The MPEG-LA, the entity that owns the patent for H.264 codec which most websites use for high-quality video, announced last week that they were extending the period of royalty-free usage for the life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License.  This royalty-free period only applies to free Internet video, so small independent producers of content do not have to pay for a license as long as they are not charging for their videos.

REAL SCENARIO:

The MPEG-LA is terrified of losing their market dominance of video codecs.  When Google announced that they were opening up their recently acquired video codec to be used for free on the web, MPEG-LA saw their fortunes starting to get chipped at by a competitor.  H.264 is by far the leading video codec online and it is only growing in popularity.  MPEG-LA wants no true competition to vie for their (going to be soon) monopoly of the video market.

I believe that once the MPEG-LA reaches >90% marketshare they will begin hedging their promises about royalty moratoriums.  When they have milked all the money they can out of hedging, then they will start to go after the video producers that publish their work on sites like youtube.  By claiming that they are making money off of their codec, even though the MPEG-LA already receives royalties from youtube directly, they will demand royalties for small-indie video producers.  Thus the way company monopolies go.

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Last Thursday morning Facebook announced their location based application: Places.  One of the surprises in the announcement is that the most popular existing location based services are able to integrate with Facebook’s application and share data.

REAL SCENARIO:

I believe that Facebook will play nice and work closely with the competition until Facebook is able to become the dominant player in the game.  Then as the competition introduces new features and continue to evolve Facebook will slowly begin to not support those new features and use the ‘extraneous’ features as a reason to stop supporting that service altogether.  Since most people are already on Facebook, when the user is required to suddenly have to start checking in with Facebook AND another service, well, we all know how lazy users can be.

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ACTION:

Last Monday Google and Verizon announced a net neutrality proposal for Congress to use as a basis for legislation. Many across the tech industry have cried foul over the gaping loopholes in this proposal.    Google has always been the stalwart companion of the Free & Open Internet®.  Now they suddenly do a 180 degree turn to get a proposal together?

REAL SCENARIO:

I believe that Google knew the backlash that would come from making these (admittedly) large concessions to Verizon to get them to agree to this proposal.  Google hopes that the backlash is large enough to spur the FCC and Congress into action to pass real net neutrality.  Both governmental bodies are reluctant to pass much regulation on the internet due mainly to political factors.  But if a sensible, lightly regulated net neutrality bill was passed into law and enforced Google could come out ahead by a large margin.

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Here’s my entry to win one of the phones:

So there I was, slogging away at my unending 9-5 job when suddenly I hear a heavenly glow emanating from my computer.  Intrigued I feel my hand, of it’s own volition, clicking over to Engadget’s coverage of this new ‘phone’, the HTC Evo 4G, which doesn’t sound like it’s possible or even real.  I devoured the spec sheet, each line seeming more incredulous than the last and making my tech-saliva start to froth.

Having  heard of this amazing new super-phone that was rumored to be coming from Sprint and HTC, I was already eager to upgrade my phone to just about anything newer.  But when I saw and believed that THIS was going to be my new phone, I knew I had been a good boy this year and was going to receive my more than ample reward.

Being the sole computer programmer for my company, I am THE person responsible for ensuring hundreds of people can access the data that they require to do their jobs.  It is essential that I can update my FB, twitter & foursquare statuses lightning fast so that I can perform at my peak efficiency.  Add in the ability to video conference from a handheld device to keep all my bosses happy and you already have some steep requirements for a new phone.  And finally having the awesome network coverage of Sprint while on the road to be on call 24/7 to be able to respond when needed to outages is what keeps me skinny, paid and happy.

So that’s my entry, hopefully I’ll win.

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I believe the biggest thing holding WebOS back now is the hardware.  The hardware is limited to phones right now, is a year and a half old and is badly in need of a refresh.  Seeing as how the iPad is coming out this weekend, I have naturally been thinking about the tablet form factor in general.  I’m not a big fan of the iPad (obviously), but I believe the form factor has alot going for it and for the right features and price I would be all over it.

