More musings on the cloud

So I've had an iPad for a week now. In fact, I'm typing this blog post on it. I'm pretty happy with it so far. What I see now as the obvious market opportunity is basically this: since there is no direct support for server filesystems (SMB or AFP), it creates an opening for a basic editing app that connects to a cloud service, caches files locally on the iPad (within the limited filesystems space the app has), syncs with it, and can handle Office/Gdocs/OpenXML formats. And the real opportunity comes if there's a desktop component for Windows/Mac as well.

Apple's iWork could do it but it's Mac-only and doesn't take advantage of the MobileMe service well enough. Microsoft could do it with an iPad-native tool added to the forthcoming versions of Office for Windows and Mac. The wildcards are Google and the third-party storage companies. Box.net, Dropbox, or another storage provider could provide an iPad app to help them sell storage. They already have apps for the client OS side.

The real point is that whoever is first with a robust solution to the problem likely wins the war. I bet folks are hurrying to get to market...

As April grinds to a halt

I am in the process of setting up my new iPad. It was actually set up hours ago - in fact, I did it quickly while I was at a client's office this afternoon. That fast and that easy. Really.

However, it's taken me a little while to get "HD" versions of my apps (most were free, and I spent about $15 on upgrades), and to find a cloud-based Office suite for the iPad (I went with the $7.99 "Office2 HD", which has Google Docs and iDisk support). Then I had to set up the local sync parameters, which resulted in a 1024x768 version of my 13k+ photo library being generated and then synced up. It took about an hour and a half to re-res everything, even with an i7 under my Mac's hood. It's uploading to the iPad now.

The only thing I'm kind of waiting for is a iPad-centric version of Tweetie, my Twitter app of choice. I figure that'll come pretty soon now that Twitter owns the app. The iPad is, in the end, one of those game-changing devices that will ultimately redefine what a computer will do for most people. And in the end, it's just too important to my career and life for me to not jump on the wave near the beginning.

HP buys Palm. Woulda Coulda Shoulda.

HP has come to the rescue of struggling Palm - but I think it's doomed anyways. Sure, WebOS is a fine accomplishment. In the year+ since the original WebOS device (the Pre) was announced the OS has matured nicely. And if the Pre had come out in early 2008 instead of mid 2009 Palm would probably be riding high again. Problem is, Apple and RIM had already gobbled up all the mindshare for smartphones (enough to convince Microsoft to reboot their platform entirely) and there was nothing left. Plus, when Palm introduced the Pre it was a US-only CDMA device and was only on the smallest CDMA carrier.

Since then, they've broadened the line of WebOS devices but it's too little, too late. In buying Palm, HP gets WebOS - a nice hedge against Android and Apple that lets HP come back into the mobile space and with an OS they control. And WebOS in theory should scale nicely for tablets and other cloud-based devices.

The catch is that HP has never shown any ability to market mobile devices. They have also never really had an aptitude for mass marketing outside of their printers. HP is pretty much a consumables and services company right now. They have more market share than Dell right now, but that's mainly a function of Dell's ineptitude more than HP's prowess. Someone has to be the market leader.

Fortunately, HP is big enough and profitable enough to keep a Zombie Palm running for a long time to come, enhancing WebOS enough to keep it competitive but never a major player in the market. I don't see them ever leveraging Palm into a major market share play. That ship sailed a long time ago and I think Android was the last entrant into the market.

My last Palm was a Treo 700p - which I ditched in favor of an iPhone the day the iPhone came out 3 years ago and I haven't looked back since.

iPad month one

I've set up a few. I'll have one myself soon. Now that it's out, I see a lot more practical value than I originally did. Typing on it is actually pretty good. But here's the missing links to it right now:

- No direct printing. There are a few workarounds and 3rd-party print methods, but no Apple-sanctioned way to get print output to even a small group of supported devices. I don't think OS 4.0 will change that, either.

- The filesystem isn't shared between apps yet, and there's no true wireless server access or file sync. So the killer app would be a local (maybe as an app written in HTML5) app that has its own cache in local filespace that syncs to Google Docs and has a desktop component that does the same sync. That puts all your real storage in the cloud, with the iPad mainly caching so that it can be used offline. Internet isn't quite ubiquitous yet.

Resolve these and the iPad will be the biggest thing ever.

Just finished an ugly read

I read "The Year of the Cock", by Alan Wieder. To save you time, here's the synopsis:

- Moderately successful reality TV producer gets a case of ego, leaves long-suffering wife.

