Category: General

I’m back from CES this year… managed to catch an earlier flight yesterday and got back to Houston in time to catch a great basketball game — Rockets vs. Lakers — last night.

I’ve had several conversations with folks about the show, what I saw there and what was interesting. Katie over at Om Malik’s blog has a good post on the Top 5 Trends at CES. I agree that THIS year’s CES was incremental, but I thought this was in contrast to last year’s CES. Last year’s CES was all about content — Google announced the availability of CBS and NBA content on Google Video, Intel announced content partnerships as a part of their VIIV campaign. Last year everyone was competing to see who could get the bigger celebrities in their keynotes (Yahoo had Ellen Degeneres, Tom Hanks, Intel had Morgan Freeman and Tom Hanks, Google had Robin Williams). Just a few months before CES, Apple had starting making TV shows available through iTunes. Last year’s CES was all about video content deals, and this was big and different news. In contrast, CES this year was only incremental. No big new technologies or products, just people trying to improve their digital devices — higher resolution, more functionality, access to more content, etc. Things that the companies exhibiting hope to improve user experience and drive volume for their products.

🙂

I’m at CES from today until Wednesday afternoon. If you are interested in meeting up, email me or call me at 713 446 7725.

Today, I mourn the death of James Kim.

Like others who are current users of the web-based Gmail Mobile, the net-net experience with the new Java-based Gmail client isn’t great. It looks nice and it does a number of things that I’ve always wanted to be able to do with the web-based version (easier lookup of email addresses, mark messages as spam), but this is a case of two steps forward, five steps back. Some of the issues that I’m having are issues with my Windows Mobile 5.0 JVM (I have a Cingular 2125):

* My Java Midlet Manager constantly asks me / prompts me if it’s OK to the access the Internet. How do I get rid of these prompts and just tell it to log me in when it needs to log me in?

* How do I get text entry to default to T9? Right now, I have to change the setting everytime I enter a textarea / textbox to enter an e-mail address or a message. On a related note, getting into a text box requires too many clicks! Click in the Gmail Java Client and then click again in Windows Mobile to edit the textarea. And then two ‘accepts’ when I want to get back to the Gmail Java Client.

* How do I link directly to Gmail from my main menu rather than having to go through the midlet manager?

* And, like Paul mentions in his post (linked to above) the context switch from my mobile web browser is a pain.

* Related to the context switch, the back button on my phone doesn’t behave the way I expect it to. When I hit back, rather than taking me to the previous screen in the Gmail Java client (which is how the web-based version works), it takes me out of the midlet manager. Ack!

I’m looking forward to iterative upgrades to this client. The client gives a glimpse at a superior class of mobile web experiences, but it also reveals the (fixable) shortcomings of today’s mobile phone platforms.

It’s not often that I watch an in-flight movie, but my flight this morning was playing “Little Miss Sunshine” and Apu had recommended this movie to me so I decided to check it out. The movie was great. The characters, the acting, the story — all great. But the cinematography was especially spectacular and it’s what made me love this movie so much. It felt like every shot in the movie was an carefully composed photograph, whether it was a shot of the angst-ridden teenager character reflected in a mirror during the intro or their van (the “bus”) set against a midwestern sky at dusk. Who deserves the credit for this stuff? How much of it is the work of the cameraman? How much the work of the director? I’m curious to know, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because I loved the final product.

(On a side note, Apu, if you are reading this, you’re partially redeemed by this movie recommendation but your last one (Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna) was a real dud so you still have a ways to go)

I’m a fan of mass customization so when I was at FAO Schwartz on 5th Avenue earlier this week, I snapped this photo with my phone (posted to my blog courtesy of Shozu). I grew up with Hot Wheels so it’s neat to see a build to order option from them.

If you’re one of my blog readers in Houston, you might be interested in checking out this talk at Rice early next week. From the sounds of it, the talk will cover a lot of topics (including peanut aerodynamics and urine leak engineering!).

Dean of Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series
Co-host: Computer and Information Technology Institute

title: Will Pringles Fly?

by Tom Lange, Director, Corporate R&D, Procter and Gamble
when Monday, October 30, 2006
time: 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
where: McMurtry Auditorium Duncan Hall

Duncan Hall is building # 20 (located in the upper right quadrant) on
the campus interactive map at http://www.rice.edu/mapos. Move your mouse
over the buildings to see the building number.

Visitor parking is shown in yellow on the interactive map. The visitor
parking west of Rice Stadium is free. Shuttle busses pick up and drop
off at bus shelters every 10 minutes. Paid visitor parking (by credit
card only) is available near entrances # 2, 8 and 13.

abstract
How can modeling and simulation greatly accelerate the pace of
innovation, and not just for airplanes and cars but for everyday
products? With Procter and Gamble making and selling billions of
products every day, we will explore some of the ?surprising? technical
challenges this presents e.g., a case study on the aerodynamics of
Pringles?. Other multi-scale, multi-physics examples will be shown that
span the scale from molecules to the enterprise: from computational
chemistry models of soap suds, to the reliability and availability of
high-speed production systems. Multi-physics simulation challenges from
diapers to laundry liquids, from human/product interaction to machine
dynamics will also be explored.

speaker bio
Tom Lange (BSChE from the University of Missouri ?78) joined Procter and
Gamble in May 1978, as a product technical engineer. Tom has spent his
27-year P&G career modeling and simulating product and production
systems, from how the aerodynamics of a peanut affect roasting, to how
baby sizes affect the probability of a urine leak in a diaper.

