be very durable, and the Android operating system is a wonderful competitor to Apple’s iPhone.  There are a growing number of apps available for these phones, with some notable ports of iPhone apps to the Android platform.  There are some weaknesses of the Motorola DROID phone that potential customers should know about.  The ones that I have stumbled upon are that text messages get deleted often by the phone, even when the auto delete setting is switched off, the fact that the phone has pathetically small internal memory for apps (about 256 megabytes, which is pathetic), and that multimedia messages take up so much internal memory that you might end up deleting apps just so that the phone dialer storage doesn’t run you into the wall when its growth runs wild, and vanishing bluetooth devices.

• Text message threads are set to auto delete when they hit a certain number of messages.  You can alter or turn off this default behavior in the test message app settings, but it will eventually delete them anyway.  It happened to me several times and it is happening to others our there.  The only thing you can do right now is to install SMS Backup, a nifty free app that will copy your text messages to your Gmail account for archiving.  It works, and there are paid apps that will also do this for multimedia messages (picture and video containing messages).

• The Motorola DROID has a pathetically small internal memory of 512 MB, half of which is available for apps.  To add insult to injury, Verizon is advertising that phone as having 16GB of memory due to the micro SD card that they ship with.  The problem is that Google has made it so that only internal phone memory is available for app executables, and most apps are made in a way that they use the internal memory for everything, so if you install many apps you run out of memory pretty quickly.  Regular apps are small, but install a few games or some data crazy apps and see how far you get.  Shame on Motorola for cheaping out on memory, Verizon for false advertising, and Google for not allowing some more leeway for using the SD card for applications, although they cite security and piracy concerns.

• The “phone dialer storage” app seems to store data of some sort on the phone, and it tends to runaway with itself as you create more message threads, especially those rich with photos or video attachments.  The obvious cure would be to delete the photos and other attachments or purge your text messages every so often, which works up to a point, but I found that my phone dialer storage held it’s data cache even after I purged.  The phone got sluggish and rebooted itself a few times too.  Finally after one spontaneous reboot, the cache was somehow purged.  Perhaps there is some internal software setting that does this, but it’s VERY annoying and not a graceful way to go about it.  The best thing that Android users who hit their phone’s memory limits can do in the meantime is to get an app management application which allows them to shuffle apps around from the SD card back to phone memory.  What this means is that you have to archive the app to the SD card and then uninstall it through the management app.  If you want to use it later you can reinstall it from the archived copy.  This allows you to archive those many megabyte game apps that you might not use everyday but don’t want to ditch for good.  It’s a compromise but it works.

• My bluetooth ear piece, a Samsung WEP470, occasionally vanishes from the phone.  Usually rebooting the ear piece fixes the problem, but I found that one time it did not.  Sometimes turning the phone’s bluetooth on and off would fix the problem.  One time nothing worked, and you could hear the incoming phone call beep in the ear piece but when the call was answered no sound came through the ear piece.  I thought the Samsung bit the dust and even started shopping for a new one.  I tried a shot in the dark approach of turning the phone off and removing the battery for a few seconds, about 10, and then powering it up again.  My bluetooth ear piece now worked fine again.  Go figure.

The Archos 5 is a slate computer that competes in the same market segment as Apple’s iPad and HP’s Slate computer which runs Windows.  The Archos is a nifty gadget because it is compatible with the Android marketplace apps and is essentially backed by Google’s massive software effort.  It is larger than a phone and makes for a great WiFi Internet device when home or have access to a WiFi hotspot.  As anyone knows, the small screens on most smart phones are woefully inadequate for real web surfing, and the Archos and other similar devices provide a larger screen and more memory for a fuller Internet experience.  While it is true that this device would be better if it had 3G capability like the iPad or other devices in this segment, perhaps the Archos makers know that most gadget freaks already have 3G smart phones and this is yet another tool that the true gadget freak will have in their technology bag of fun.

I agree with Google that the outlook for Android is VERY good since they are doing with mobile phones what Microsoft did with PC operating systems.  It’s funny that Microsoft was there first and failed horribly at the PDA/mobile phone OS market.  Android is one OS that is running on the devices from multiple manufacturers, and in time there will be so many more Android devices than iPhones.  It’s just the Law of Averages at work.  The article mentions that Microsoft is entering the fray by attacking HTC over patent violations, but another story states that HTC cut a deal with Microsoft, which would mean Microsoft sticking it to Apple by giving HTC a pass of sorts through a royalty agreement.  The software business is once again looking like a soap opera script.  It’s fun though.  :)

HTC is licensing Microsoft patents as they are facing patent lawsuits and possible injunctions by Apple, who wants the HTC phones banned from the US market.  Sorry, but IMO this is just another illustration how these micro patented features are just a bad idea.  It hobbles creative freedom and results in less choice for consumers.  If Apple’s iPhone is so great, then let it compete for the hearts and mind of consumers based on the whole Apple aura that surrounds it, rather than Apple using these patented features to force HTC to stop selling what seems like great phones in the US market.  This is just Apple afraid of Android, IMO.

