Hurricane Sandy Update

A little over a week ago, I sent out one of the most difficult emails that Squarespace has ever delivered to our customers.

Peer1, our data center in downtown Manhattan, was so severely impacted by Hurricane Sandy that it suffered a total loss of power despite multiple levels of redundant systems. At the time, there was no resolution in sight. Our backup fuel reserves and building infrastructure had been destroyed by Sandy's storm surge, which flooded many buildings downtown. As you may be aware, this was a historic and unprecedented storm for the entire tri-state region, bringing about the largest storm-related power outage ever in Con Edison's history.

I am proud to announce that throughout this event, Squarespace customers experienced absolutely no downtime related to the power outage. This is an amazing outcome considering the extraordinary circumstances we faced last week. What remains is an incredible story.

For those of you that haven't been following our updates, employees from Squarespace, Fog Creek, and Peer1 manually carried fuel up 17 flights of stairs for three days to save our generator while an interim fuel supply and pump could be installed. These efforts to provide uninterrupted service for our customers were chronicled by numerous publications including All Things D, BetaBeat, Computerworld, Fast Company, TechCrunch, The New York Times, Pando Daily, and The Verge.

We now have a working pump system delivering fuel to the roof generator, more than enough fuel on site, and a redundant street-level generator connected and tested as of last night. These systems will remain in place for the foreseeable future. Our building has still not been able to connect to Manhattan's power grid, as the building's two sub-basements were submerged in 30 feet of water that took four days to pump out. We will continue to post updates on status.squarespace.com as we resume normal operations.

Of course, such heroics should not be necessary to keep operations running smoothly. We initiated a plan to build a geographically redundant operation this past summer and expect to have it online in early 2013. This gives us the ability to route around areas affected by natural disasters much more effectively.

We take the responsibility of running the hundreds of thousands of sites on Squarespace very seriously . Our homepage states that our scalable, reliable cloud infrastructure eliminates downtime, and our customers all over the world count on us to keep their websites online no matter what. Wanting to keep that promise is what propelled us forward and helped us persevere during this most challenging of times. Thank you all for being Squarespace customers - it is with your continued support that we can continue to fight for great design, amazing products, and exceptional service.

We know that there are many in our area that were impacted far beyond what we experienced - if you can, please take a moment and contribute to hurricane relief efforts. A little goes a long way.

Thank you.

Anthony

I was initially very excited by the idea of a Microsoft-made Windows tablet, the first new Microsoft-branded hardware product to come out in a long time, and even then, mostly just accessories. This isn’t the first tablet that Microsoft has explicitly shown to the press (see the aborted HP Slate 500 at CES 2010), but the Surface platform marks Microsoft’s intention to directly compete with Apple’s iPad and the various third-party Android tablets. It’s definitely going to be a necessary step to get consumers invested in their ecosystem of products that now share the Metro UI experience (Windows Phone, XBOX 360, Windows 8). For what it’s worth, Microsoft’s surprise event was on par with Apple’s product announcements that engaged the press and consumers with heartfelt stories of the creation process and future consumer user experience.

My problem, on behalf of consumers, is the fact that Microsoft didn’t announce one product - they announced two. Surface for Windows RT is the pure tablet, running on an ARM processor (Nvidia Tegra 3) and will not have any traditional desktop Windows functionality. Microsoft should be releasing a tablet version of Office, but after that you’re at the mercy of their mobile app catalog and third-party developers, which has yet to receive the adoption rates of iOS and Android. Surface Pro for Windows 8 will run on the Intel x86 architecture, and will run the full desktop version of Windows 8, which still pushes the Metro UI, but has a normal desktop and runs Windows apps just like your desktop/laptop. One tablet does so much, the other tablet does the same and more. So why would consumers buy Surface for Windows RT and will they know the difference? Apple has indirectly shown that giving consumers choice makes the purchase experience harder and more time consuming, so Microsoft will have to explain the difference to consumers, or leave that responsibility with the retailers.

Unlike at Apple product announcements, where the product launch dates are either announced or launched that day, Microsoft gave no release date details at all, but it won’t be until Windows 8 is actually released, and that will be at the end of the year. So, Microsoft just announced a first-party product, a pair of tablets that run their next operating system, that won’t be available for about 6 months. That’s too long of a wait and this time window gives Microsoft OEM partners a head start to make superior products. Third-party Windows tablets have been shown off (demonstrated, not sold) for almost a year now, but they haven’t received much attention. Microsoft already has a painful history of Windows tablets to escape and their only solution to get a Windows 8 tablet in consumer hands is to brand it with their name. Consumers are going to instinctively trust a product that is 100% made by one company, much like anticipation for a Google-made Android device. “Microsoft makes Windows, so they should know what kind of hardware to make and how to seamlessly blend the two together.” The logic makes sense and it’s reasonable to believe from the announcement event, but how will that affect OEM partners who also want to make Windows tablets and which CPU platform(s) will they support?