He was recognized in 1994 with a PRISM award, P&G?s highest technical
recognition for engineering. Tom was appointed associate director in
1998, becoming the first department head of the modeling, simulation and
analysis department for corporate engineering. In August 2001 he was
appointed head of P&G?s CAE (computer-aided engineering) organization.
In September 2004, he was appointed director of modeling and simulation
for P&G in Corporate R&D, including CAE and computational chemistry
efforts.Dean of Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series
Co-host: Computer and Information Technology Institute

title: Will Pringles Fly?

by Tom Lange, Director, Corporate R&D, Procter and Gamble
when Monday, October 30, 2006
time: 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
where: McMurtry Auditorium Duncan Hall

Duncan Hall is building # 20 (located in the upper right quadrant) on
the campus interactive map at http://www.rice.edu/mapos. Move your mouse
over the buildings to see the building number.

Visitor parking is shown in yellow on the interactive map. The visitor
parking west of Rice Stadium is free. Shuttle busses pick up and drop
off at bus shelters every 10 minutes. Paid visitor parking (by credit
card only) is available near entrances # 2, 8 and 13.

abstract
How can modeling and simulation greatly accelerate the pace of
innovation, and not just for airplanes and cars but for everyday
products? With Procter and Gamble making and selling billions of
products every day, we will explore some of the ?surprising? technical
challenges this presents e.g., a case study on the aerodynamics of
Pringles?. Other multi-scale, multi-physics examples will be shown that
span the scale from molecules to the enterprise: from computational
chemistry models of soap suds, to the reliability and availability of
high-speed production systems. Multi-physics simulation challenges from
diapers to laundry liquids, from human/product interaction to machine
dynamics will also be explored.

speaker bio
Tom Lange (BSChE from the University of Missouri ?78) joined Procter and
Gamble in May 1978, as a product technical engineer. Tom has spent his
27-year P&G career modeling and simulating product and production
systems, from how the aerodynamics of a peanut affect roasting, to how
baby sizes affect the probability of a urine leak in a diaper.

He was recognized in 1994 with a PRISM award, P&G?s highest technical
recognition for engineering. Tom was appointed associate director in
1998, becoming the first department head of the modeling, simulation and
analysis department for corporate engineering. In August 2001 he was
appointed head of P&G?s CAE (computer-aided engineering) organization.
In September 2004, he was appointed director of modeling and simulation
for P&G in Corporate R&D, including CAE and computational chemistry
efforts.

I recently switched from a Dell laptop to a Toshiba M400 Tablet PC and I’ve also been spending some time using Shonali’s new MacBook and I’m discovering something interesting. Keyboard layouts vary pretty significantly and I think if I were an “average” user (as opposed to someone who is an early adopter, a techie), this would be one of the biggest barriers to switching from one PC to another.

Shonali’s MacBook doesn’t have a PgUp or PgDn button (though I eventually figured out that Fn + Up or Fn + Down accomplish the same thing. My new Toshiba doesn’t have a Windows button in the same row as the keyboard (I’m used to there being at least two of these buttons — one to the left of the spacebar, one to the right of the spacebar). My new Toshiba also has a ` button in the same place that my old keyboard and every other keyboard I’ve ever used has it’s control button — this particular difference is a major annoyance!

Anyways, the point here is that when I’ve bought new computers, I’ve never paid attention to the keyboard layout. In fact, until now, I can’t say that I ever gave keyboard layout any consideration at all while purchasing a laptop. You certainly don’t hear reviewers talking about keyboard layout as they whiz through the latest speeds and feeds.

Sometimes non-obvious things (at least, non-obvious to early adopters) are what lock people into one product vs. another.

Marc Canter says of Michael Arrington’s Google-SpaceShipOne replica blog postings: “Who the fuck cares about that bullshit!” I had a similar, albeit much tamer, question when I read these postings on TechCrunch over the weekend but the answer seems pretty obvious to me. First of all, based on Michael’s history of posting, I can tell that he’s no Google fanboy so I’m pretty sure Michael didn’t post this because he wanted publicly adore Google (if anything, he might have been trying to do the opposite in an unspoken manner). So the reason he’d post something like this is simple — it was a Google-scoop in a world where everyone loves the latest kooky Google story and a scoop like this, if successful, promises to bring with it lots of great link juice, potential mentions in offline publications and, ultimately, lots of readers. And, again I don’t know Michael personally, but from the few times I’ve talked to him and heard him speak, if there’s one thing Michael does care about (and is good at), it’s increasing his readership.