WebOS excels at it’s purpose, being a finger-friendly, multi-touch, multitasking operating system.  This would translate perfectly over to a tablet form factor.  Taking the iPad’s form factor, which is almost without flaw, Palm could make the software match the hardware for beauty and usability.  Enable a ‘touch bar’ around the entire border of the display.  Allow developers to enable or disable portions of the touch bar to enable different hand positions on the device.  Just like on the Palm Pre, having a gesture area that is not on the screen can be very useful and add valuable real estate to the device.

Also, and this is a big one, add a camera!  It appears that even Apple had a camera in the iPad but was removed before it’s debut for some unknown reason.  Adding a front-facing camera enables native Skype calling, picture/video capture and a new interactive level to games. This ran a close second to being the biggest reason why I don’t want to get an iPad(yet).

Update WebOS to be able to operate like Google’s Chrome OS by saving all your documents to the web.  If I could prop the tablet up and sync a keyboard to the device and work on any documents that I need without the hassle of dealing with copying them manually to another device, that could solve a huge hassle when you’re sitting on the couch decide to type a quick something up and sharing it with others.

Add USB ports (or even microUSB)!  Adding two little ports would expand the usability exponentially.  The ability to directly connect millions of peripherals to the tablet directly would greatly expand the capabilities of the device without the need to buy any special adapters or new accessories.

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My mother is a music teacher for a local county school system.  She uses facebook.

Her school system has created a ‘facebook-lite’ site that allows their employees to socialize, coordinate and share information on a secure site in a more relaxed setting than the normal workplace.  When I asked my mother about her experience using the new site she said it was very similar to the functionality of facebook but it was a hassle having to deal with logging in to that site to make sure she’s up-to-date with the latest info.

Thinking about this, I realized that this is a perfect area of expansion for facebook to go into, corporate facebook networks.  Not in it’s current form.  Most large businesses are able to restrict access to their ‘network’ on facebook by requiring anyone joining that network to have an appropriate email address.  What fb needs to do is have private, secure networks that are managed by the businesses that no one outside this network can see anything that happens within it.

Facebook should allow corporations to set up private networks that work as a subset of the main facebook site.  Fb could charge the corporations for this ability and the corporations can benefit from having a very robust, feature-rich, easily accessible site for their employees to socialize and collaborate.  For the end-users this is the easiest solution since you could use your normal fb login and have all your corporate activity integrated with you normal social activity.

If fb gave control of layout, features and user management to the the business, it would allow each business to be responsible only to themselves for all user management.  This could be a major source of revenue for fb which appears to rely almost solely on banner advertisements.  Even charging just a couple dollars a month per user could greatly boost their cash flow and profit margins.

Just my two cents.

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I’m very happy with my Pre and only have a few small quibbles with it.  Occasionally the phone slows down, I’m assuming due to background apps, but I’m not sure.  I would like the app loading to be a little faster, for simple apps like the calculator it should be lightning quick to load.  I would also have liked a louder speaker on the phone when either using it as a speakerphone or playing music over the speaker, it’s just not quite powerful enough.

Now onto what I would love to find in the next Palm phone.

To really show that Palm is back, they need to show that they have both ends of the spectrum covered.  They wowed everyone last year with the introduction of the WebOS platform and now they need to knock everyone’s socks off with some new high-end hardware.  They need to be first (or at most, second) to market with a 4G handset.  It appears that the HTC Supersonic will be first with an integrated 4G modem, but if Palm comes out with a 4G radio I believe that will be the biggest sign that Palm is truly coming back.

Secondly, they need to up the screen specs.  Palm needs to increase the size to at least 3.7″, up the resolution to at least 800 x 480 and go AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic LED).  Since the Pre has the gesture area below the screen, it allows them to run a slightly smaller screen but new generation device screens are more than 20% larger and come with many more pixels.  OLED would help offset the larger display’s power consumption, but more importantly, it would at least match the screen quality of the current top-end phones available today.