So did Microsoft really announce anything “new”? We already knew about Windows 8 and its tablet OS variation, but the Microsoft-branded tablets were a surprise, since they have never made their own computers before. Microsoft has always been a software company and relied on OEM partners to produce the diverse hardware ecosystem that we are familiar with to put Microsoft products on. This is going to result in either better third-party tablets competing at launch or Microsoft pushing third-parties out of the spotlight. No matter what, any outcome where Microsoft and other OEMs are directly competing will result in a polluted variety of Windows tablets to choose from, comparable to the PC buying experience we’ve known for years. Microsoft is betting heavily on the future of Windows 8 and getting consumers into the complete ecosystem, which they need to since Apple already has a foothold in both the home and business spaces. Both Surface tablets are going to have to be not only competitively priced, but will have to be given enough exposure to distract from Apple’s advertising. The headline honeymoon is over and I’m less excited for the product, but still curious to see how this will change the market. I’m still going to buy one, but even I don’t know which one I’m going to buy.

Microsoft Surface Keynote: http://youtu.be/jozTK-MqEXQ
The Vergecast episode 35 discussing Surface: http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/23/3111792/the-vergecast-035-06-22-2012

Josiah's Take:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/11/3151472/microsoft-kevin-turner-apple-wrong-pc-plus-era

There are plenty of articles out there, even testimony from our fellow SpiceHeads, regarding implementation of networked storage in SMBs. At first, I was going to write another SMB-oriented post, but realized that you all know what you’re doing when it comes to your work. You’ve got your vendors for drives and storage appliances, as well as the infrastructure for storing your business’s large amounts of data. That’s when I realized that there’s a related subject that hasn’t been touched on, at least in the Spotlight series: consumer storage. And by golly, do I have experience with consumer storage.

Personal storage at home was never really an issue until about 10 years ago. Before we were ripping CDs and DVDs, our PCs were mostly just full of pictures. 30¬–50 GB drives were monstrous and users were hard pressed to fill it up, unless they had a collection of programs/games.

In high school, I got introduced to video production and competed in school competitions across the state and country (media production was just one event among many). There was no A/V club or else I would have been the president of it. So, I was on my own to learn about video production and importing raw footage from my camcorder, including how much space that takes up. Being naïve and having little resources, my first attempt at large storage was JBOD and using Windows Disk Management to simple span a volume across the drives. Obviously, highly unreliable and risky, but isn’t that what youth is all about?

Thanks in no small part to the boom of file sharing, personal storage requirements skyrocketed and larger drives started rolling out to meet demand. For the sake of argument, let’s just fast forward to the point in time where consumers are legitimately purchasing content and downloading GBs worth of music and movies regularly. (That’s obviously not what everyone’s doing, but we’ll just say it is.) The important thing is that not only do we need large amounts of storage, we need reliable storage and ways to access it. We don’t just have one computer, we have multiple computers in the home and at least one mobile device per person. In the past five years, we’ve gotten set top boxes to access streaming content networks, but if we’ve got the boxes on our TV and the content on our computers, it only makes sense to combine them together.

Stage 1: Build it
So, once you’ve reached the capacity and functional limits of your PC’s internal storage. Where do you go? Maybe you work in the SMB or enterprise field and know of plenty of business-scale storage solutions, but you’re not looking to shell out thousands of bucks on a rack mountable appliance that takes SAS drives. You’re just a consumer or maybe a prosumer who needs an inexpensive solution that you can trust to store and protect your data. Once you begin your shopping quest, the question is immediately: “What’s the best?” Of course, that is to say, “What’s best for ME?”

The market for personal storage is getting supersaturated, and it’s becoming more of a chore to decide what to get. There are tons of DAS solutions out there, but you need useful RAID and not a disaster waiting to happen. I would strongly recommend against any device with a sealed enclosure, because you can’t access/replace the drives should they fail. I’ve gotten into some heated discussions with Hitachi and Western Digital reps at trade shows and they really couldn’t defend sealing the box.

HDDs are about as reliable as they can possibly be with the current technology, but you have to be prepared for failure. Business rules state that you should have at least one cold spare ready, and that’s no different if you have valuable data at home. Should you need a fast replacement, devices with hot swappable bays like Drobo and QNAP are going to make this much faster and less hectic. The next stage is recovery. Confirm the method of recovery for your device and what you’ll need to do. Do you need to power down or can it be hot swapped? Will you still be able to use the data? Will you need the same capacity drive or can you use a larger one that will apply towards expansion?

Stage 2: Share it
But, you don’t just want storage, you want a way to access it. What about getting your stored data to your TV via a set top box? You can look for appliances that host their own UPnP servers to broadcast and transcode on the fly, but odds are that any onboard software will be flaky and infrequently updated. Whether your storage device is locally or network attached, you may end up serving the media through your PC with UPnP software like Playstation Media Server (works for everything). This was still a niche feature a few years ago, but now that everyone is streaming Netflix/Amazon from their game consoles or third-party boxes, they’re realizing they have their own stash of content they’d like to see on TV. Just make sure your player supports your video codecs!