The article also proposes a fun conspiracy angle claiming that maybe Microsoft is “throwing HTC a life preserver” in it’s pending battle with Apple.  i.e. Microsoft sticking it to Apple.  That is funny, and very possible.

Ever wonder how to use your smart phone’s Internet connection as a modem for your notebook or laptop computer while unable to connect to another WiFi hot spot?  While WiFi hot spots are available at an increasing rate, sometimes you are in a place where an unsecured public access one just is not available.  Now, if you are out and about one might wonder can’t you just use the phone’s web browser to look something up?  Well, yes, to a degree.  Sometimes there is just no replacement for a full computer for your Internet needs.  There are several programs out there, and there are also methods that involve rooting your phone, but a non root convenient method is to use a nifty application called PDAnet on your PC and phone.  Simply install PDAnet to the computer and it will also install the driver.  Once you connect your Android phone to the computer via the USB charging cable, the phone side app will be installed and you can now use the phone as a modem for the computer.  You have to turn on USB debugging mode, which was already enabled on my phone.  Once everything is up and running, you will have full Internet access on the computer via the phone and your unlimited data plan.  I wouldn’t use it as my sole connection or to download vast amounts of data, but it is great in a pinch.  Case in point, you want to use your computer with Internet access at a friend’s house where there is no WiFi hot spot to connect to.  You need to show them something on the computer which requires Internet access.  This solution is the solution to that conundrum.  PDAnet has a trial period and after that you need to pay a modest one time $29 fee for continued full access.  You can continue to use it free of charge but secure HTTPS sites will not be able to be accessed from the free version after the trial expiration.  You can still use it for regular HTTP access however.

I guess that you never know, but I think that i4i is going after Microsoft because they are a deep pockets company, and frankly if I had a patent that I thought was being unfairly taken advantage of by a behemoth like Microsoft then I might sue as well.  Maybe the company founder(s) want to lure Microsoft into a lucrative acquisition deal and spend the rest of their days checking email via satellite wireless from some private island somewhere?   It would be a shame if they went after OpenOffice, especially since OpenOffice has a small market share and couldn’t possibly be threatening this i4i’s business.  I wonder how valid their patent claim really is?  There is not a great track record of for profit software companies suing open source software providers.  I recall the famous SCO vs Linux debacle.   Anyone even hear of SCO lately?

There are reports that Google is spending over $100. million to open source a video codec by ON2 in order to leapfrog a web video standards impasse.  As it stands today, much of the web’s video is encoded in proprietary formats like Adobe Flash, for example YouTube’s .flv video files, and that various browsers are set to use the Ogg Theora codecs while Apple refuses to use it due to an “uncertain patent landscape”.    Netscape accuses Google of sabotaging the standard because they use the Adobe formats for YouTube, etc.  Lots of infighting.  If you want to play the videos you need a third party proprietary plugin like Adobe Flash.  While this is free for the end user of an approved Operating System, it is very hard for device and software makers to create software and products around this without facing potentially huge licensing/royalty or lawsuit issues.  Having an open source alternative that is backed by such a standards setting monster like Google would take a huge step towards making this problem go away.

Ogg Theora is actually based upon an earlier open sourced version of the On2 codec, but it’s performance can’t match the newer versions or the non open sourced competitors.  The Register article explains the whole situation very well.  I’m linking to it in order to comment on it.  Google has become this 8000 lb gorilla on many technology fronts.  They wield enormous power due to their sheer size and domination of the Internet search and advertising markets.  One little change in their search algorithm or standard can shut down many people’s profitable Internet properties overnight, with no recourse.  They have become evil, ironic for a company who’s motto is or was, “Do No Evil.”

So, if they open source this video codec and make web video seemless and ubiquitous without the worries of patent issues, they would take a small step away from being evil.

Windows 7 is going to be the first Windows OS to treat the GPU more as an equal to the CPU, according to Nvidia product manager Chris Daniel.  He also says that with Windows 7, Microsoft is “really opening up the immense parallel computing horsepower of the GPU natively right in the operating system.”

This is obviously great news for graphics ungry users like engineers and digital artists.  We already know that this will be great for gamers.

Windows 7 introduces a new API called DirectX Compute, which enables the system to fully use the parallel processing in modern graphics cards from Nvidia, ATI, and others.