- Moves into apartment, starts screwing a diverse array of women.

- Decides his dick is too small after seeing Fred Durst naked. Goes off on obsessive dysmorphic streak and freaks out.

- Flies to NYC to win back wife. Succeeds for a while. Gets a little less neurotic and gives props to his shrink.

- After reconciliation, has a kid who he loves. Wife divorces him in the end anyways.

- Tells us how stupid he was.

Amen to that. I think I'll stay married. Then again, I was anyways.

When I was 14

The day I turned 14, I don't remember. I'm pretty sure it involved a sparsely attended birthday party (I wasn't the most popular youth), and my hormones bubbling over.

The day I turned 24, I went out for drinks and food (but mostly drinks) with my girlfriend and a few of my friends who lived around Boston. Went to work at my crappy dead-end pseudo-sales job that I had back then (I was making about $20k working the floor at Egghead for a dedicated porn enthusiast), and went home to our rented apartment.

The day I turned 34, I went to work at a much better job (it was a Tuesday), and then I went out for a quiet dinner with my wife - the same person who was my girlfriend at the birthday ten years prior (we got engaged later that year). We had owned our house for seven years. I think I played golf that afternoon before dinner.

The day I turned 44, I got to go to back to bed for a couple of hours after being awakened by a tantrum when my son couldn't get a toy to work at 7AM. Followed by a lovely session of trimming nose hair because that's something you get in your forties. After breakfast, we watched a rented movie, and we are going to a school meeting before dinner at a Mexican restaurant where I will be made to wear a goofy sombrero at some point during the evening.

After which I shall work on a proposal, write instructions for one of my employees' use tomorrow, and do laundry.

Life goes on. 54 should be interesting, you think?

I haven't pre-ordered an iPad (and I'm not going to)

The iPad comes out in just under three weeks. Pre-orders began this past Friday morning. The wifi version will be delivered on Saturday the 3rd of April if you pre-order, and the version with 3g can also be pre-ordered though you will not get it until late April (date TBD). I have a large number of clients participating in the pre-order. Quite a few of my fellow Apple nerds are doing it as well. But not me.

I did wait in line twice for the iPhone - once for the original, once for the 3G. When the 3GS came out I had it shipped to my house instead since that was an option. I'm not planning to order this years' iPhone either, though.

Why did I wait for an iPhone in 2007? Well, back then I had a Treo 700p. It sucked. Hard. I got tired of it right around the same time the iPhone was nearing launch. Had the timing been different, I would likely have sucked it up longer. I waited for the 3G because heck - it had been kinda fun the first time (of course the massive activation Fail Apple and AT&T teamed up on with the 3G subsidy took the fun right out of it). By the time the 3GS came out the only reason I got one then was because I was looking to get an upgrade for my wife, who had a 4GB original iPhone and needed more space. So I took the 3GS and gave her my 3G.

There's nothing falling apart in my technological life that compels me to go get an iPad sight-unseen. It looks like a really neat device. It takes the iPhone metaphor up properly without giving too much away. The prices are pretty reasonable as these things go, though the 3G version is being sold at a hefty premium.

But there's nothing I do in life that screams "I have to have an iPad!"

Whenever I leave the house, I have my iPhone (which I now refer to as my "iPad nano") in my pocket. That gets me email, some music, quick webpage referrals, Yelp, Wikipedia, and some news sites along with a few games. Pretty much my essentials. There's a charger in my car, a pocket for the Bluetooth headset in my jacket, and I usually have my Mophie JuicePack Air handy to give me a full day's talk time if I need it.

For my work, I almost always have a MacBook in my bag. It's a 13" that will be replaced with an Arrandale if they ever ship 'em (let's hope this Tuesday brings laptop joy). If I'm working I have it with me.

When I go on a trip longer than overnight I also have the laptop with me. Staying in a hotel, going on vacation, or visiting family and friends I bring the laptop along. That's pretty much a necessity on anything but weekend daytrips.

And back in November I got a Kindle (the little one). It holds all my tech reference material plus an occasional book for vacation trips (and I've bought a couple of bestsellers rather than getting them as dead tree versions). I don't take it everywhere but I do have it in my bag a lot.

In other words, the iPad doesn't really fit any of my typical use patterns. If/when I get one, here's what it'll do for me:

- Keep me from bringing my laptop downstairs to sit on the sofa

- Give me something to take on overnight weekend trips

- Provide another, less battery-efficient way to read my e-books and reference material

Will I still get one? Of course I will at some point. And I'll find ways to use it that aren't covered by this list, either. But I figure that isn't a sufficiently compelling reason to buy one the first week.