Stage 3: Grow it
Dedicated storage appliances can come in handy because they can be easier to expand compared to DAS RAID situations. Something that you have to take into account is what filesystem your NAS uses. That isn’t immediately important because they use SMB/CIFS to be network accessible to all platforms, but becomes important if you ever intend to migrate your array to a different appliance. That’s where my history with Drobo comes into play. I started with the 4-bay Drobo that is locally attached only and you designate what file system to use. I was running Windows, so I chose NTFS. When I filled that up and needed to migrate to a Drobo FS, I realized the roadblock I ran into: My original array was NTFS and the FS only uses ext3. This is probably going to be common when migrating from DAS to NAS. Unless the appliance supports the same RAID architecture, you’re going to need all new drives to start the array. After supplying the Drobo FS with all new drives to generate its “BeyondRAID” array, I had to transfer my data from Drobo to PC via USB 2.0, then PC to Drobo FS over gigabit. Needless to say, it took a while, and I still wonder what I could have done differently to save the existing array. If you ever recreate my experience, you’ll have a complete storage appliance you no longer need and might want to sell to pay for the new one.

After all this, was this post meant to tell you what to buy? Of course not, merely provoke thought and consideration into what factors you want. Aside from the fact that I’m not a salesman, the only prosumer storage solution I can recommend is Drobo because I’ve used two different models and am very satisfied, but there are plenty of resources out there to compare. I can certainly provide my experience with Drobo, but I don’t dismiss the possibility that there are other choices that could work better for you.

Feel free to sound off what your home solutions are and important factors that led you to use it!

Amazon is my first resort, mostly because their store credit is the most valuable to me. Getting real cash from the others in the list is good, but I’ll end up using it on Amazon anyway and they’re the only ones on the list that use UPS (my preference). Amazon will provide you with a pre-paid UPS label, so all you need is to BYOB and take it to a UPS store if you have one available (safe to say that the post-eBay era has made these stores more common to keep people out of the distro hubs). At most, you’re paying for a new box and packing, but it gets a bulk of your collection out of the way relatively easily.

iPodMeister

I would mostly recommend this as a solution for gargantuan collections, especially of CDs since almost no one will take them. iPodMeister is the website front of a second hand bookstore in Brooklyn, NY that takes in any kind of disc media and pays $1 a disc. Essentially, a 2-disc CD or DVD set should net you $2, but don’t expect to get paid for every disc. They’ll contact you saying that a number of items were not in sellable condition or maybe were even empty. You won’t get money for them and you won’t get them back. Possible risk factor, but it might be countered by the fact that they’ll still give you cash and even pay for the shipping. I loaded up 3 extremely heavy boxes of CDs and DVDs and took them to FedEx (not my preference, but them paying for shipping is fine by me). All in all, I probably received $450 for a total of ~600 discs, a lot of which were 2 disc CD or DVD sets. By comparison, it makes some Amazon trade in offers generous, but you’d have to cut up the collection and inventory it. If you’ve been collecting disc media for years and have an overwhelming collection that you don’t want to go through, iPodMeister is probably your first stop. Pull out any box sets and rare items, for sure; they’re bound to get you real money. The real selling point of iPodMeister is that they offer not just cash, but gadgets of equal value. They even utilize a fuzzy law that allows you to trade in your CDs, and they’ll put the music on a brand new iPod or hard drive in exchange. So they’ll basically digitize your collection and give you a new toy to play it on.

Glyde/Gazelle

These are the underdogs of selling your old stuff. They have their own benefits and you have to decide which is better for you. Glyde is a cross between Craigslist and Netflix, where you post your items on their site and wait for someone to buy them. Glyde provides recommended prices, but you are free to set your price. They take a sale commission and postage tax out of the sale, so you won’t be getting the entire sale price. Unlike some stores where you send in your goods, you hold onto everything and Glyde will send you an empty mailer that you stuff and mail back out to the buyer. It’s a very similar experience to mail order rentals and if you sell things within their price range, you ought to be able to move almost anything. I put up about a dozen games and movies and sold 3 in the first day, another a few days later. The recipient confirms they received the item and Glyde gives you your cut of the sale in a virtual balance. When you’re ready to cash out, Glyde will direct deposit you anything over $10. Gazelle is closer to Amazon, where you inventory your items and they tell you what they’ll take and what the current market value is. They emphasize more on gadgets, hoping to score smartphones on the eve of new models. I avoided them for now only because they only use USPS and FedEx, neither of which I prefer. They do have more payment options than anyone else, offering “from a check, PayPal, Walmart Prepaid Visa, or Amazon.com® gift card. You can also select from more than 100 approved charities and donate the value of your items to your favorite cause.” Unlike Glyde, Gazelle doesn’t sell your items back to other uses; they get them wholesale refurbish them or recycle them for parts.

Glyde referral: http://gly.de/h/kdra1u

Cash 4 Books

I only mention this because books are really the last thing people should have collected. Any media made after 1990 depreciates in value within years, including books, but there are always going to be books that are worth something. People collect books like they collect movies, and books are even worse to collect. They’re large, heavy, and are much more vulnerable to damage. Sell them now. Amazon will take a few, but I had some good experience with Cash 4 Books. Plug in the ISBNs and see what they’ll give you. Odds are, you can get rid of anything you don’t absolutely need, and even if you get rid of books you like, you can rebuy digital versions.

