I love it when marketing teams re-brand something, give it a new identity, people buy into it and bam, you have a new product. What really happened was they put a ribbon on their grand father’s toy truck and tried to sell it as brand new. Sometimes it works, sometimes it flops. Amazon, and Microsoft soon, have taken the bull by the horns on this one and are running with it.

In it’s most simple terms, cloud computing is basically letting someone else worry about putting your computer, and therefore your software, on the Internet. So, therefore, you are in the “cloud”.

But, wait a minute. I was doing that in 2001. Websites have been doing that since the web was invented. When I worked at a small ISP we called it co-location. You put your server on our rack and enjoy our Internet speeds. Boom, welcome to the ‘fog’(?). Or, you just host your files, database, whatever, on our servers and enjoy our bandwidth and server maintenance, and bam, cloud!

So why is it all the rage these days? Because most people don’t know what they are talking about. Sure, there is virtualization and you can spin up new servers, more ram, more power, with a few clicks instead of modifying the hardware. But you can do that in your local environment as well. Hell I do it on my Lenovo laptop and have five servers running in a single instance. You can go to Dell and get a super cheap server, throw in lots of ram, and you have a virtual server. Done.

But, people like to buy into the cloud. They host with Amazon. Amazon crashes for days. And many mainstream services like Reddit and others go off line. How can any self respecting CIO buy into this bullshit? Serves them right if you ask me. Bottom line, doesn’t matter who you are, Sony, Amazon, anyone, you are not invulnerable, your servers will crash. If you are the “cloud” then you will piss off many many people.

And you know, all you are really saving is the cost of the hardware. You can buy your own hardware and put it in any number of data centers in the world. The “cloud” isn’t going to write your software for you. The ‘cloud’ isn’t going to maintain your database for you. All it’s going to do is give you a server, some canned code if you want it, like wordpress or joomla or others, and that’s it.

The cloud is never going to replace a Domain server. Not with the bandwidth speeds we have today. So you are going to have internal infrastructure anyway. Anyway, that’s my rant. Cloud = co-location of 10 years ago. Don’t buy into the hype.

I recently received my IPAD 2 and immediately starting playing on it. I added all of the standard apps, Netflix, DropBox, Kindle, and began adding a few new ones. I have to say that the power of the IPAD lies in its apps. There really are apps for everything out there.

But Apps alone don’t make a tablet. The device itself is really quite amazing. Operating it is really a dream. It’s fast, smooth and pops between apps quickly. Though I can’t use Flash, I’m really not missing it. Those sites that have upgraded to HTML 5 work quite fine and those that don’t probably have an App. Fora.tv, one of my favorite websites, has an app for that. I can watch Fora programming on my Ipad, and though its built for the iPhone, it works quite well.

I don’t think the iPad 2 will replace my PC, as I do programming and gaming that require me to install things, but for everything else I do on the net, I’d rather do it with an Ipad.

Now, let me stress, I am no Apple fanboy. In fact, I hated Apple’s computers for years. I am a PC guy by nature and experience. OSX sucks balls, just try getting three macs to work in an office full of PC”s with issue, and the machines themselves used to burn your hand if you touched them as they ran hotter than a frying pan.

But where Apple started to win me over was in its mobile devices. First the iPod, which was awesome, then the original iPhone, which was a game changer, and now the iPad. Say what you want about Apple, their mobile stuff is pretty damn good. That said, I am no longer using an iPhone but switched to the HTC Evo. But that choice was more because the Evo had 4G and a carrier that didn’t treat their customers like dung.

And as for all the people complaining about Apple’s control of the App store, take a look at what happened recently to Android’s market. It’s really out of control with malware and cheap apps. At least when I download something from Apple’s App store, I know it’ll at least work.

Wow, I’m really sounding like a fanboy, but I’m not, I swear. Again, I will never own a Macintosh computer, they are crap. As for their mobile suite, lets face it people, it’s pretty damn good. They aren’t selling 45 million iPad’s to just fanboy’s after all. They made a killer device. By controlling the software, hardware and retail stores, they have a winning recipe.