A couple more reasons why I'm not a Republican

These are all mine:

In 2000, George W. Bush was awarded the Presidency by a bitterly divided Supreme Court after a razor-thin winning margin was established in Florida by a count rigged as best as possible by a virtually all-Republican state political hierarchy. Post-election analysis established clearly that had the count been allowed to proceed, by virtually all measures Gore would have won the state.

This was considered by Republicans to be a mandate in their favor.

In 2004, another virtual dead heat was decided by a late-night count in Ohio that, while not established to be fraudulent like Florida in 2000 was, had a lot of irregularities. This was also considered to be a mandate by Republicans.

In 2008, the Democratic candidate won in an electoral landslide and a popular vote margin of 7% (or 8.5 million votes). Republicans consider it a mandate in their favor. And a plurality of these same Republicans believe that the current President is constitutionally unqualified for the office. And that the election was likely stolen by a single community service organization.

In many ways I could call myself conservative (with a small "c"). Most of the time I would rather government keep the purse shut. I would prefer if pregnant women elected to have their babies (though I believe they have a right to decide not to). I believe in marriage over long-term cohabitation (though I see no reasons why same-sex couples can't marry as well). I think taxes should be moderate, and government should mainly keep out of my way and let me try and be productive to society. I'm not interested in doing drugs (but I think most of them should be legal, regulated, and taxed).

But I also believe that there is a place for government to provide benefits. A place for regulation. That the private sector sometimes fails - and in the health care arena it already has failed. I believe government can do that better. I don't like political parties that legislate morality and try to use religion as an excuse to deny reality. I'm annoyed when government tells me how to run my business. But I'm deeply offended when they presume to tell me how to run my life.

So until that changes someday, there's no way I could possibly be a Republican.

Why I'm not a Republican

This fine list was compiled by Slashdot user "Boronx".  I copied/pasted it with a couple of typo corrections.  Democrats believe occasionally weird things, but this goes way over the top of anything mainstream Democrats think:

Republicans believe:
That there were WMD, but Saddam moved them to Syria.
That there weren't WMD, but we had good evidence he did.
That even if we didn't have evidence, Saddam said he had them, and wouldn't let in inspectors.
That we've put on more debt in 1 year under Obama than 8 years with bush.
That the best thing to do in a recession is to balance the budget.
That social security is in crisis.
That Barney Frank forcing banks to loan to black people is what caused the crash of 2008.
That tax increases on the ultra rich are class warfare, but tax increases on everyone else are fair.
That gay marriage threatens marriage.
That the US has the best health care in the world.
That the most conservative, free-market based healthcare overhaul you could imagine coming from a Democrat is a dangerous socialist experiment.
That contrary to the Democratic plan, the best way to fix health care is a combination of tort reform and letting insurance comapanies pick their favorite state to regulate them.
That invading Iraq wasn't a war crime.
That torturing people isn't a war crime.
That we only tortured terrorists.
That waterboarding isn't torture.
That holding people without trial forever is ok.
That an illegal, dictatorial system of counter terrorism is better than a legal one.
That Bill Clinton was one of the most corrupt presidents.
That Sarah Palin might make a good president.
That Rush Limbaugh isn't a toxic zit on the ass of humanity.
You probably don't believe *all* of these things, but any one of them is obviously false or flatly ludicrous, and if you don't believe any of them, why would you be a Republican?

Followup on yesterday's race

Looks like NASCAR's in a box now. They said that drivers would police themselves. Well, Carl Edwards just did. Granted, the end result was a flying crash, but what if Brad's car had stayed on 4 wheels and just spun out? Then we're talking about payback and nobody's calling for Carl's head. That's the problem. If they can hit and wreck each other, you can't really talk about the way the wreck happens. For what it's worth, Carl hit him in the straightaway (not in a turn) and put him into the SAFER barrier. Bad Things happened to the #12 afterwards, but that's the randomness of physics. If I'm going to punish him for anything, it's for going the wrong way down pit lane.

My verdict? A fine for that (stupid move) and "double-secret probation" for the rest of the year for dumping Kesolowski. Not so much because I'm a huge Edwards fan but because that's the boundary that NASCAR set. And at the driver's meeting in Bristol 2 weeks from now? "Gentlemen, now you know where the line is. We don't want anybody else over it, or they're going to be staying at home for a while." That ought to tamp things down.

(Update 3/13/10: A draft of this was published on Yahoo Sports - link is here)