1. Sold only through iBookstore, yes. If you give it away for free, you can give it away free anywhere.

2. It'll have to be proven that Apple will enforce this. You can use iBooks Author to create your work, export it to a universal file, then sell it elsewhere - then see if Apple will do anything about it. That would require them being able to determine that your exported file contains in it some info that identifies what software was used to make it, info that you can't remove. Data that you can't remove from a universal file such as raw text or PDF? If you can't do that, you probably shouldn't be using sophisticated software to create your work.

3. Most importantly - If you were intending to sell your work through anywhere else, why would you be using iBooks Author in the first place? The entire appeal, at least its unique functionality, is that it wallows for dynamic multimedia that is exclusive to iBooks. If you were going to create fragmented versions of your content that have platform exclusives, you might as well just kick your customers in the balls. If anything, you'd be using iBooks Author intentionally to sell your content through iBookstore. If you didn't want it to be exclusive, then use a universal format and sell it through normal channels. Amazon already has a self publish platform for Kindle, and I'm sure there are others for Nook and everything else. This sentimentalization of Apple's distribution model is moot.

Common misconceptions of iBooks Author: http://venomousporridge.com/post/16178567783/common-misconceptions

It's no secret that I love phones to the point where I'm collecting them now. I have two lines of service and use them to alternate getting a new phone every year. To counter my aging iPhone 4 and replace my ancient Moto Droid, I've gotten myself the Samsung Galaxy Nexus for Verizon. So far, I love it. But loving the Galaxy Nexus is like loving a beautiful super model. She looks great, but is so thin, she's difficult to hold without feeling like she'll slip through your arms or get crushed in your manly grip. 

Even though I dual wield an iPhone 4 on AT&T and just replaced my OG Droid on VZW with the CDMA Galaxy Nexus with LTE, it was hard to break the instinct to grab my iPhone. I had to force myself to leave what I’m comfortable with and make sure I forced myself to fully explore the phone. I left my iPhone at home for a week and made the Galaxy Nexus my daily driver, solely relying on it to get me through each day. This is what I noticed.

Design

My main complaints are mostly all physical. The large surface area of the phone mixed with the thin profile makes it difficult to hold (compared to a more natural cupping of a round backside - that's right, I said it). The phone itself is slightly curved concave as a way to tout Samsung’s curved display. The large display means that with a typical "monkey grip", you're not likely to be able to reach the far corner with your thumb, making this a two handed phone for anything more than simple browsing. That makes sense for some people to naturally use a smartphone with both hands, but we all have scenarios where it would be nice if our grip hand could manage the whole phone (commuting, walking, driving where legal). That said, should you want to reach the far corner with your thumb single handedly, you turn the phone and cup the thin edge, putting it in a perilous position. The phone's design makes it dangerously smooth and subject to slipping out of your hand. I'd say get a silicone case for grip, but I'd wait until one accommodates the an extended battery should you need it. Plenty of companies will be making cases, especially with CES 2012 here. If you’re unimpressed with the bland grey color scheme, you can wait for the recently announced white version that will start shipping soon, but so far it’s just the GSM version.

Display

The 4.65" display is gorgeous, especially for a PenTile. While we've seen bad Pentile implementation on phones like the Droid RAZR, the Galaxy Nexus doesn't suffer the same woes. The high density of the pixels makes them almost indistinguishable, which makes for clear images and impressive color. It still has a slight discoloration when viewed from an angle, but you likely won’t be doing that. Something to remember is that the display will likely be the most power hungry factor in this phone, with the highest brightness attributing to upwards of 50% power usage. Definitely be smart and use auto brightness or keep it at 50% until you need it brighter.

Sound

Knowing that smart phones have become the de facto music player for many, phone maufacturers have put the headphone jack on the top so the user can still look at the screen properly (you can't rest a phone on a surface standing up if the headphone jack is on the bottom edge). I don't know about you, but I frequently put my phone in a cup holder and don't like the idea of putting it upside down just because the headphone cable is coming out the wrong way. If I had to choose a single physical detriment that could hinder a common use case for smart phones, it would be the speaker. The single (possibly stereo, can't tell) speaker is questionably located on the backside, at the bottom. The speaker isn't that strong to begin with, certainly nowhere near close to the iPhone (relative to size), but remember that something else goes along the bottom of the backside - your hand. Why on earth would designers put a single speaker grill right where your hand is? It makes it impossible to hear anything while you hold it. Even then, I've listened to music at full volume with the phone face down on my desk and felt like I was nowhere near "11". There’s really nothing that will make the speaker work any louder short of external accessories.

