…check and direct and let’s begin.
So we’re coming back. Laura and I are making a trip(s) back to the midwest for the seixghth time this year? That’s somewhere between 6 and 8, I think. Laura’s actually making two trips because she has to be here in Portland during the week for work. So why are we coming back? Lana Davis (Scott to be) is getting married in good old Lawrence this weekend, and then Kate “the Zimminator” Zimney (Coleman to be) is getting hitched next weekend. So I’m doing a three way PDX-MCI-MSP-PDX trip while Laura’s just flying into Lawrence and Minneapolis each weekend.
Folks, I’ve gotta tell ya, I love coming home, but I’m tired. Seems like we haven’t had three weeks in the past six months where we haven’t either been heading out somewhere or have had people here visiting us. We love seeing people, but shit is exhausting! So, that said, I’m looking forward to weddings and seeing people and all that, but I’m already feeling homesick. PDX homesick. And I haven’t even left yet!
Okay, so there’s my announcement and rant, all in one. I’m guessing this is my most boring post to date.
Laura and I have been on the road for more or less the past month. In the month of August we had two midwest wedding to attend and one weekend of bachelor/bachelorette parties. So rather than flying back and forth and trying to find a dog sitter for three weekends plus, we just thought we’d load up the car and make a road trip out of it. And now, 6300+ miles later, Laura, Charlie and I are back home with about 1000 new pictures. It was really a great trip overall. We saw a lot of family and friends along with about half a dozen national and state parks. To keep expenses low (and due to hotels not all being too keen on dogs) we camped out for most of our time on the road. We hit up 11 states in all: Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah and, of course, Oregon.
Need to go into more detail on the trip, but as time passes, it’s harder to blog on the past. Lesson to learn? Blog in real time.
But check out my picks: on the blog or on picasa.
It seems over the past decade there has been a increasingly disappointing decline in the quality of the news organizations of the United States. Maybe it started with the popularity of reality tv. Or maybe corporate america just hit that breaking point of flooding into every outlet available. Or maybe I was just ignorant to the whole thing and am just now realizing how crooked this world is.
It seems that most major news sources like Fox News, MSNBC and CNN have started spending most of their energy reporting anything that can stir up a group, regardless of credibility or relevance. In fact, I find it hard to even call them “news”. In my opinion C-SPAN is really the only credible cable new source around. And I get it. C-SPAN is boring as hell. And most people don’t watch it because of that.
I’m really struggling here not to go off on a tangent of all the shit that any news source has covered over the last decade or two, from OJ Simpson to Monica Lewinsky to Tiger Woods. Somehow the “tabloids” have made their way into the “main stream” and it’s bullshit. Credible sources and hearsay are interchangeable and titles like ‘opinion’ and ‘news’ are overlooked. No one reads the fine print anymore. If it’s spoken on tv or read from a news paper it’s seen as fact. In short, we as Americans have gotten way too into the habit of serving the lowest common denominator. And the lowest common denominator around here is pretty fucking pathetic.
Enter the New York Times.
I’ve known that the cable and even local news networks have been crap for some time, but for some reason I’ve assumed that print was still fairly credible. And in general I still believe that to be true. Which is why I was so disappointed by this article from the New York Times. If you notice, the word could is used in each of the first seven sentences of the article. One fact the article did get right is that Google and Verizon (one of the nation’s largest ISPs) are talking to each other about what to do about Net Neutrality. However, rather than factually reporting what the two companies have been discussing, the article goes into what the two companies could be discussing or rather what the result of their discussions could be. The first sentence states that the two Internet giants are “nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.” It does say why the author might think this could happen, it just says that it could. The New York Times and Edward Wyatt don’t really know anything about the specifics of the discussions between Google and Verizon, but they saw fit to publish some possibilities.
Immediately upon reading this article I was questioning it’s credibility. Since it’s inception, Google has been an amazingly strong proponent of an open and free Internet. Something at the essence of Net Neutrality. Probably because of this, the uproar over this accusation has been incredible. People and organizations have been up in arms over Google apparent slide into an evil empire. I’ve received emails from numerous organizations like MoveOn.org and Color of Change asking to sign petitions against Google. People like to have something to bitch about and the whole thing got blown way out of proportion.