Will honeycomb beat out the iPad in years to come? Who knows. The power really is in the Apps and until Google, and let me say I am a google fan boy, deals with it’s app store, it will never really be a solid challenger.

It’s really amazing to me that someone could screw up something as simple as email. I mean checking email on the web has been around ever since the net has been around. We’re talking a basic function here. Dare I say its even a “Cloud” service? Years before this ridiculous marketing term every came to be, yes the ‘cloud’ is nothing more than a marketing gimic and anyone trying to sell you on it is a huckster, web email was fairly well ingrained in the Internet. As soon as the first browsers came to be shortly thereafter email on the web followed.

I mention this only because we are talking about a part of the web that’s been there from the beginning. SO it’s with an amazing level of disbelief that I logged into Yahoo mail and tried the new beta. Here then is my tale of woe.

First, the look. It’s not bad. Very modern with navigation down the left side for the email system and long the top for the specific function you are in. For instance, when I press compose message, i get new commands along the top for sending, saving as a draft, etc. All pretty standard.

But, when I do hit compose message, something else odd happened. A tab opened up inside the mail system itself. A tab inside of my page. Hmmm? What’s this? Tabbed email? This could be cool right? Not so fast, this is Yahoo we’re talking about.

I continued to play with the email system and the more I played the more frustrated I got. Those tabs seemed to be everywhere. When I click on an email, it opens a tab. It does not alter the current tab, it opens as brand new tab. Not only that, after 11 emails being clicked on, I get a message saying “You’ve reached the maximum number of message tabs”. What?!?! What kind of anarchy is this? Maximum number of tabs? What year is this?

Yes, it’s true. There is a limit to the number of tabs you can have open in your email program. Insane. Not only that, when i’m in an email and want to go back, what do I do? I do what I’ve done on the Internet for over a decade. I hit hte browsers back button. But oh wait! What happens? You guessed it, it takes me back to the previous page, which is outside the email system.

Here then is where I claim they have broken their own email page. Hitting the back button is simply ingrained in the minds of web surfers. It’s what we use. Why on earth would you make a system that not only didn’t use it but took you out of the system you are in? By treating emails as built in tabbed pages you’ve eliminated all the functionality of the back button. Not a smart move.

So, in conclusion, Yahoo, get a grip. The tabbed emails could be cool but you’ve limited how many we can open and eliminated the traditional way of going out of the email and back to the main email system.  People fly through emails like they do through web pages. We click on one, read it, move on to the next. You’ve made it much more difficult to rifle through emails. Take a look at how Google does it, maybe you’ll learn something.

As for Carol Bartz. What can ya say. Good job!

My opinion of the Chrome laptop, it rocks. It’s really a slick design. Granted, you simply must have an internet connection for it to function, but honestly everything I do and have is on the internet these days. I don’t even have music files anymore, I just use Pandora and Grooveshark. All my documents are in Google Docs and even if I did want to get to my Dropbox, I can hit their website and get my files anyway.

The one most impressive thing about the CR48, it’s fast. Really fast. I close the laptop, leave it for a few days, and when I return and open it up, it’s instantly on. Love that.

Apps in the Google chrome app store are a little lame. Some are good, granted, but most are really just links to a website where they have an HTML 5 site. Not that I’m complaining, the NY Times HTML 5 Google app is really solid. Huffingtonposts is even better.

One neat extra that the CR48 has is downloaded files. You can download a file and get access to it somewhere on the machine. Not sure where it’s stored but it’s there. Also there are some apps that run in little popout windows in the bottom right corner of the screen. Not too shabby. Imagine it like a windows task bar without all the massive CPU and memory wastes.

If you want to give it a test run, just try to use Google Chrome. It’s a similar experience just possibly not as fast as the laptop is. I’ll have more as more features come out. I’m looking forward to running apps behind the scenes, something that Google just came out with.