Third, take a page from Google’s playbook and add voice-to-text for any text fields.  This is a fantastic evolution of speech recognition.  There have been countless times that I would have found that very convenient to be able to speak what I need typed.  In addition to this they need to get an on-screen keyboard; many times I have need to type something short and quick into my phone and I wanted to do it one-handed but that is not very feasible with the slide-out, physical keyboard.

While I don’t expect, yet still hope, that all of these changes are in store for the next Palm phone, I hope that they will soon start releasing information on the next device – my year is almost up and I need a new phone.  I believe they need to continue pushing the envelope if they want to stay relevant and carve out a niche for their future success.

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I’m glad the original Moses tablet was more revolutionary, cause this was just a disappointment.  I had been casually following the iPad rumors and was interested in what Steve Jobs was going to announce today.

Jobs’ track record over the years has been one of the best in the consumer electronics world.  You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who’s had a larger influence on the CE world than he has.  From all the rumors that have been floating around, this tablet was supposed to be IT.  The pinnacle of Jobs’ design life.  From a hardware point of view a case can be made for that claim.  But the software side of the iPad is what kills it.

Jobs has essentially blown up the iPhone OS and enlarged the size of the screen.  There doesn’t appear to be any major changes in how the OS works,  which is the downfall of the iPad.  What works for a 3.5″ screen does not necessarily translate to the same experience for a 9.7″ screen.  The biggest drawback to Jobs’ decisions on the iPad’s OS is the lack of multitasking.

A reasonable case can be made that a user doesn’t need to be able to multitask on a phone, but on a tablet there is no excuse to exclude this ability.  From everything I’ve read the iPad is extremely fast and responsive and I believe most people would gladly give up a slight boost in speed by allowing multiple applications to run simultaneously.  I use a Palm Pre and one of the main reasons I use that phone is for it’s multitasking abilities.  I have found the multitasking to be extremely convenient and time-saving by being able to have, for instance, Google Maps running alongside my email program or browser.

I’ll list a couple cons & pros of the iPad and then go into a little more depth.

Pros-

• OLED Display
• Hardware Design
• Battery Life – compared to notebooks

Cons-

• Battery Life – compared to Kindle
• Multitasking
• Camera
• Wireless Data
• USB Ports

On the plus side, the iPad is a beautiful device.  Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design guru, came through in flying colors with the hardware.  The choice, although not a hard one, to go with an OLED display was smart.  OLED is the current leader for small, affordable displays.  And the battery life, my jaw dropped when Jobs announced that it had 30 days standby time and 10 hours of video use on a charge.  Compared to notebooks this is exceptional in a device this slim.

On the negatives I won’t bother with multitasking again, but the choice to not include a camera is stupefying to me.  I cannot see any logic to not include a camera of some sort besides maintaining niches for each of Apple’s products.  The lack of USB ports I believe was based on the decision of form over function.  Apple would rather have a beautiful device even if it means losing some important functionality.  I wish Apple would have included at least one USB port just so that I could hook up my Clear USB modem and surf the web, that would be a mobile internet experience to fit the Apple ecosystem.

And battery life, yes I know it was on the pro list, but if you compare the iPad to the Kindle, it doesn’t compare.  Jobs seemed to try to position this device as a competitor to the Kindle with many added features, but one of the killer features of the Kindle, or any E-Ink display, is the outstanding battery life.  Most people could easily go a month without needing to charge their Kindle, not so with the iPad.

One major problem I see with the iPad is not inherent in the design or software, it’s in the choice that Jobs made.  His choice to use AT&T as the 3G wireless data provider.  From numerous studies across the US, AT&T is viewed as the largest deterrent for people who are considering buying the iPhone.  AT&T has notoriously bad 3G coverage.  Of the three major wireless carriers in the US, they have by far the worst 3G coverage.  It’s so bad they’ve  sued other companies for advertising their own horrible 3G coverage.