Battery

The phone comes with an 1850mAh battery, which seems ample enough by today's standards, but the larger display, multitasking OS and optional LTE radio usage will consume that power very quickly. On launch, Verizon was already selling a first-party 2100mAh battery for $50 and immediately discounting it to $25 by day two (so if you paid full price for it, call Verizon immediately and have them credit your account). For the price of a nice lunch, you can get yourself a bigger battery that could make the difference between your phone dying before leaving work and making it back home at the end of the day. In my conservative tests with LTE disabled, I made it 24 hours on a single charge with the extended battery. For those with LTE service available, this is a blessing and a curse. LTE can definitely nab you insane speeds, like the 17mbps down, 10 mbps up I got in the road between Ames and Des Moines. But it absolutely destroy your battery. To give you an objective power usage example, I left the phone in my hotel while I was staying in the Milwaukee area. It was 100% charged when I left, so the meter started when I unplugged it. I returned about 5 ½ hours later to see 8% power remaining. I had just powered the phone on before, so I know the only apps I had running were my widgets for GMail, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Google Reader. That actually is a lot to keep running, but without the display running at all, no Wi-Fi, and no calls, iit still would have been dead from virtually zero usage in 6 hours. The lesson here is that if you plan on using LTE, you better be plugged in. Some reports even say that heavy usage with LTE enabled drains the battery faster than it can charge.

OS

ICS is definitely a step up from the Froyo I'm used to and doesn't feel like it needs any mods at the moment with all its monitoring utility. You definitely need to get used to the change in manipulating apps and widgets, and of course the control buttons being "displayed" instead of being static. It's neither better or worse than iOS, and I say that as someone who uses both phones daily, which is about as objective as you can get. Would I recommend it over an iPhone? Depends on the person, of course. It's definitely the best Android phone on the market (with some very close competition from other Android devices), but you have to know that you want iPhone over Android. There's no point in telling people what they want if you are just going to tell them what you like. What I can say is that I would never question anyone buying an iPhone. They're either understand it immediately or in a short amount of time. I would question someone blindly (meaning never used a smartphone) buying any Android phone and recommend they use it before buying. Then again, anyone buying the Galaxy Nexus is buying because they know they want it, especially if they're buying unlocked for GSM (fully compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile services). For Android enthusiasts who are up on modding, CyanogenMod 9 is almost done and the available builds work on the Galaxy Nexus.

I can't speak to the call quality, since that's mostly a VZW issue and I'm probably in a bad place (AT&T has better coverage in every regard here, but that's subjective and useless in a review).

UPS has always provided shippers with a way to manage all the packages they send out. Merchants and other business absolutely need this to ensure timely delivery of their goods. But there's never been a good way for recipients to track all their incoming shipments. Collecting all your active tracking numbers and plugging them into the UPS site each time just isn't good enough if you have to do it all the time. GMail actually uses its ad space to provide an automatic link to a shipment tracking page if it detects a tracking number for UPS, FedEx and USPS. That's actually one of the types of ads that I don't mind. Plug the shipping company all you want below the link, but providing me with that helpful information makes the process much faster for me (iOS Mail app does this too).

However, this doesn't escape the major issue for someone who needs timely deliveries: signature releases. Even if the sender (ie, Amazon) doesn't require a signature for the item (ie, Spider-Man: Edge of Time), it's up to the driver's discretion to leave it or not and instead leave one of those awful slips on your door. But those paper slips are about to go the way of the dinosaurs.

UPS has finally answered my prayers with My Choice, a free (with paid extras) service that where you can register your name and address(s), so your driver will know to leave it without signature. It's a permanent whitelist. The more advanced features are rerouting packages in transit if you realize you are not at home, or having UPS hold until a certain date. This is certainly not for everyone, especially since most people live in houses and/or get deliveries without signature all the time. But for apartment dwelling folk, who try to race home or watch the online tracker show they're already too late, this is a godsend.

Just a word of warning, setting this up requires verification of identity. It doesn't require any super sensitive information, but will use your provided name, address and phone number to cross reference with any existing data they have accumulated on you. It's certainly understandable that they want to make sure no one is trying to intercept someone else's packages, but the data they have on us is scary. They will ask you to correctly answer three multiple choice questions about you, such as "What is a street you have lived on?" or "What is a phone number you have used?" Where would they get such information? From past deliveries to people with similar info, especially if you have ever shipped using UPS (eBayers, they will probably have lots of info on you). But it's not as alarming as it seems at first, just answer the questions and you're confirmed. You can now add tracking numbers to your profile for future checking and even label them so you can tell them apart.

If you regularly receive UPS shipments and paper slips are a problem for you, you should check this out. If you are concerned with "the man" knowing more about you, then I suggest not using delivery services.

UPS My Choice - warning, only link I know about is for registration. Don't know the easy way for existing members to log into their dashboard.

Because of this inherent compatibility, Audible content could always be easily transferred to iPhones to be played with the iPod app (renamed "Music" in iOS5). There was nothing wrong with this way of playing content, however, Audible wanted to bring more to the experience. It took Audible until 2010 to release an iPhone app to buy, download, and play content within the app, but that first option was short lived (more on that later).

