Deeply unique and filled with strutting attitude.

Tried watching the debate tonight using MSNBC streaming video. After sitting through the usual video commercial, I was greeted by this lady:

She informed me that streaming video was not available for my browser, any of my browsers in fact, I tried them all.

This despite running the latest version of Flip4Mac that lets me view pretty much any other Windows video (read: p0rn).

Of course I could watch commercials and the pretty-version of a browser alert dialog, over and over.

Does MSNBC really think I will be using their site for anything else with this type of service? Their not some start-up just figuring things out. They have billions of dollars and thousands of talented developers at your disposal.

”Apple Inc. surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts for its usually tepid second quarter, delivering an 88 percent increase in profit on strong sales of Macintosh computers and iPod music players,” Laurie J. Flynn reports for The New York Times.

(Via OSNews.)

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, Mac

Why have we fallen behind in the broadband deployment in the US - again?

The US fell from 23rd to 25th place in worldwide broadband penetration in the last half of 2006, according to a recent survey by Point Topic. An OECD study confirms the slowdown, with US broadband growth falling below the OECD average. Meanwhile, US broadband penetration grew 0.65 percentage points to 80.81% among active Internet users in March 2007.

Source: websiteoptimization.com

Technorati Tags: Broadband

Coda is incredibly useful and beautiful.

If you develop web applications, services or sites, you owe it to yourself and Panic to check it out.

VoIP on mobile devices is such killer app for mobile phones. Here in the states, the carriers seem petrified by the threat. But that is not stopping agile startups from making headway.

After getting the new Nokia N95, I spent some time loading different VoIP clients. The Nokia came with Gizmo, which I have used on the desktop with some success.

Research and testing lead me to Truphone and Fring.

Truphone is a complete VoIP solution offering slick integration with the N95. Fring is a hybrid solution combining proxy-like support for Skype, Google Talk or MSN, and true SIP functionality.

After 24 hours of playing, Truphone has the lead. The quality is great, integration with Nokia is smooth and the cost to get started is low, they even include a dial-in number to allow you to receive calls in the US and UK.

This week I am going to spend with Truphone to see how it performs on WIFI and the Cingular data network.

Next week I will pound on Fring, which also looks to be an excellent solution.

Why no Gizmo or Skype?

Gizmo got the boot for now due to reports of poor call quality when not using WIFI and problems receiving calls. Native Skype support is MIA, since Skype themselves have to build a useable client the S60 platform, which is rumored to be coming.

Luckily, I can access both Gizmo and Skype accounts through Fring.

Time to talk a bunch.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Nokia, N95, VoIP, Skype

Been playing with the mildly useful OpenDNS for sometime. It is a free DNS service with some nice innovations.

Well, today marks the day OpenDNS got really cool!

Imagine del.icio.us for your DNS that cover your entire network and/or any computer you assign their DNS service to.

Today we give you shortcuts, marking the first time you’ve ever had control over how your address bar behaves. Shortcuts are a cool way to use a short word for a long address.

Shortcuts will change the way you navigate the Internet. Unlike keyword-based systems in the past, shortcuts are yours. You create them and you decide where they go.

Without getting technical, here are some examples of what you can do with shortcuts. You can make a shortcut for ‘mail’ go to gmail.com, mail.yahoo.com, your webmail or anywhere else you’d like. You can make a shortcut go to a website, start an IM conversation, initiate a phone call, and more. Our goal is to help you navigate the Internet in the easiest and fastest way possible.

There are a few different ways to create shortcuts. You can create them in your account, you can create them on the OpenDNS Guide pages, and you can create them on any other Website using a bookmarklet.

(Via OpenDNS Blog.)

Sure some of this could be done using geek hacks of network config files. But I could see the bulk of my frequently used bookmarks easily offloaded to this service.

Yet more metadata being moved into the network. I hope an API is in the works to let developers build cool tools around this service.

Technorati Tags: DNS, OpenDNS, EveryDNS

My N95 arrived today and I am very impressed. It is perhaps the best S60 phone I have experienced. The interface and built-in themes have a much more refined feel than previous devices, and the speed of the OS is noticeably improved over older devices.

As mentioned in yesterday post, I wanted to share why I pay extra to get unlocked phones from Europe and other markets.

