Category: Uncategorized

I’m inspired by my colleagues at Metacritic to try a composite review. Instead of a movie or DVD, I’m going to try it with a product, the Palm Treo 700w.

Background
I own and enjoy (most of the time) a Palm Treo 650, via Cingular (no love lost on the carrier, but not sure it matters), so I’m quite familiar with the device prior to the 700w. The resolution of the 650 screen is a big selling point, and having seen the Treo 600, I wouldn’t give up those extra pixels. As most below note clearly, the Treo 700w has a lower-res screen. My take is that if you don’t care about a good screen, then you’d carry a much smaller cellphone. It’s all about the e-mail. Guess I’m fortunate that CNET Networks is willing to use GoodLink software with the Palm OS, so I haven’t had to wait for a version “native” to Microsoft Exchange. Personally, I won’t be looking for a replacement until I get fed up with the VGA camera in the 650.

On to the reviews…

What did I learn? It’s very hard to normalize scores across different reviews, especially when some of the most interesting reviews don’t give any score at all.

The punchline? I couldn’t come up with any meaningful score. If I had to come up with something to sum up the general opinion on a 100 point scale, I guess it would be a 68. That’s a total guesstimate.

CNET.com – 7.6 out of 10, Very Good
Palm Treo 700w
Reviewer: Bonnie Cha
Review date: January 4, 2006

The bottom line: The Treo 700w brings Windows Mobile and a number of useful features–such as push e-mail and photo speed dial–to the much-beloved smart phone, but its heft and washed-out screen has us giving the edge to the Treo 650.

Bonus: Video of the Treo 700w (didn’t see this anywhere else)

Updated January 24, 2006 Score is now 7.3. I’ll have to inquire why it dropped, or what changed in the 20 days between the initial review and the current review, as the bottom line didn’t change. 98 users have weighed in, with an average score of 6.3.

NYTimes.com – No number score
A Marriage Not Made in Heaven
Reviewer: David Pogue
Review date: January 5, 2006

The Treo 700W ($400 with a two-year Verizon commitment) is a Frankensteinian mishmash. Some of its features are so inspired and well executed, you can’t help grinning, while others are so clumsy, you smack your forehead.

Wall Street Journal – no number score
A New Palm Treo Uses Microsoft’s Software, But It Doesn’t Beat 650
Reviewer: Walter S. Mossberg
Review date: January 5, 2006

The Treo 700w will appeal to some Windows Mobile fans, and to some corporate IT staffs. But for everyone else, I advise sticking with the Palm-based Treos.

Boston Herald – no number score
Treo 700w takes steps forward with some useful new features
Reviewer: Eric Convey
Review date: January 9, 2006
Generally positive, but no firm opinion to quote. Closest would be this one…

For individuals, it will come down to a matter of taste. I love Palm as a company, but have found Windows Mobile more appealing than the Palm OS.

Treonauts – no number score
Treo 700w: The Treonauts Take
Reviewer: Andrew
Review date: January 6, 2006

It seems that many Treonauts cannot wait for me to finish my detailed review of the Treo 700w and would like to know _now_ exactly how I feel about this latest addition to the Treo family so below is my take…
Overall, I cannot categorize the Treo 700w as being better or worse than the Treo 650 – they are simply different. Having said this, there is something to be said for the fact that the Treo 650 is one generation older than the Treo 700w and that it is nonetheless still able to firmly hold its ground in the face of a fresh new contender a full year after its release

Note: Treonauts got started earlier, in late December 2005. The detailed review is in progress, with three lengthy posts covering specifics already out there.

PC Magazine – no number score
Palm, Verizon Release Treo 700w
Reviewer: Sascha Segan
Review date: ?
Thorough review of the specs from CES, but no firm opinion.

We’ll give you more impressions of the Palm Treo 700w later in the show.

Couldn’t find the additional impressions by searching PCMag.com.

Treocentral.com – 4 out of 5
Treo 700w
Reviewer: Michael Ducker
Review date: January 5, 2006

The Treo 700w was created to specifically address a demand in the marketplace for a Windows Treo, and Palm did an excellent job on their first try.

Found at the end of a lengthy review.