The New York Times article was very inadvertently accusing Google of going against it’s informal corporate moto of Don’t Be Evil. Immediately after the publication of the article both Verizon and Google refuted the article’s claims. And more recently Google has published a statement describing a joint proposal from Google and Verizon on Net Neutrality. Furthermore they’ve published a Legislative Framework Proposal that will be submitted to Congress on Net Neutrality. The statement and proposal are everything you would hope to expect from a company that “does no evil.”
In short, the accusations made by the New York Times are all completely false.
I’m feeling rather unsatisfied with this rant. Probably because there’s so much to this story and even more to the greater issue. I get that opinion is opinion and often tech articles point to speculation, but especially after witnessing the aftermath of this New York Times article, I believe it was simply irresponsible journalism (if you can call it that). The article should never have been published and the New York Times and Edward Wyatt should make an effort to correct the damage that was done to both Google and Verizon.
So it’s been at least over a month since my last post. Why? Well first off because I got married. Not much time to blog, when you’re putting a wedding together, not to mention having two straight weeks for family and friends in from out of town. I’ll probably blog about it a bit when get our pictures from the photographers. Hopefully that’ll be soonish.
And in order to keep this post mildly interesting, here’s a video of me and Wasko at Ben Flannery’s bachelor party two years ago. Needless to say, we were a little drunk.
Recently I switched over to Songbird as an alternative to iTunes. Songbird, in all it’s glory has the ability to integrate with iTunes, which includes importing the library and sharing playlists among other things. It’s great if you want to be using iTunes along with Songbird or are even just wanting to port your iTunes setup to Songbird. However, if you don’t want to be using this feature, there’s one flaw. In the lefthand nav, Songbird creates an iTunes “folder” for playlists brought in from iTunes. Even if this folder is empty, it still shows up. So naturally, it can be a bit of an eyesore when you’re trying to get as far from iTunes as possible, but still have to see it represented along with your Library and playlists.
iTunes listed with other playlists etc.
The solution lies in the service-pane.rdf file found in your Songbird profile folder. On OS X, Songbird profiles are stored here: ~/Library/Application Support/Songbird1/Profiles/. The Songbird1 portion of the path is subject to change. Mine was called Songbird2. There should be only one folder with this naming scheme though.
Each folder within the Profiles folder will be named *some_random_string*.default, where *some_random_string* is replaced by… some random string. For example, my profile was called a3ufknya.default. It’s possible you may have multiple profile folders, so you may need to snoop around a bit.
Once you found the profile you want to edit, within the profile folder find your service-pane.rdf file. Now be sure to duplicate the folder in case you botch things up. I just copy and pasted the file as service-pane-orig.rdf. Now open up the original file, service-pane.rdf, in your favorite text editor. I use TextWrangler, but you can use anything that’ll save the file out as UTF-8. Now do a search on the file for “iTunes”. You should find two bits containing the word iTunes:
<RDF:Seq RDF:about="SB:iTunes">
</RDF:Seq>
<RDF:Description RDF:about="SB:iTunes"
NC:Name="&servicesource.itunes"
NS1:Properties="folder servicesource-itunes"
NS1:contractid="@songbirdnest.com/servicepane/library;1"
NS1:Editable="false"
NS1:Weight="3"
NS1:Hidden="false"
NS1:Open="true" />
and
<RDF:li RDF:resource="SB:iTunes"/>
The second line is what you want, or rather don’t want. By deleting this line of code from the file, you remove the reference to the first bit, thus remove the item from the left nav menu. Ta da!
Songbird sans iTunes
It’s always good to keep the service-pane-orig.rdf file in case you need/want to revert back. It’s also possible that Songbird will add the item back into the file if you re-enable the iTunes synchronization, but I don’t know as I’ve completely kicked iTunes off my machine.
Hope this helps someone else out, as I couldn’t find any information online regarding this topic.
It’s here! Well, sort of. You can get Android 2.2, aka Froyo, on your Nexus One if you’re brave enough to install the new OS manually. Thanks to the folks at Android SPIN, there’s a pretty easy way to get the Android 2.2 SDK and get it installed onto a Nexus One. I have no idea of this will work for any other phone running Android.