Oh, and on another note, I do plan on jumping into the iPad game this Friday the 11th. Might as well. Don’t know if I even need a tablet, probably not, but what kind of geek cred can I claim if I don’t have one?

I haven’t been posting for a while but you can expect to see some updates as I give this little baby a ride. First impressions are the laptop is SMALL and very light. I only got so far as to hold it up in the air and triumphantly yell “KAHN!!!” It was the only battle cry that came to mind.

How did I get one you ask? I just filled out the form here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/cr48advanced/

Give it a try, you never know!

The biggest concern I had with the Evo was battery life. No matter where I looked I found people crying about the battery. I did find a few sites and youtube video’s of folks not having any issues so I decided to give it a try. Suffice to say, when I use the Evo heavily, the battery drains. Shocker. I play a game, turn on GPS, etc, it will drain a bit faster than if I don’t. But on a regular days use I quite easily get a solid 12 hours. That is not total stand by either, that’s a checking emails, making a few calls, generally using the phone. Safe to say that with the out of the box battery, it’s not a big deal. Also, you can find some after market batteries that should give more battery life but I haven’t tried them.

The second big concern I found was FPS. The EVO is locked at 30 fps and can’t go higher. Well, honestly, I could care less. I haven’t really noticed a big difference. I suppose if I put my Insignia TV next to a LG or Sony and stare really hard i’ll eventually see some difference but honestly, do you care that much? You shouldn’t.

The next big factor was the network. Sprint is right now better than AT&T, at least in DC. With ATT I would drop calls in my own living room. That is very frustrating. I live in the city and to drop calls on the couch is just unacceptable. Besides, Sprint has 4G partially rolled out in DC, and let me tell you it is fast. If it were really reliable I could ditch Comcast as well. I use the tethering on the EVO for work and that works well also.

So, if you are wondering if the EVO is a good bet or not, I have it, use it regularly and its a solid phone. Video on it is top rate, the screen size is great and the kickstand is just cool. One bad thing about it, 100 dollar mail in rebate. Give me a break. Mail in rebates should die, seriously.

When the Empire struck back they kicked the rebel asses hard. Very hard. Amazon is about to do the same thing to everyone in the e-book market. Why? Because they were first. Being first has its advantages. The Kindle came onto the scene when there was only one competitor, Sony. Since then Amazon updated it’s kindle to a second version and even made a larger DX version with twice the screen size. That was last year.

Amazon hasn’t done much this season and with good reason. I suspect they sat back and watched. They watched Apple, Sony and everyone else scramble to compete with it’s e-reader. Amazon saw different companies ideas and has taken notes. Why have an R&D department when you can watch everyone else?

Expect to see a Kindle 3 in the near future. Expect it to be bad ass. Full multi-touch color e-ink screens. The company that makes e-ink has announced that their e-ink is going to faster, support multi-touch and have color. Amazon is going to take strong advantage of that. They have also recently purchased a company that makes flexible touchscreens.

Lets not forget that Amazon has ‘an app for that’ on PC, Mac, iPhone and other platforms that is basically a Kindle to go. All Amazon really wants to be is your source to purchase books. Having the e-reader is just icing on the cake.

Amazon has sat back and watched everyone else put out e-ink devices or tablet PC’s that really don’t add anything to the market. The next generation e-book is going to be multi-touch, e-ink AND color capable and might even be a flexible display that you can roll up and put in your pocket.

Oh and the name on the top of it will be Kindle.

First of all, the good. The iPad is beautiful to look at. It really is. It has access to all of Apple’s App store applications, which is awesome. It’s light, portable and cheap, you can get one for 500 bucks, not bad at all. Apple has added some good apps including iWorks and iBooks, both of them aiming at different competing software and hardware on the market. And last but not least, they are 3G capable, so you can go anywhere with them and have blazing fast speeds. Ahem.