Techworld.com – no number score
Palm’s 700w – the Windows Mobile Treo: Other Windows smartphone makers had better watch out!
Reviewer: Yardena Arar, PC World
Review date: January 9, 2006

Buying advice: Mobile professionals tied to Micorosft Exchange should be pleased with a Palm that takes steps to solve the problems of Microsoft’s convoluted Windows Mobile operating System – and can access fast data services. … The Treo 700w is almost guaranteed to please a growing number of mobile professionals who are tied to Microsoft Exchange Server, and the fast data support is the icing on the cake.

Pocketnow.com – 4 out of 5
Your Snowball Won’t Melt Either : Palm Treo 700w
Reviewer: Christopher Spera, Senior Editor
Review date: January 7, 2006
Lengthy; detailed.

Over all, the device isn’t bad. … For a first swag, Palm came very close. The next generation WM Treo will likely be the better device for a power user like me.

Mobility Today – no number score
The Palm Treo 700W
Reviewer: Jack
Review date: January 7, 2006

Truly one handed and a unique Today screen that will make your user experience the BEST you have ever experienced.

But the reviewer admits he doesn’t even have the device yet!?

Hmmm…
For a long anticipated offering, it wasn’t easy to find true reviews (even lackluster ones), rather than just announcements. I’m sure there are more out there, but the ones above were the most obvious from a first cut search. I may add others over time, especially if helpful readers point them out in the comments.

Here’s the official Palm page for the Treo 700w. Also, someone was smart and grabbed the Treo700w.com domain name. I’m not going to link there to encourage anyone… it’s headlines with the product name in them, and some Google AdWords.

There are three calendars in my life.

First, there is my Outlook calendar, which I view on my Treo most often.

Second, there is my wife’s calendar, which lives on paper.

Third, there is a kitchen whiteboard, for the month, with the highlights of items which affect us both.

I’m investigating calendar solutions for a specific workflow problem at work, so the coincidence of seeing Tim Bray’s post PHP Calendar Fun tied together my personal mix with my professional need, though his solution isn’t for me.

I’m intrigued by how complicated the problem is for someone with significant technical chops and whose spouse is also a professional in the industry. What about the rest of us?! I’m not likely to convince my wife to go digital here.

I know many folks are itching to solve this problem now. Like every other late 1990s idea maybe the environment and infrastructure has caught up with the enthusiasm.

Enjoy this news analysis from April 1999: Calendars key to portals’ progress.

Just as 1998 was the year the Web discovered free email, 1999 is turning out to be the year of the calendar.

Ummm… not quite. Maybe it’s 2006?

I hope so.

(When.com isn’t resolving… it was a long time ago when the founders sold the company to AOL/Netscape.)

Newsvine is in private beta. Like many others, I expect, I’ve added my name to the waiting list. In the meantime, I’ve read a few reviews from those who have seen it.

• Hypergene MediaBlog » Heard it on the Newsvine: First impressions, which comes from the Amazoning the News team (which gives it a lot of weight in my book).
• Steve Rubel doesn’t give many specifics.
• Newsvine – Seeding the Vine. First Look! has a more in-depth look.
• Or just read a bit from the leader: Newsvine: First Day Traffic, Reviews, and More

In some ways, I envy these teams the opportunity to start from scratch, learning from what’s gone before and building on the latest technologies and ideas. The challenge, of course, for these newer sites is finding an audience. Newsvine, beyond its use of new technologies and interfaces, is offering to share the revenue generated from its audience’s activity.

Newsvine is going to pay people to be, in effect, good editors. If there is enough money in the system to make that an effective business platform for people, an eBay for news judgment, then it’s very powerful. But that’s the business. First, let’s see how it works for delivering information.

Why is this different than MetaFilter, which I’ve never really followed? Does news get created here, or noted and followed up on? Human-friendly, Web 2.0 savvy version of Slashdot for anything, not just tech? (Yes, I’ve seen Digg’s rise, and the recent discussion about the causes.)

I’m curious about the use of AP (Associated Press) content. I expect this seeder content is to avoid the blank slate problem, but I can’t imagine this kind of generic (by definition) content will suit the audience that Newsvine wants to attract.

When I get an account, beta or otherwise, I’ll post my own review.

Much the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) hype and coverage this week focused on the marriage of video content and online distribution, as Yahoo and Google and others offered up more experimental combinations. In a nod to how technology has become more mainstream, you can read about a few of the highlights in most major newspapers… the next day.