I believe the overriding reason Steve Jobs chose to stick with AT&T is because of a huge wad of cash they shoved in Apple’s pocket.  While that in itself is not such a dastardly thing, what is shocking is that Jobs always harps on user experience being king.  That’s why he doesn’t allow multitasking on the iPhone, that’s why Apple has a strict application approval process for the App Store, that’s why all Macbooks now have a unibodies with non-removable batteries.  It’s all in the endless goal of improving the user experience.  But he chooses to stick with AT&T when they are the largest cause for complaints on the iPhone?  I wonder how much his ideals cost him?  Maybe it’s time he does retire if his jesus-juice is running so low he has to compromise his ideals.

I hope that the disappointment that is being expressed about the iPad will cause Steve Jobs to reconsider a few of his design choices and release an updated design that includes multitasking, camera, USB port and different wireless data provider.  With those four changes I believe the iPad would receive much higher reviews and much higher sales numbers.

Disclaimer: I am a proud user of a Palm Pre on Sprint, I own a first gen iPod Touch, I have Clear WiMax Internet, I used to be an AT&T customer before I got my first smartphone.

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For the few times in my life that I’ve been in a ‘sales pitch’ position I always felt a little dirty afterwards. I’ve never been really comfortable trying to persuade someone to buy/lease/use something without giving them the low-down. I’m much more comfortable discussing the positives AND negatives of an idea/product/item than actively avoiding the negatives aspect of said subject.   Now I don’t have a problem selling anything, just in the act of persuading the other person.  The only time I’ve felt differently is when I’m selling someone on myself, most usually in relationships.  

Most everybody’s been on both side of a relationship breakup.  The break-upper, trying to be gentle yet firm and not giving in to the sales pitch when the break-upee is fighting to stay together.  And I’ve been the one fighting to keep the relationship when the girl wants to end it.  I guess my normal objectivity goes out the window when relationship emotions get worked up.  But that’s can be a good thing.  When in a relationship, there should be no holding back.  

I’ve grown accustomed to the usual disclaimers on any advertising related to wireless cellphone companies.  But an ad on facebook caught my eye today for AT&T.  

AT&T Ad

I am amused by AT&T’s lawyers coming out of the woodwork to update their disclaimers to more accurately reflect the contracts that they require their customers to sign to get the best deals on hardware.  I’m used to the regular disclaimer “2 year contract required, early termination fees apply”.  Simple, sweet, to the point.  Then a couple years ago they added “3G not available in all areas”.   I understand, don’t want to misrepresent AT&T’s (notoriously bad) 3G coverage.  But now they’ve added “significant restrictions apply”.  Has hell frozen over?  Pigs flying? (Oh wait, their flu is flying around the world….bad example!).  I guess some of AT&T’s recent bad press has them getting more sensitive to the response that their data rates (correctly) bring out of people.  But I am overly glad that they are now at least hinting some of the (artificial) limits they are placing on their data plans. 

Maybe people will see enough these disclaimers to cause them to look more closely at their usage agreements with their wireless carrier and start to ask questions on why they can’t use their phone or netbook the way they were designed.  And start to demand that the large sums of money we are paying to the wireless carriers allow us to use their networks for our own purposes and not solely to increase their bottom lines. 

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But anyway, this isn’t about engadget, well, only tangentially.  I got a Dell mini 9 delivered this week (which I ordered after hearing about Dell’s sale for $199 minis from engadget).  Today I read on engadget yet another photo frame that has wifi, a 7″ screen, 512 MB memory for $199.  Now, this is one of the much cheaper photo frames that are out there.  I don’t see why people will pay $200+ for an lcd that scrolls through pictures when you can buy a $200-300 netbook and just set up flickr, or picasa on it.

In addition to have a larger display, a netbook has more storage, a web cam (usually), a web browser and a battery!  If you had a couple netbooks lying around the house, you can just set them up as photo frames on shelves and you’re good to go!

I don’t see any major change in this scenario until e-ink makes an entry into the photo frame market.  Judging by the latest e-ink CE products lately the photo frame market is secure for awhile.  I believe it will at least be the end of 2010 before the e-ink color displays become attractive enough and within the realm of affordability to become mainstream.

Until then, I’ll be viewing my photos on my mini 9.

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