Well that’s all well and good, lets run out and buy it, right? Hold your horses there comrade. Lets take a deeper look at this magical device. First, it’s the iPhone OS, so no flash. Yes, no flash. Excuse me? No flash?!? Love it or hate it, Flash is a big part of the internet. I can’t even look at my Google Analytics with this thing let alone play Flash games and the biggest of all let downs, I can’t watch porn on flash porn sites! WTF?

Next problem, you can’t multitask with it. So, if I want to use Apple’s iWorks and do a bit of research on Wikipedia while I’m writing something, I can’t. I certainly can’t have two apps running at the same time. That seems to me to be a serious let down for what is supposed to be a bridge between netbooks and phones. That was Steve Jobs opening slide, an iPhone on one side and a Macbook on the other with a big question mark in the middle. The iPad goes in the middle. Well, tell me how not being able to do two things at once is anything at all like a netbook? I typically do 10 things at once on the PC, I have poker sites open, two or three FireFox windows open, Chrome, Kindle for the PC, etc etc. You expect me to go down to just one? We’ve been turning ourselves into an ADD species for decades and now I have to revert? No chance.

Another big minus is no camera and no phone. Huh?? How is something that is supposed to be both an iPhone and a Macbook not equipped with a phone, camera or Flash? Epic Fail.

Next, they partnered with AT&T again. Need I say more? Blazing fast 3G? HA!

Apple got something very right with the iPhone. It filled a big need. Adding computer like capability to a portable device. They designed it to have a closed system which has worked well for the iPhone. It has because people don’t expect it to be a computer, they just expect it to be computer like. People tolerate not having flash on their phone because not many people want to browse the web on such a small small screen while sitting in their house. The iPhone OS is meant to be portable. The big issue here is that the iPad is not a portable device.

The iPad is really a game changer. It will change Apple’s success rate of recent years. They have taken the functionality of a netbook, removed it, taken the limitations of the iPhone, expanded them, and put it all together. The iPad is now a big iTouch. That’s it. It is not a functioning computer that you can use and do anything with effectively. By locking it down so much they have made it useless.

Here is what you need a tablet computer to do. Everything a laptop computer can do. Simple isn’t it? The iPad can’t do half of what a laptop can do. It’s way to big to put in the pocket so portability is out of the question. You can’t multitask with it so anything work related is not going to happen. You do have access to the App store and it is a nice screen for browsing the web, but that’s about it. It doesn’t fill any need or niche.

All in all, the iPad will be purchased by people wanting to have a new toy. You won’t see 75 million people buying this. Everyone needs a phone, so everyone bought the coolest one. Not everyone needs a tablet that doesn’t do anything except what Apple says it should do.

One thing is for certain. Google better be paying attention to this. Chrome OS will be about the same as the iPhone OS except no App store. Why do these companies think if you remove functionality that you have a winner? These internet only computers, which is really what the iPad is, are neat in that they are designed to just look at the internet. But frankly, they don’t do anything that my laptop or computer doesn’t already do. They boot in seven seconds you say? Who gives a fuck?!? Turn on your PC, go to the kitchen, get a beer, get back, it’s up.

Oh and the last thing that’s wrong with this thing, the name. iPad? Lame.

All that aside, and I don’t want to go too deeply into the RIAA and all of that, I personally think we should just bag it and try again. What did you say? I’m insane? No, that’s just alcoholic dementia, it passes. But I honestly think we could have a shot at creating a subnet to the Internet. Read on!

Truth be told, there are thousands of subnets on the Internet. They are called Intranets and they are used for businesses and schools to provide a private network for employees and students. These are accessed using a VPN, or virtual private network, to ensure security is maintained and also to gain access to internal DNS servers, or domain name servers.

So, have you caught on yet? Why don’t we, and by that I mean a group of tech savvy and fed up 30 somethings, make a giant VPN network on the Internet, make our own DNS servers and bid a fond farewell to all the noise that the Internet has devolved into?