I defy anyone to have kept up with the flood of news, pictures, videos, announcements, analysis, audio, and more from News.com, sister site CNET.com (wonder how many of these announcements will be actual products still in the US market during the 2006 holiday season?), Engadget, or the like. Before online media took hold, coverage would have been limited to industry print outlets, for the most part, with their finite pages, several days after the fact. Instead, we had minute-by-minute reports from the keynotes. Too much information, sure, but people eat it up, on their own time and at their own pace. Makes you wonder who’s actually in Vegas at the show! (Of course, from all reports, it’s jam-packed.)

Before the show, Robert Cringely took a swing at the past, present, and future of media with “Stop the Presses! How Pay-Per-Click Is Killing the Traditional Publishing Industry.” One of his conclusions (“much of print publishing as we have come to understand it is doomed.”) is nothing new, although throwing the dart at pay-per-click is a slightly different take on the transition which is obvious to anyone who’s had their eyes open for the last decade. Measurability across all marketing spends is changing the marketplace, but Cringely gets it wrong when he says that advertising is the problem. The movement of the audience is the problem; advertising dollars are just following that movement… call them smart lemmings.

The more egregious mistakes, though, start here:

…A website is not really an electronic magazine. It can contain all the stories of its print equivalent, but IT CAN’T CARRY AS MANY ADS. … Now compare this to the edit-to-ad ratio for most web pages. The densest web page will have one banner ad at the top, eight to 10 Google ads down the right side, and maybe another Google ad or two at the bottom. That sounds like a lot, but on a strict real estate basis, it is very hard to exceed an ad-to-edit ratio of 50 percent, and most web pages have three times as much editorial content as ad space — the exact reciprocal of the experience with paper publications.

Cringely is underestimating both publishers (of all shapes/sizes) and advertisers. I expect the ad-edit ratio to continue to increase as long as it makes more money for the publisher. Customers will decide if that works or not, and most traffic trends I’ve seen demonstrate that customers are not rebelling against additional advertisements (whether numerically or by page ratios) on web pages. There are limits, and my company is growing on the strength of online advertising, so I’m sure we’ll help find some of those limits over time.

At one time, though, I would have thought Cringely is right.

An alternate universe

In early 2001, CNET introduced big square-ish graphical advertisements to the web, breaking the mold from the 468×60 tyranny. These “Messaging Plus Units” (MPUs), or what the IAB nows calls the Medium Rectangle IMU, were big, bold, and different. This change captured a lot of attention, especially near the nadir of online advertising.

A less recognized part of the proposition was the promise of exclusivity on a page. On News.com, where the MPUs were introduced, only one advertisement per page was shown. Prior to the MPU, the page had a collection of different size units and text links, probably totalling 8-10 ads per page. So, an advertiser was given a bigger canvas and less competition on the page. If that combined promise had been marketing nirvana, then Cringely might be right about the ratio issue (except that he’s still wrong… read on).

Marketers loved the new size, and we’ve all witness the explosion of new shapes, sizes, and formats in the online advertising world, most of them bigger still.

The exclusivity? Few cared, and after some time had passed, multiple ads per page became the norm once more. I remain surprised by this, in some ways, but the numbers don’t lie.

More content does mean more advertising

The more obvious, and more useful, way to carry more ads is to have more content, Cringely’s SHOUTING in the quote above notwithstanding.

Cringely ignores that content doesn’t disappear from one time period to the next online, as it does in print. Last week’s — or last year’s — story still carries ads, and more content does mean more ads. There’s 90,000+ News.com stories online from a decade of coverage. Sure, recent coverage gets most of the audience, but that (cough) “long tail” does still wag in wonderful ways.

The Washington Post recently open its archives for 60 days in a bet that making more of their content available will make them more money. It doesn’t hurt them that NYTimes.com and WSJ.com, the other two major contenders for “national” newspapers are gated to varying degrees. (I didn’t even think about USA Today in that role, despite its print circulation… what does that say?)

The model isn’t the same for everyone, but much online media can, does, and will thrive with advertising.

Cringely is probably right about this, though:

Print publications fade from sight or continue primarily as art forms, rather than businesses. It will take another decade to happen, but happen it will.

Guess I’ll be an art lover.