You can download the Froyo update here: http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-FRF50-from-ERE27.1e519a24.zip
Once you have the download, if you want to flash the downloaded update file, follow this guide:
http://forum.androidspin.com/showthread.php?t=2631
This past week marked Google’s 3rd Annual Google I/O Conference in San Francisco, CA. The event which spans the course of two days is a platform for Google to share it’s latest goodies with the world among other things. As an Android convert, I was excited to see the Day 2 Keynote which highlighted all of the new features in Android 2.2 (aka Froyo). If you love android already, make the time to watch this presentation. It’s all very excited stuff. If not, maybe take a look and see what Android has to offer over the leading brand. You may be surprised.
For me, I love how dedicated Google has become to being “open”. Their mission is to make the Internet great and easy to use for everyone, which is more than I can say for some other groups out there. I not only support the amazing technologies that they’re producing, but also support the way they’re doing it. The essence of the Internet is in openness, and Google has been a leader in keeping it that way.
Yesterday, Steve Jobs made a post on Apple’s website regarding his Thoughts on Flash. The article lists six reasons why Adobe’s Flash is not and will not be made available on the iPhone/iPad platform. His reasons are misleading. His logic is murky at best. To a common iPhone or iPad user they may seem, well reasonable. However, to someone with a deeper knowledge of the technologies he addresses, most of what he says is simply false.
“Frist, there’s ‘Open’.”
Jobs claims, “by almost any definition, Flash is a closed system” because Flash is only available from Adobe. This is to say that in order to create a Flash application, one needs to own a copy of Flash. This is simply untrue. Through the use of technologies such as MTASC it is entirely possible to develop full Flash applications without owning the proprietary Flash software. Adobe has never done anything to deter such technologies. It’s also important to note that Flash development can be shared with anyone at no cost to the developer. A developer can create a Flash, Flex or Air application and distribute it however they see fit.
Now let’s take a moment and look at the development process for Apple’s App Store. The iPhone SDK is written in Objective C which is developed by Apple and the equivalent to ActionScript being developed by Adobe. No surprises there. However, in order “to develop iPhone applications, you use Xcode”. Xcode, although free, is, wait for it, wait for it, proprietary. Xcode is used to digitally sign an application with the developer’s digital certificate before it can be submitted to the App Store. This digital certificate costs the developer $99 which is paid to Apple. The best part? If the developer does all of this, it doesn’t necessarily mean their application will see the light of day. This is because Apple individually approves all apps before they are made available in the App Store. A process that can take up to two years.
Jobs goes on to explain that Apple has a firm belief that, “all standards pertaining to the web should be open”. Jobs writes, “rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards.” So let me see if I’ve got this straight, Steve. Apple, while not open itself, supports open standards, but only for the web. And since, in the opinion of Steve Jobs, Flash is not “open”, Apple’s closed system in going to exclude Flash? Maybe a fair point, but also maybe a little hypocritical. Of course this assumes the opinion that, “Flash is a closed system,” is accurate.
“Second, there’s the ‘full web’.”
Ah, yes. The “full web”. Jobs starts his “full web” experience with video. Adobe claims that 75% of all video on the web is delivered using Flash. Jobs rebutes saying that YouTube makes up 40% and the iPhone and iPad are bundled with a YouTube app. Problem solved. Using the YouTube application, you’ll have access to 40% of all video that is available on the web. Of course you won’t be able to view that video in a web browser or see any video that is embedded with Flash within a webpage. But I guess you’re right, Steve. 40% of all video made available through a separate application is practically the “full web”. Lets just forget about any Flash dedicated websites and round that figure up to 100% for “full web”. Done and done.
Jobs continues to brag that the App Store contains more games than God, much less Flash. I understand the point here. Apple and it’s App Store provide a suitable replacement for Flash and therefore Flash is obsolete. That’s all fine and good, but it doesn’t fill the gap between the “full web” and the web as it is on the iPhone and iPad. Furthermore, reason #2 is certainly not, “based on technology issues,” as Jobs claims his reasons are.
“Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.”
Here Jobs actually has a good point. If this was the extent of his article, I wouldn’t be writing mine.
“Fourth, there’s battery life.”