Upon its initial release, the app was designed to rely on iOS 4's new features, such as app multitasking. It was intended to replace the playback functionality of the iPod app, which would provide achievement stats such as "hours listened" and reward with badges (which are only stored within that copy of the app, there are no global stats). The ultimate downside to this feature over a year after its release is that it Audible lacks any social networking for users to associate with other users and compare each others' libraries and reading achievements. Let's get this out of the way - Audible sucks at engaging its customers and allowing them to engage each other. For being a book retailer, it fails to grasp the notion that reading is a collective experience and isolating us slows down discovery. For God's sake, people don't have book clubs for the fun of it! You expect people to gather at their local Borders to... oh wait. Anyway, back to the main topic.

Although I'm just going off memory, I want to say that the Audible app was originally unable to play content in the background, which meant if you wanted to browse the web or use any other app that allowed background playback, the playback would immediately terminate when you closed out the app. For me, this meant launching the app, playing the book, then using some other device to do what I wanted... or I could just transfer the audiobook from my computer directly to my phone's storage and let the iPod app use it. If I wanted to earn those achievements, I could let the Audible app discover it - another feature that I never saw work until now. With October 10th's v1.7.1 release, I'm seeing a lot of the promised functions work as intended, with one exception. Audible completely removed any ability to shop their catalog within the app. I honestly can't remember the app ever having "in app" purchases, but I think Audible tried to circumvent Apple's 30% commission by launching a web browser within the app and having your buy from their mobile site. As fun as it is to shop online with a 3.5" touch screen, I would sooner just go to my computer and make the purchase, then get the content to my phone. Now it seems that pressure has forced Audible to remove even that, allowing you to create a link on your homescreen to their site.

This is where I have to say that stupid business decisions hurt consumers. Trust me, I get it, 30% is significant and Apple (as well as Google, RIM, and other mobile market platforms) should lower that to 15-20%, but if I can't easily make purchases on the spot (read: impulse purchases), then I won't make them at all. Just accept the loss in order to make more sales. More sales are more important than more revenue, because sales lead to repeat sales, which leads to more revenue. While angling iTunes as a competitor to wipe out illegal music downloading, Apple quickly realized that giving people an absurdly easy way to buy content with the push of a button will facilitate more sales. Hell, I was buying $2 comics off the Marvel app until they jacked prices up to $4 each. Whoa, stop the show. Without knowing how much of Audible's "sales" are actually made with subscription credits (has to be significant), shouldn't they be able to get away with members "purchasing" new content with their pre-paid credits within the app? It's technically a $0 transaction at that point, so Apple can have 30% of that all they want. Sure, it only benefits people with credits (Gold and Platinum subscribers), but to play Devil's Advocate, sounds like a great incentive for people to start subscribing! Now to be as fair as I described, Audible loves trying to keep its customers with incentive deals. If you try to cancel a subscription, Audible will likely offer you a discount on 3 months or a free credit. Just be prepared if you try to cancel after accepting a courtesy once or more - they make you call in to cancel. Almost makes the "I'm unhappy with Audible" reason redundant.

Here's the announcement that was emailed to Audible users the other day, hardly sympathetic from their perspective. While I praise Audible, I will always follow up with the caveats that come with their ecosystem.

We'd like to update you on a change to the Audible application that affects the way that you access the Audible mobile store. In order to comply with recent policy changes by Apple, we've removed the "Shop" link from within the app that opened your web browser and took you to the Audible mobile store.

You can still shop the mobile store, and we've created a "Shop Audible" icon that you can add to your home screen so it's always one click away. To do this, launch your web browser on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, go to mobile.audible.com, and follow the instructions to "Add to Home Screen". You can watch a quick video to walk you through the steps, or call us at (888) 283-5051 if you have any other questions.
   
    1. Click to bring up options. 2. Click on [no really, it just ends there, completely blank]   
   
That's it. The link is gone, but everything else is the same. You can still shop the store, and all your books will still be available in the app.

Thank you,
The Audible Team

He wasn't an engineer. He wasn't a designer. He was a business man. His business was to assemble the best people in the business, make them build the best product they could make and make people want it. Apple has always been a company that makes a product with a combination of form and function that you've never seen before. Someone may make a beautiful product, someone else may make a powerful product, but Apple balances the two and gives consumers an experience they've never had before. That was Steve's goal. It wasn't about being first, it was about being the best. If you couldn't give him your best, he didn't want you. He expected nothing less than perfection and drove his teams hard to get it. It was about taking others' poorly executed plans and showing them how it should have been done. He wanted a product that could be used by everyone, from less fortunate to politicians, the disabled and the independent.

There's so much about Steve Jobs that most people don't know or wouldn't recognize from his jean and turtleneck appearance. He was a vegan hippie Budhist rock star. He attributed his "out of the box" thinking to dropping acid and fought criticism with high brow sarcasm. Following an very premature obituary release in 2008, Steve opened his fall keynote with the Twain quote: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." When he formally introduced the iPhone 4 in 2010, even though Gizmodo had thoroughly scooped the device early, he told the audience to stop him if they had seen it before.