As an aside: I think all of these companies racing to distribute video content in new ways should be hoping that Sony gets the PlayStation Portable into as many hands as possible, as fast as possible. I don’t have one, but the screen is gorgeous, and notably bigger than the video iPod. Use case for portable video still seems limited to travelling moments, whether commuting or flying, but I’m sure I’m missing something here.

Twenty-two Undersea cable maps, ranging from 1858-1992. Reminds me of Neal Stephenson’s Wired Magazine article from December 1996 “Mother Earth Mother Board,” about laying the cables. [Via The Map Room]

I wonder how redundant all these cables are now, both in terms of multiple cables per route and wireless/satellite alternatives. Seems like an economic monopoly — and therefore, a target — to me.

I’d like to learn enough programming to satisfy my inner geek, even though I’m never going to be a coder. I have a project in mind which might be a useful tutorial. Nothing too complicated, but the end result involves HTML, forms, and a database. So I figured my lack of programming knowledge might be turned to good use: I can choose any language I want.

Joel and Tim point out gaps in many programmers’ bag of tricks, and suggest that those gaps are growing through the teaching of “easy” languages. I’m not trying to make my living as a programmer. This is simply messing around on a rainy day(s), so I don’t have to worry about anything but the tools fitting the job. Which, it’s true, is what the links above are saying, too, but their focus is on the higher end of the scale here. So I won’t worry about C, Lisp, or even Java at this point.

As I’m swimming in the Web 2.0 froth (and liking Backpackit), I decided Ruby on Rails would be my testbed.

Several hours later…

I understand programming logic (the basics). I know how computers work. Still, configuration, installation, and development environments frustrate me to no end. What I want to do is write a program, and see if it works, and then iterate back over it. The more time I can spend at an editor versus the command line, the better shape I’ll be. The syntax for variables, arrays, and the like can be learned by just keeping at it (or so I tell myself).

Anyway, in my effort to avoid configuration and hours of set-up time, I downloaded Locomotive, as it promised to bundle everything together. Then I downloaded the BBEdit language module for Ruby (file) so I wouldn’t have any syntax coloring excuses.

Cazy part about Locomotive, which just went to 1.0, and unapologetically has no application help was that the screencast (QuickTime) was the most useful tutorial I could find. I ended up going back and forth in the screencast to check my work and learning where I had gone astray.

Hardest part was the database. Locomotive comes with SQLite to ease the pain, but the default database.yml file in Locomotive 1.0 has info for MySQL and PostgreSQL, too. You need to remove that if you’re using SQLite. And the screencast is not from Locomotive 1.0, so there are some differences (but no real distinctions). Overall, Locomotive was a boon in this process, but it’s still not easy.

The last piece in my set-up process was finally resolved when I realized my chosen table name was (mistakenly) in the singular, instead of the plural.

For the magic of ActiveRecord to work, you must name your database tables and columns according to specific rules. For example, when you create a table, Rails wants it to be plural. Not story, but stories. (Really Getting Started in Rails – thanks!)

I got a (tiny) bit further than the screencast itself, and then I realized how much I have to learn, both about Ruby and about how to model my database. The lengthy holiday break comes to an end tomorrow morning, so this project may drag out over weeks or months, depending on how many ‘aha’ moments I find time for.

Following a meme shared by Neil Turner a year ago, here’s 2005 in review, via the first sentence of each month’s first post.

January: I won’t claim I’m back up to speed, but all the home email is read, the aggregator is showing only a day’s worth of new items, and I’ve got fewer than ten open browser windows. (Re-plugged, Jan 1, 2005)

February: Via Slashdot, I found this Ars Technica review of the radioShark. Solid details over four pages, with ample illustrations. (More details on the radioShark, Feb 1, 2005)

March: Tonight, I’m speaking briefly at the East Bay Internet Group (eBIG) meeting of the Blogging and RSS SIG (special interest group) on Jumping on the Blogwagon. What’s the Buzz on Business Blogging?. (Blogging and RSS SIG meeting tonight, Mar 1, 2005)

April: Actually, it’s not just geeks who will find the new Link Count numbers from PubSub interesting, but geeks will have fun arguing over a new dataset.(Geeks love numbers: Link Counts, Apr 1, 2005)

