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A box arrived from Sun the other day. We slid back the cover, and were amazed to see 48 - 500 Gig drives all nicely sitting in their little hot-swap bays. The Sun Fire X4500 box is pretty cool - 4 rack-units high, with dual core AMD CPU’s, 4 gigabit Ethernet ports, lots of slots, and LOTS OF DISK STORAGE. All for $1.5 per gig.

Apparently, this box is pretty popular with the porn sites.

Me, I’m thinking I could upload about 6.3 million MP3’s, or quite a lot of videos…

Or, I guess we could hold out for the 48 terabyte version…

I installed Dash today. Tried it for all of 10 minutes, then decided to purchase. Dash is a decent first implementation of Quicksilver, an essential Mac application that I absolutely rely on.

Basically, you get to define a hot-key, and when you press it, a window opens, and you can type in a keyword - to do things like run an app, send mail, do a Google search,  look up a word, open a Wikipedia article, etc. Once you are used to this, it is SO FAST to open apps - it saves all the clicking about with the mouse.

What’s Good?

• The app is small and fast.
• It makes it really easy to add keyboard shortcuts for MANY things I do every few minutes.
• The app stays out of the way when I don’t want it.
• It comes with a decent starter set of keywords.
• They claim to be making lots of plugins which will extend the capabilities of the app.
• They have a really nice video on their web site showing the app in use. Very slick - even a British voiceover, which is very classy.
• I bought it right away - so that’s a pretty good endorsement.

What Sucks? 

• The app has a trial version - but rather than a simple “enter a key” to unlock the REAL version, you have to download and re-install the app.
• The Email implementation is terrible. Yes, you can  send mails, but they all go out with the title “Note” which is silly. And, it doesn’t appear to be looking up names in my Outlook contacts. I use a plain vanilla installation of Outlook and Exchange - if they can’t support THAT out of the box, then they have totally missed the mark.
• Needs better support for Quicksilver style plugins to extend the capabilities of the app.

Summary:

It is a great 1.0 application, that you’ll get a ton of use out of right out of the box.

We’re looking around at new applications we can build here at InGenius, and of course, we’re looking at Facebook. One of the neatest things I’m finding about Facebook is the Applications you can load. I tend to keep an eye on my Facebook friends - and checking out what apps they are loading and deleting. The apps tend to be all over the map, from little graphical widgets, to complete, complex applications. It’s a nice thing that Facebook has done better than Flickr, MySpace, et al.

But, how long is Facebook going to be around, and be king? I’ve talked to a few people lately who say they are moving AWAY from Facebook! It was taking up too much of their time, and they weren’t getting much out of it aside from browsing photos. A year ago, we would have been considering doing an app for MySpace - but that isn’t even on our radar now. I’m wondering, is Facebook peaking now? If we’re going to spend the money developing an app, is Facebook the way to go? What will be next?

And, let me know if you find any cool Facebook apps - especially telephony ones!

Apple’s iPhone, whether successful or not, will have a huge influence on the telecom industry - changing cellular phones, voice and data bundles, UI / UX, hardware, software, telcos, and even reaching beyond the cellular world - right into mainstream corporate telephony where InGenius plays.

The iPhone’s UI, like all Apple UI’s is just beautiful. It brings a smile to your face when you use it, and if you are watching someone fiddle with it, you’d just have to grab the phone out of their hands and play with it. This is something that doesn’t happen to often these days - the last time I remember grabbing someone’s phone was when my friend Jacques got a Blackberry Pearl. I just HAD to try out that trackball.

The iPhone UI redefines mobile phone UI’s - it’s a complete redesign of every aspect of the UI, adding features that are intuitive, simple, and powerful.

Every mobile manufacturer HAS to have an iPhone by now - the CEO HAS to have stormed into the UI department, slammed the phone down and said “Make our phones work like this!” Which would be followed by a room full of Industrial Designers, UX experts, hardware and software engineers being excited, horrified and terrified at the prospect. I know we are!