In ye olden days of PC lore, when computer processors didn’t include the math coprocessor for cost purposes, anything requiring floating point math calculation took FOREVER to complete.  I know this because I had an old Packard Bell 486SX laptop with the old CPU which did not have the coprocessor built in.  A 486DX would have had the floating point instructions built into the main CPU.

I had a 3D architectural program that would let you build houses and rooms in 2D, then it would render them in 3D for a walkthrough.  The 3D rendering required floating point math, and it took a long time to render on the non floating point CPU.  This old laptop did, however, have a spot for a math coprocessor.  I purchased and installed it, and the 3D rendering phase of that program took off.   Not long after that, math coprocessing instructions were built into the main CPU as a standard feature.  This was before the days of these 3D graphics cards with their unreal floating point performance.  These cards’ instructions are utilized by many games’ routines which are specifically built for accessing these features.  In DOS and some older Windows versions like Windows 95, the games (like DOOM) would basically create their own operating environment which the OS would shell out to, in order to have access to 32 bit and graphics functions.  Later on, Microsoft introduced the DirectX API for direct access to the graphics features via the OS itself.  Now it seems that they are taking it one step further.  I am not totally clear on how the games, which are essentially Windows apps, could access the graphics features via regular DirectX, but regular apps require this new API?  I probably am missing a step somewhere in there.   I’m sure that there are new GPU features that they allow access to, or improve the access.  Maybe this new API merely makes it easier to access for regular (non games) applications programmers.  I really do not know at this time.  I have not studied the API.

Chris Daniel further claims that Directx Compute will “enable use of advanced technologies like SLI-based, multi-GPU gaming, 3D Vision, and PhysX real-time physics.”  So, this will bring parallel computing to the masses.

Well, that’s great news for graphics hungry Windows users who have top shelf graphics hardware.  I guess that that $6000 Alienware gaming laptop is again calling my name.

According to many articles, including this one, Apple tried to have Microsoft stop running ads touting how expensive it is to buy an Apple notebook.  The ads showed a frustrating shopping trip of a twenty something who wanted a laptop for under $1000.  She was frustrated at the Apple Store, and ended up buying an HP Pavilion running Windows for $699 at a local electronics store.  Well, I have to back that up.  Apple’s products are expensive.  Now, many Apple fans will say that there are good reasons for that, and there are.  This doesn’t alter the fact that the average consumer sees things in dollars and cents, pounds and pence, euros and whatever.  I really can’t believe the nerve of Apple, though.  After running those commercials where the pudgy facsimile of Bill Gates, representing the PC, was constantly bested by that pretty boy who was in Galaxy Quest, they had the gall to complain about Microsoft running ads that were ACCURATE vis a vie pricing?  Give me a break, Apple!  Apple should be touting WHY their machines are priced higher.  You know, their OS is tailor made for the hardware and that there are less driver issues and incompatibilities because they have a closed system and control all that stuff.  If Apple freed up the hardware and just marketed the OS, then Macs would be on the shelves for PC prices, but Apple is not MS and would never be viable enough without their hardware business.  It is a slightly different business model.  It has worked for them and I do not begrudge them this.  I do begrudge them crying “No fair!” to what amounted to accurate Microsoft advertising.

Apple, you are better than that.

The Internet online version of the Office 2010 apps will be available at no cost ala Google Docs.  Windows Live account users, Microsoft hosted Office Web apps, and customer hosted Office Web apps for Microsoft Software Assurance enterprise customers will all be free.  SMBs who decide on Office 2010 web apps instead of purchasing regular packaged (non online) Microsoft Office will have to pay  Estimate is perhaps a $50 price. We don’t know the price but like I said that is a guesstimate.

Office 2010 web apps will be a bit stripped down as compared to their full software versions, but they will be useful for many.  Let’s face it, honestly, how many of the features of full blown MS Office to you actually use?  I thought so.  One great feature of the Office web apps is their integration with SharePoint 2010, providing it with a full backend data store to organize and access Office files, and a SharePoint portal to boot!  Office web apps give SharePoint a clear edge when compared to many other competing Wiki solutions which rely on basic forms submittal and lacking in the rich applications interface.

Microsoft is offering a robust set of installed apps with web versions, SharePoint integration, a free Windows Live version.  Customers can even shoode a Microsoft hosted option or choose to host it internally themselves. Google’s office apps can only be hosted with Google, and they do not offer a SharePoint equivalent.  Microsoft’s web office will work under Firefox and Safari, in addition to IE, but NOT Google’s Chrome. (unsupported)

This is heating up to be an all out multi front war betweeen Microsoft and Google.

I like this!