Jobs’ fourth reason is for battery life, but more specifically the way battery life is effected by video as delivered using Flash. He starts here and basically turns his point into a pitch for H.264 video. Battery life has been one of Jobs’ goto reasons for not providing Flash on the iPhone. Jobs writes, “H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours,” while video provided from Flash will, “play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained”. I’m curious. How would Flash video compare to talking on the phone or simply surfing the web? According to the specs on Apple’s website, the iPhone’s battery life will only provide up to 5 hours of internet use or talk time while on a 3G network. Considering Flash video content would presumably require internet use, it’s no surprise that battery life would dip to under 5 hours.
“Fifth, there’s Touch.” (note: Touch is capitalized… amazing he didn’t add the ®)
Here Jobs whines that, “many Flash websites rely on ‘rollovers’” and that in touch-based devices a rollover simply doesn’t exist. He then concludes that as a solution, developers should, “use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.” This, to be blunt, is just stupid. First, let’s establish one thing right off the bat. JavaScript, one of Jobs’ modern technologies, is just as capable of being dependent on “rollovers” as Flash. Second, to suggest that it makes more sense for developers to fully abandon Flash and completely rebuild Flash content as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript rather than reworking them in order to avoid “rollover” dependency is absolutely ludicrous.
Jobs goes on to claim that, “most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.” A claim that is equally true for “most” JavaScript driven websites. Here, Jobs is making a claim that he simply can’t support.
“Six, the most important reason.”
Jobs’ final and most important reason, “why [Apple] does not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads” has nothing to do with running Flash as an application or in a browser on the iPhone, iPod or iPad. Instead he goes to explain why, Apple’s new developer agreement mandates that developers use Apple’s API and only Apple’s API to develop applications for the iPhone. This blocked the most substantial new feature of Adobe’s recently released CS5 Suite, which would have allowed developers to generate iPhone applications through the Flash IDE.
Before I get started, to say that not allowing this feature in Flash is in line with keeping Flash off of Apple’s mobile devices is simply inaccurate. The new feature provided by Adobe would have published applications as native iPhone apps. There would have been no emulation. We’re not talking about a Flash app disguised as an iPhone app. Flash would have compiled ActionScript code into an actual iPhone application.
Apparently, Jobs is concerned that the ability to develop iPhone apps through Flash would create a bottleneck of Apple’s technologies. Jobs says, “we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.” That’s like not selling a computer to someone unless they have internet access because they won’t be able to use it to its full capability. If developers want to develop with the lastest innovations and enhancements, they’ll learn to develop in whatever platform is needed. The ability to develop applications in Flash in no way effects the ability to develop applications using Apple’s SDK.
Is Apple within its rights to mandate how the applications in the App Store are developed? Yes. Is doing so a proprietary move? Absolutely.
“Conclusions.”
Flash is a widely accepted multimedia tool that has yet to reach the mobile realm. Soon it will reach that realm and with it, it will bring the single most cross platform development tool that exists. It is already able to generate desktop applications on both PCs and Macs with Adobe Air and is widely used throughout the web.
Apple iPhones, iPods and iPads are a closed box system. They are not multiplatform. They are proprietary. And in that respect Flash has the potential to be one of their biggest competitors. It is in Apple’s best interest to keep Flash from reaching that potential. That’s what Reason #6 is all about.
I understand why Steve Jobs and Apple don’t want Flash running on their devices. I think that concerns for performance are very legitimate. Those concerns are exactly why Flash has yet to be made widely available on any mobile platform.
What I don’t appreciate is reading a misleading statement from Apple’s CEO that attempts to smear Flash. This is either a personal grudge between Jobs and Adobe or Apple attempting to muscle Flash out of the mobile market. Regardless, it is being done at the expense of both Apple and Adobe’s user base.
Daniel Zimney
April, 2010
This is really pretty amazing. Nothing of this magnitude has happened in the iPhone/Mobile world since the iPhone was first jailbroken. This is the feat that was previously said would never be done. Why you’d want to run Android on your iPhone over on an native Android device is beyond me, but I guess being able to run both OSes on the same device is cool. I can only hope it will bring people to realize how awesome Android really is and create some converts. I’ll probably be trying to install this on an iPhone this weekend. Sweetness. This is really really exciting, in a totally geeked out way.