The UI requires a ton of in-the-phone back-end infrastructure to make work - the phone needs tons of memory, a great display, a powerful CPU, a graphics library with a ton of 3D effects, and stacks and stacks of other software. This will end up being a fantastic benefit to us normal phone users - as all these software and hardware capabilities become available in phones, EVERY app on the phone will benefit, as well as third-party apps. It’s a great motivator to get decent performance out of our hand-held devices. I can’t wait to browse and use Google Maps on my mobile - at desktop speeds!

And the influence is felt in telcos as well. AT&T had to do a TON of back-end work to support the iPhone. Consider the voicemail application alone! The iPhone has a voicemail client that is very closely tied into the telco’s voicemail system - showing the user a list of voicemails on the phone, with caller ID info for each - and the ability to play voicemails in any order, and even to delete voicemails in any order. This is a HUGE barrier to entry for any telco that wants to support the iPhone - I’m sure Apple has defined an API that all the telcos and their big voicemail providers are busy implementing right now (ANOTHER reason why won’t see the iPhone in Canada any time soon…)

Hopefully the telco’s web sites will be improved as well. I remember how excited I was to get my first camera phone - a Samsung from Bell Canada. Then, I snapped my first photos (before leaving the store even!), and then I discovered the horrid UI on the phone for managing the photos - and the even WORSE UI at Bell for managing photo uploads. It was a complete disaster at Bell - the site was horrible, impossible to navigate, very difficult to download photos or share them, and very very slow. Hopefully the iPhone experience will revolutionize this area as well.

And the influence of the iPhone will extend well beyond mobiles as well. You HAVE to figure that Palm, Microsoft, and every other handheld manufacturer is busy revamping their UI’s - as well as beefing up their hardware capabilities. In a year or two, all handhelds will be much faster, and have much better capabilities - way beyond the normal speed of evolution - as the manufacturers struggle to catch up, and surpass the iPhone.

And, remember that this is only V1.0 of the iPhone. Apple is busy building newer and greater applications as we speak! Of course, the iPhone will transition from the cellular network to your 802.11 wireless network when you’re at home or at work. Of course, we’ll see companies licensed to develop applications for the iPhone - I’m sure Apple is talking to a ton of it’s loyal application vendors, giving them first shot at developing cool iPhone applications. There’s a camera there waiting to be exploited - video conferencing, live VLOGing, live podcasts. And, ebooks, social networking apps, uber presence, and on. I can’t wait!

And, the iPhone is affecting us in the landline phone business as well. We’re working on some awesome home and business phone products now - and our UI designs will certainly be influenced by the iPhone. We’re already pushing the hardware people to add tons more capabilities to the hardware we work with. Our customers expect very fast UI’s, a nice user experience, colour, video, andio, etc, and we’re working to add those daily. It’s a ton of fun in every aspect of the telecom industry right now.

Thanks Apple!

I’ve been an entrepreneur since high school when I was a partner in a mobile DJ company with Mitch over at Sensory Metrics. And, in the business I’m in (software development, engineering and consulting) I run into a ton of people every day.

But every now and then, you run into someone pretty impressive - who shares my ideas and ideals in software engineering and development - and who’s also doing some pretty cool entrepreneurial stuff. Stephane over at FollowSteph.com is one of those guys. He’s built a decent business selling his property management software - an app that is being used by everyone from people who own one property - to cities - to manage tons of sites.

Steph and I had a nice talk recently - covering JoelOnSoftware.com, development environments and procedures, daily builds, Story-based development, Subversion, and on and on. Where I’m normally the mentor in such things, I kept having to run over to my PC to make notes about some of the cool technologies Steph was recommending (NSIS, CruiseControl). I even found that one of the reviews of a Help Desk package (HelpSpot) I’ve been considering was written by Steph!

Steph also understands the power of blogging, and has built a respectable following for his blog - following along on his entrepreneurial journey.

Check him out!

Handy Backup is one of those apps that you install, set up quickly and easily, and then just forget about. The application runs quietly and reliably in the background, doing the backup tasks you have assigned it.