What amazes me about him was that he was a magnificent hyporcite. Steve was a mad man. He challenged authority and became the single unchallenged authority. He broke the rules and made rules that could not be broken. He competed with the slogan "Think Different", yet cultimated the mentality of Apple addiction. He would claim that Apple would never make something, then make it. He commanded an unparalleled respect from the public. He controlled his public image and created the hype that Apple is famous for. He was Apple. No company founder or CEO will ever be revered as much as him. The impact on the news circuits was immeasurable.

Steve knew his time was coming to an end and put all his ducks in a row before he left Apple. He was a master strategist who saw a much bigger game board than anyone else. I have no doubt that many of the products in Apple's near future will still have Steve's fingerprint on them. A light that burns twice as bringht burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly, Steve.

Sent from my iMac

Engadget

This Is My Next / The Verge

And gdgt is coming out of retirement to cover this event!

As a casual Apple user (I have an iPhone and iPad, but haven't traditionally used Macs or any other Apple products), I had this preconceived notion that Apple was watching out for me. With their well-publicized tight controls on the apps, I assumed they would be watching the books like a hawk, too. That really was naive. How would Apple be able to monitor these books, which are written in an open platform? It's not at all like controlling their apps, which are written on Apple's closed platform. Besides, we all know that some undesirable apps have slipped through. It's just that it was so shocking to me to find such a blatant example in my face. What's worse in my mind is that there isn't a clear way for me to escalate this and notify Apple. I did post the issue on the official Apple iBooks support forum, as well as wrote a review to make the problem clear.

Those of you who know me probably know that I've had a long-time interest in remote controlled vehicles. When I was young (<10) I can remember driving a RC boat in my grandparent's pool. When I got a bit older, I had a Tamaya Grasshopper car and later the Midnight Pumpkin pickup. My interest waned as I got into high school and other things competed with my time, but I returned to the hobby a few years ago when I picked up a gas-powered nitro truck. I sold that when we had our children.

Now enter the AR.Drone from Parrot. I've been following the development of this device for over a year. I believe I first heard about it at CES in 2009. If you haven't seen it, it is a $300 RC quadricopter (helicopter with four propellers). All four props are horizontal, meaning they blow air down only. The blades are in matched pairs (front left and back right are the same, front right and back left are the same), and the on-board controller handles the duties of alternating speed of each prop to respond to your controls. Speaking of controls, you use your iPhone (iPod touch and iPad work, but I find the iPad is too large). The copter uses on-screen controls and sends video back to your phone. Since you can find most of the specs and control methods easily online, I'll focus most of the rest of this on giving my opinion of the device.

First thing to know is don't believe the marketing stuff. I think most readers of this site are more savvy than that, anyway, but you may see lots of information and videos from Parrot showing how easy it is to control. I even found one of a 20-something man in what looked like a dorm room or apartment (small, 10'x10' space) with associated clutter fly it around without issue. I don't believe the video is fake at all, but you have to understand that the person flying the drone in the video has hours and hours of practice, and the room is setup in just the right way.

The videos show people flying over nicely mowed, flat green fields. Unfortunately, places like that are very scarce where I live. We have rolling hills, rural orchards and pasture-lands. The first time I flew the drone, I took it out to a nearby pasture. It was the best open space I could find. I must say that it was...interesting. I immediately noticed that the copter had some issues maintaining altitude. Not that it wouldn't stay off the ground, but just the opposite - it was too high off the ground! There was supposed to be an altitude limiter on it to keep it from going over about 10 feet high or so. My drone easily went up 20+ feet. Fortunately, the automatic landing feature worked great. There's a button on the controller that you press and the copter will automatically land itself (in theory). After I burned through two batteries (I bought a spare at the store) I had successfully landed it probably 2-3 times and at least a dozen times were crashes. Either it hit a tree and fell over, or a rotor got caught on something and flipped it, or I couldn't find a flat clear place. What I'm saying is it takes time to learn.

Fortunately, I have a relative who actually owns an aircraft hanger and it happened the night I bought it we were having dinner at his house. I brought the drone with me and we had a blast. One thing I picked up from the videos is that a hanger is the ideal place to learn to fly the drone. And that is a fact, Jack! No wind, large flat open space, etc. I had seven family members in their for an audience. Everything went perfectly. It was like night-and-day difference from the pasture. I had people walk under it to feel the breeze (and it is quite strong) and I flew it all around the hanger (probably 100' Long X 25' Wide X 25' High) without incident. After that great experience, I went back outside with it the next day and felt much more confident. I flew it around our backyard, front yard, even over the roof of our house. But it still takes practice. I've probably had nearly 90 minutes of flight time so far and have a ways to go.