I am suggesting a migration. A human migration from one living space to another. It happens all the time. We are a migratory people, or at least we once were. When one area of land runs out of food or gets full up with a-holes, all the cool people get together and say “f-this, lets find some new digs”, or more accurately “Grunt, mrpgh, ugh, go, mmmmmm”. Well, I for one think the Internet is becoming a-hole central. Most of it is just fine, the blogosphere is fun but overrun with places like Huffington post and other commercial blogging sites that overshadow all the individuality out there.

Enter the Internet Mark II. Lets setup a VPN network at universities around the US. Once on the VPN we’ll redo DNS, point sites like www.google.com to anything we want, setup our own ICANN, redo it right. And we won’t let anyone in that doesn’t know what a ‘red shirt’ is, can’t spell their name in binary, and doesn’t have at least a modicum of geek cred.

All joking aside, I have to wonder if these little VPN networks don’t already exist. If they don’t, it’s not such a radical idea to create them. Only allowing in those that are allowed in. Keeping out the RIAA, spammers, virus websites, phishers, and every other douche that we don’t want. Net Neutral? Sure is. It’s our VPN and all the traffic is encrypted so the ISP’s won’t know what we’re doing, only that we are doing something.

The books Otherland by Tad Williams, one of the best scifi series books ever written, a group of future techies made a network like I described. It was kinda like the Babylon 5 of the Internet, except no law. Anyone is welcome, don’t damage the space, don’t try to hack. Their private network was kept safe by it being easily able to be deconstructed and reconstructed on a moments notice. When the feds came looking the would shut it down, dismantle the servers and remake it elsewhere. Something that could easily be done with today’s Cloud.

Am I off kilter on that one? Sounds like a good idea? Maybe. Maybe not. But it sure would be cool.

The iPhone was game changing. Never before had anything like it come out in the smart phone market. Sure there was blackberry and it had a neat keyboard, but really that’s all it had. The iPhone was sleek, slender, and destined to be great. The app store was innovative and showed the world that a closed system could work just fine. In fact it works better than fine, as Andriod developers are finding out.

Ok, what all this really amounts to is a new smart phone with this nifty thing called Andriod on it. What does it do? Well, first and foremost it does a lot less than any iPhone. Why? The app store, that’s why. There are 100,000+ applications in that thing from fun games to professional level software. Sure there is an Andriod app store but it has  a tenth of what’s in the Apple store. Sure new apps will go into the Andriod app store but so will apps into the iPhone app store which now has a huge lead. The real clincher here is going back to that closed system of the iPhone. Because it’s closed that means there are just three hardware models, all three generations of the iPhone. With Andriod you have many more. Soon there will be hundreds more.

The issue? Not all phones are made equally.

Some phones have touch screens, some phones have GPS, some phones have a flip out keyboard. If you are a developer, your app better know how to deal with it. The issue we are seeing is that apps have to be customized, just a little bit, for every model of phone out there. But wait! There’s more! Now that tablets are coming and some powered by Andriod, the problem will only get worse. Developers are freaking out about it and I don’t blame them. I want to make one application, sell it, make money, have hot girlfriend, go to beach, the end. I don’t want to make one application, get complaints it doesn’t work on yet another Andriod phone, fix it, make money, get more complaints, see hot girl friend leave for not stressed out twenty something douche bag. Big pain in the ass.

Ok, so the app store sucks, what about all those other bells and whistles of a smart phone? Can we say,been there done that? They all have cameras, they all have touch screens, etc etc. Just putting out yet one more and wrapping it under both Andriod and Google names isn’t going to do anything. Sure they will sell but the appeal to an iPhone isn’t just the phone, its the store.

If you have a phone already, keep it. Don’t buy into the hype and waste your money. Wait for the next generation to come out. I am talking built in pico projectors, not something that you connect to the bottom. I am talking holographic keyboards, they are displayed with friggin lasers on a solid surface and can operate just like a normal keyboard. Wait for the day when your phone will fit into a stand on your desk, use it’s projector to beam a 1020/768 screen on your empty wall and its friggin lasers to draw a keyboard on your desk. That day is coming. Soon  young jedi, soon.