You set the app up by choosing a backup source and destination. The source can be any drive or directory tree, and the destination can be another drive, network share, FTP, ZIP file, CD. You can set up any number of backups, and when you want them to occur.

Then, they just happen.

We’re using this software at work to backup our NAS to a hot backup disk, and to a large USB drive we swap out every day or two.

I’m using it at home to backup my main PC’s contents to a large USB drive.

I’ve tried lots of other backup software - I’ve even owned a data backup and restore company!, but this software is the easiest and most reliable I’ve ever used.

The one problem: It doesn’t work on macs…

Highly recommended.

While we were down in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago I picked up a Sony PRS-500 Reader. I’ve been wondering about these for quite some time now - wondering if it can really be used as a replacement for a real book - wondering what its

The reader comes with a cover, and USB cable to connect to a PC, as well as a charger.

What’s good?

It is a really well built, fine piece of electronics.

The screen really is good - you can basically read off this screen just like paper (sort of like reading a magazine printed on non-glossy, pulp type paper. I’ve used it indoors, outdoors, on planes, at night with a book-light, and it’s been easy to read at all times.

It’s NOT backlit - so you have to get into the mindset that this thing really is a replacement for a book. You don’t expect books to be backlit… It works OK with the three models of booklight I’ve tried it with.

The menus and UI are OK. I’d really like some more feedback as to where you are in a book, something more visual than 100/932.

It is really cool to carry around dozens or hundreds of books at once. I tend to flip between reading that I *should* do for work, and reading purely for enjoyment - it’s nice to have a bunch of content with me. It is REALLY nice not to have to lug around hard-cover books!

What Sucks?

The web site and application that you use to load books onto the device really suck. It’s SLOW, poorly designed, and lacking in content. Why don’t people who run sites like this simply sit down in front of Amazon or iTunes and figure out what these people do right, and copy it?

YOU CAN’T BUY BOOKS WITH A CANADIAN CREDIT CARD. This REALLY sucks. I’m faced with getting my friends in the US to load up my account with $$$ - and then sending them money - or trying to get a US credit card, or a single use card or some other contortion. I’m sure there are all kinds of licensing reasons for this, but still, this ain’t no iTunes.

It’s slightly odd the way the screen refreshes. The e-ink that’s used has an extremely slow refresh time, so you can’t do anything really interactive like a mouse cursor. The UI accommodates this quite well.

Update: I tried plugging the reader into my MacBook Pro - the Mac detects it, the reader goes into “USB” mode - but the reader does NOT show up as a device in the file system. You can see the device in the USB Device Tree - but you can’t copy files to or from the device. Rats again Sony.

Tips and Tricks

Right now, there’s a $150 “special” on for the device. You’re allowed to purchase $50 worth of new books, and $100 worth of “classics” - which is 50 public domain type OLD books. This allowed me to load up the device with content - without a US credit card. I just entered a 90210 address…

Update: I’m having a friend in the ‘States sign up on the Connect.Com web site - and send me gift certificates. I think this will be the easiest way to get content into the device from the Sony store.

You can get content from sources such as FictionWise - choose the non-DRM’d content in PDF format and you’re OK. If there’s a choice, choose the largest font size PDF. So, I should be OK for content till I get the credit card business figured out…

I’ll keep using it over the next few months and report back!

Update Aug 31, 2007:  I’ve read a number of books using the device now, and I’m still happy with it. It is so nice to not have to read and travel with a heavy book. It works great with booklights for spousal happiness. I still wish I could get newer books through the Sony Connect service…

Google has added a terrific new feature to Maps - when you create a route from: xxx to:yyy you can then drag the blue line that signifies your route - to add way points, or change the routing. It’s really well done - a fine example of an online application REALLY working like a desktop application.

The UI is very nice as well - super intuitive - but a bit hard to discover without being told about it. Google has put up a nice video showing how to use the feature, and some example routes to play with.

See more at LifeHacker