One of the things I've enjoyed best is seeing the improvements Parrot has made over time. Their SDK is on v1.5 now and some of the improvements include improved frame rates, better controls, more control options, etc. And right along with Parrot's improvements, the third-party apps have improved. Currently, I am alternating between the official Parrot app, Freeflight (it's free), and a third-party app called Drone Control, which is $2.99. What's special about Drone Control is that it allows you to record screenshots and video from the drone. Whatever you see on the screen of your iPhone is recorded. Then you can transfer those files to the iPhone's camera roll for editing or transfer to your computer. The only issue I have with it is more of a moral one - I could in theory use this device to spy on someone. More specifically, I could easily look into a neighbor's fenced yard or second story window. I'm not overly concerned about it, but it could be an issue "in the wrong hands."

A couple more observations:

1. The issue I experienced with the drone's altitude was in fact a bug. It was specific to tall grass (as in a pasture).
2. The marketing suggests you can fly the drone based on the video feed from the iPhone. I haven't found the feed to be consistent enough, although Parrot has improved it over subsequent SDK releases.
3. This device is tough. I've banged that thing around a lot. One time I dropped it through the branches of a 30' tall pine tree (see picture below). All that happened was a small metal pin got bent. Parrot sells replacement parts for basically everything, and it only cost $10 for four pins with gears in a package. Easy, inexpensive repair.

In summary, I think the device is amazing for $300. I don't buy their marketing messages, but who does? It takes some learning, and the right conditions to get used to it. If you already have an iPhone or iPod Touch, and an interest in RC aircraft, then I think this is a wonderful device. I've been very careful not to call it a toy as I've seen in other reviews - it is too pricey, sophisticated, and complicated to be a toy. My recommendation is to pickup at least one spare battery, and I thought about a second. Also consider getting a package of spare propellers for $7 and the metal pins with gears for $10. That way you'll have them ready and they don't cost much. It's better than being down for 5 days while you wait for the new ones to ship to you.

Here are two parting shots taken from my drone using the Drone Control app. The first one is the neighborhood near the pasture where I was learning to fly.

The second shot is about 15 seconds before my drone went through that 30' pine tree and bent a pin. I think you can tell from these shots that the drone can get up pretty high.

While shopping, we noticed a trend to include a dedicated numeric keypad as part of the laptop keyboard. I would imagine this is due to the form factor of widescreen LCDs in newer laptops. In any case, we got the laptop from Amazon (model # NV5936u) and my wife loved the look, feel, and performance. There was an issue with the WiFi receiver (more on that in a future article, perhaps). But the numeric keypad - I mean, I get it that numpads are useful. They have a purpose when working with financial data and numbers, but my issue is how it changes my interface to the computer. After two weeks, neither my wife nor I got used to the off-set alignment of the regular keys. Her old HP and my existing laptop don't have numpads and what they did is slightly move the rest of the keys over to the left in order to support the addition of the extra keys. Eventually, we returned the Gateway (due to the WiFi issue I mentioned above, not the keyboard).

We went back looking for another laptop and decided on an HP G62-144DX. No numpad. Lighter weight. My wife likes this one even more (she's not picky). However, even thought there isn't a numpad, HP added five buttons along the left side, below ESC. These keys act as hotkeys for email, DVD playback, opening the internet browser, printing, and accessing the calculator. Aside from the dubiousness of someone else deciding what five functions I want hotkeys for, it also happens that these keys are in such a position that it fouls up my ability to type. I am a touch typist, and as such, I use the keyboard by feel alone. The fact that there are extra keys to the left of the ones I use, like Ctrl and Tab, means I hit a wrong key at least once every 10-30 minutes. It doesn't happen so much while I'm actively typing an article like this because my fingers tend to stay exactly on the home keys, but when I am browsing the web, I will accidentally bring up the DVD program or the calculator quite often. It's a pain.

So my question is why are computer makers doing this? I think in large part it is simply the old clichéd answer: Because they can. As laptops have become so much of a commodity, I think it gives them a way to differentiate theirs from the competition. I also think that since the netbook segment was created, manufacturers are looking for more ways to separate a full-sized laptop from a netbook. By having hotkeys and numpads, it gives manufacturers more check boxes for their marketing crap. It helps them justify the price difference between a netbook and a laptop in a physical way that consumers can actually see, as compared to just differences in specs that most people don't care about. The problem is it messes up the fundamental way I interact with a computer.

Now if you read my rant to this point, you might think I don't like innovation, or I'm averse to making changes (even ones that might improve the ultimate user experience). I say nay. Here is what I would propose: First, don't worry about a dedicated numpad. At least not with anything under 17". We're talking about a laptop, after all, and I know many people use one as their primary computer (so do I), but if one needs to work on spreadsheets, financial documents, etc., then one probably has the ability to use an external keyboard and numpad. I know several nice wireless numpads that are portable and can easily be used alongside a standard keyboard (including one in a laptop). Second, if you're going to give me hotkeys, at least make them programmable. I'm pretty sure there's a way to reassign them, but the point is HP should have included an easy way to do it. Third, the hotkeys should be up top. There's plenty of room, especially with widescreen format, to include extra buttons along the top. They even look cool - the smooth capacitive bars with LEDs under them for things like mute, WiFi, etc. Use that space for your marketing buttons. Bottom line, until some other primary interface is developed, don't mess with my keyboard!