May: Well, actually it’s David Sifry who updated his State of the Blogosphere, but he’s CEO of Technorati and uses Technorati data as the raw material. (Technorati updates State of the Blogosphere, May 2, 2005)

June: Nice to have another site that requires little explanation: TV.com. (TV.com is live, Jun 2, 2005)

July: I threw out a link on Wednesday evening, but the RSS promo from work late Thursday afternoon actually drew attention to the News.com tag cloud. (Seeing who’s paying attention, Jul 5, 2005)

August: I was looking forward to seeing Batman Begins.
(Movie: Batman Begins, Aug 1, 2005)

September: Not quite sure what went wrong today, but the kids were at their worst today. (Whine is in the air, Sep 3, 2005)

October: First, I got excited that a Slashdot thread started about The Big Picture. (Slashdot misses the point, Oct 2, 2005)

November: I was reading Tim Bray’s brief notes on Wikipedia, which end with this observation about one possible fund-raising option. (Thought experiment: Wikipedia to book to… Google Print?, Nov 4, 2005)

December: Nothing like getting on a morning airplane to make for a light sleep the night before. (Light sleeping, Dec 6, 2005)

Not a best of, or most popular, but interesting for me to review all the same. 254 posts for the year.

The movie Adaptation is just meta-meta-meta, and nuts. Sometimes in the best way, but damn. I don’t comprehend where these visions come from, and how the screenwriters and director communicate well enough to create these internal mindscapes as a visual story that hangs together.

I’ve never read The Orchid Thief, the book which is at the heart of the movie (ostensibly). But a movie about screenwriting a movie, adapted from a book? This takes the Hollywood insider nods of Bowfinger to a highbrow, neurotic extreme… and it mostly works!

The cast is high-powered and hard-core: Nicholas Cage, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep. Cage plays both twin screenwriting brothers, and this is far, far from his role in, say, The Rock. I did get caught up in wondering how they shot the many scenes where both brothers are on-screen at the same time. Also, the nods and direct inclusion of the movie Being John Malkovich (same screenwriters & director) are amusing.

Metacritic score of 83.

Don’t watch this movie for an escape, though — you have to pay too close attention.

(Warning: LazyWeb request)

Solved! See comments. Thank you, Ben.

The format of my post links has changed from

http://www.pencoyd.com/clock/2003/12/12.html#a293

to

http://www.pencoyd.com/clock/2003/12/12/TITLE/

I need to use a regular expression redirect to change my 2.5 years of previous posts to something not broken (and I need a better 404 page, but that’s easier and separate), so I need to change

.html#wildcard

to

/

in the .htaccess file.

That won’t get down to the individual post when I’ve had multiple posts in a day, but it won’t be totally off and broken, as it is now.

I hope to use Webmin (my ISP’s web-based config application) to make the change to the .htaccess file, rather than editing it manually, but I need the right format for the grep.

If this is second nature to any of my readers, I’d welcome a tip.

With this much free time, and the end-of-year flood of Academy Award-wanna-bes, we’ve seen a flood of movies. Thursday night, we caught Good Night, And Good Luck. Instead of the Manchurian Candidate version of McCarthy, we get to see the real McCoy… er, McCarthy, as the CBS News team led by Ed Murrow use the “junior Senator from Wisconsin’s” own words to take him on. Of course, Murrow and team are actors playing roles, which is harder to remember (at times) because of the black-and-white authenticity.

While several reviews and comments highlight the parallels with the current debate over civil liberties vs. national defense concerns, I found the on-screen debate about what the role of journalists should be more relevant. The Murrow and Fred Friendly character debate with their boss about whether it’s OK to take sides, and Murrow (held up as the shining light for fair play in journalism) argues that nothing is objective.

The anachronisms? Smoking. Lots of smoking. Even when on camera! Also, a husband and wife hid their marriage (unsuccessfully) from their colleagues to comply with corporate policy. Those taboos still exist, but are more deftly and honestly handled now, in most circumstances.

David Strathairn, as Murrow, is fantastic, in a very good film. I agree with the Metacritic score of 80.

One preview grabbed attention: Why We Fight, about the continuing place of the military-industrial complex. Instead of McCarthy speeches, we get Eisenhower’s famous warning as the historical hook for an investigation of the current day situation. Opens in late January. On the list.