The main reason is freedom. As they say freedom has a price, and in the mobile phone market the freedom you get is to enjoy the full experience the manufacturer intended.

Take the Nokia E61/62 for example. If you paid extra and got an unlocked E61, in addition to a great phone with email, you enjoyed VoIP and Wifi access.

The U.S market got the E62, Cingular had the E61 on a starvation diet. No VoIP or WIFI.

The motivations are obvious, complete control and lock-in of their customers to their data and voice service.

Based on experience, when Cingular or TMobile get the U.S. N95 (perhaps called the N96), it will most likely be missing features, such as WIFI and VoIP.

I would love to be optimistic, and suggest that with Apple’s iPhone having WIFI, Cingular would not demand a neutered version of the N95. But, then again, they may want to drives sales of the iPhone and not have too much competition.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Nokia, N95

A lot pundits are spouting about the imminent doom or sweeping success of Apple’s upcoming iPhone.

While I am what could be called a fan of the products Apple designs, I am more of a fan of whatever makes work easier.

This is why, I am passing on version 1.0 of the iPhone.

Over the last few years, I have searched for the optimal mobile solution, and keep ending up with the same company’s products - Nokia.

Motorola, Samsung and LG all make quite usable mobile phones, but lack the platform appeal to draw 3rd party developers.

Sony Ericcson’s offerings while highly attractive and usable, seem more focused on purely consumer oriented devices.

Palm’s Treo is fairly ubiquitous, but the Palm OS platform is beyond long in the tooth. I had more crashes of Treos than any other mobile device.

Blackberry’s are by far the most email friendly mobile platforms. But web browsing and 3rd party applications are ridiculously encumbered by proxy gateways, signing and deployment procedures. While the email client is wonderfully efficient, having to pass all email through a 3rd party server is unacceptable to me.

This bring me to Nokia. While their interface could use some polish, the core of the S60/80 platforms are deserving of the label platform. There is a thriving 3rd party community, Nokia has been embracing an open platform strategy with their 770/800 internet tablets, and is pushing the envelope with the convergence of photography, video, music and VoIP on their latest devices.

This is why I just spent my iPhone fund on a Nokia N95. The convergence of Video, Photograpy, GPS, VoIP, WIFI, Internet and Voice are an outstanding value.

It is more expensive than the iPhone, unless you consider the contractual requirement that Cingular may enforce to get one. But the functionality is incredible when compared side by side.

When Apple truly opens up the iPhone to 3rd party developers I would get one. But not until they offer unencumbered access to the platform. I would not pay a license fee or endure some lengthy approval process to gain access to the distribution pipeline.

I expect version 2.0 to be the real shining star of Apple’s mobile effort. By then they should implement HSDPA, 4MP+ photography and video, open the platform and perhaps offer VoIP options like Skype or Gizmo.

Tomorrow: Why I didn’t wait for the official U.S. version of the N95.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Nokia, N95, N93

Sorry, things have been quiet here for awhile. I have been hard at work on MailTank, which has been getting more attention and customers! Woohoo!

Lately my real fun has been playing with Amazon AWS. I signed up late last year, but just didn’t find time to kick the tires until now.

Last month I spent a couple days getting some EC2 instances running, learning to configure things and save images. This lead me to migrate F8P.com from Mediatemple.net’s Grid Service to an EC2 server running Fedora Core 6.

So far, I am very impressed, though nervous. You see EC2 requires you to think about servers differently. They are 100% virtual servers including the 160GB of “storage”. This has caused a lot of tension in the AWS forums.

My nervousness is subsiding as I grapple with the realty most developers dread - man down! a server has crashed!

When a server crashes in a normal data center, you have a chance of recovering data from a hard drive assuming it is not the source of the crash. If an EC2 server crashes or “goes away”, you loose everything on that server. It is GONE for good.

A lot of developers are writing EC2 off because of this design constraint. After much consideration and experimentation I don’t think there is anything different from the old tried and true way of doing things.

Using multiple instances and frequent backups there is no reason that you can not mitigate the risk EC2’s constraints impose.

Over the coming months I am going to be pushing more EC2 and S3 services into our daily production infrastructure. We expect to double or triple our existing capacity while reducing costs substantially.

It is going to be a wild ride for certain!

Hmm. Now if only I could run Mac OS X on an EC2 instance. That would be very interesting indeed.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, EC2, S3, AWS