December 17th, 2007

Google's GMail product manager: 'User data should never be held hostage'

Posted by David Berlind @ 12:22 pm

Categories: Apple, General, Mobile, Personal Technology, Software Infrastructure, Video, Web technology

Tags: Google Inc., Google Gmail, JavaScript, E-mail, IMAP, E-mail Providers, Internet, David Berlind

Last week, while in California, I made the rounds, capturing on video as many interviews as I could with interesting people that would be fun to hear from. One of those was Google Gmail product manager Keith Coleman who, in the attached video, gives us a status update on where Gmail has been, where it’s at, and where it’s going (showing us a thing or two in the current user interface along the way). If there were two things that stood out to me in the discussion, it was (1) how a complete rebuild of the Javascript engine was needed (and completed) in order for Gmail to take some of its next evolutionary steps and (2) how strongly Google feels about a user’s data (like his/her e-mail) — strongly enough that even though Gmail is an advertising-supported Web service, that the company has no qualms about letting users have access to it through user clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, BlackBerries, iPhones, etc.) to which that advertising never flows.

The recent addition of IMAP support demonstrates that philosophy in spades. Normally, when third party clients are used as a front-end to an e-mail service like Gmail, it is done through a protocol known as POP3. But POP3 is extremely limited in what it can do. For example, if you receive a Gmail e-mail into your copy of Outlook and file that e-mail into a folder, your Gmail account remains oblivious to that organizational context. That e-mail may reside in a folder in your Outlook, but it stays in the inbox on Gmail.

Although Gmail’s full support of IMAP is limited to certain clients (as far as mobile is concerned, only Apple’s iPhone is “officially supported”), IMAP support is what makes it possible for mail items that are filed into certain folders on the client side to be automatically tagged with a label on the Gmail side. Today, Gmail eschews folders in favor of what are referred to as “labels” (considered by many to be “tags”). That said, I’m relatively certain we’ll see folders pretty soon in Gmail. In the interview, Coleman says the company is hoping to add foldering capabilities soon — capabilities that would include the ability to drag and drop emails from the inbox to a folder. According to an entry on the official Gmail blog regarding colored labels (mentioned below):

We actually kinda like folders. In fact, we’re doing some work to add some folder-y-ish functionality. Stay tuned.

Going back to the broader discussion of IMAP, enhancing client-side functionality with something as powerful as IMAP when the client-side essentially strips Google of its ability to contextually serve advertisements onto the e-mail page does speak highly of Google’s willingness to set users’ data free.

According to Coleman:

One of Google’s core philosophies is that user data should never be held hostage. We want people to be able to take their data and do whatever it is they want with it. This isn’t something that’s really standard for e-mail services. Particularly Web mail services that rely on ad revenue. There’s a risk if you let people get their mail in Outlook or some other client that they’ll stop using the Web interface and they’ll end up just reading their mail in a desktop client. We believe that if we give users the best possible product and if we create a good Web interface, and let them use their data in these clients like Outlook or like their BlackBerry, that they’ll overall have a better experience and be happier with the product. So, we’ve made a point throughout Gmail’s history to give people this freedom with their data.

We launched POP access back in 2004 which lets users read their mail in these clients and then just recently, we launched IMAP [support] which is a lot like POP except it keeps your data in synch no matter where you are. Let’s say you’re reading your mail in Outook and you read a message and when you go back to go back to your Gmail, you want that message to [to be marked as having been] read there as well. That works with IMAP. With POP that doesn’t work.

Regarding the updates to the underlying Javascript engine, Coleman talks about how, as a result of those changes, not only has the Gmail team been able to add eight new features in as many weeks (colored labels [mentioned above], keyboard shortcuts, instantly opening e-mails [via prefetching], integration of AOL Instant Messaging, group chat, etc.), but about how the pace of change will be very fast which means a great many more enhancements (barring foldering capabilities, none of which Coleman would let slip in the interview) are coming Gmail’s way (some experimental, some not). However, one feature that’s here now, that Coleman did slip-in, is that the storage limit for users of Gmail currently exceeds 5 gigabytes.

One downside to all this upside news is that, for users of the Google Apps-based version of Gmail (the one that organizations would subscribe to), many of the features being rolled out to the larger Gmail population — for example, prefetching and colored labels — are not yet available (I tested this and was disappointed to see that, as a Google Apps, some of these very cool and useful features didn’t work for me). Off camera, and via e-mail, Coleman confirmed this and said that the reason is that the new Javascript engine hasn’t yet been introduced to the Google Apps-based users of Gmail. Wrote Coleman:

Colored labels are currently only available on the version of Gmail that uses the new Javascript implementation. The new Javascript is currently live for Gmail accounts on Firefox, IE7 and Safari 3, and we’re actively working to launch it for Google Apps accounts and IE6….As with colored labels, you’ll see the speed improvements [from prefetching] once we roll out the new [Javascript] to Google Apps accounts.

Finally, as we were packing our video gear up, I asked Coleman why Google still refers to Gmail’s status as being “beta.” After all, the service has been running since 2004. After a bit of joking around about this, Coleman mentioned that the company would like to stabilize a few more of Gmail’s features before officially declaring the beta program over. Although he made no promises, from what I heard, it sounded like that too could be expected relatively soon — probably sometime in 2008.

December 7th, 2007

Second Kindle bug hits (not a crash this time) and how Amazon will 'patch' Kindles

Posted by David Berlind @ 10:09 am

Categories: Entertainment, General, Hardware Infrastructure, Mobile, Personal Technology, Software Infrastructure, Web technology, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Amazon.com Inc., USB, Amazon Kindle, David Berlind

Earlier this week, I shared with you a video of Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader in a crashed state. It was my first Kindle bug (brought on by an attempt to connect it to my PC via USB). While the crash itself hasn’t happened again, my Thinkpad T42 refuses to recognize the Kindle as a USB mass storage device (the way it should) when I connect the two of them with a USB cable. In the Kindle’s favor, I’ve had USB trouble with this Thinkpad before (but rebooting usually takes care of it) and other PCs (including a Mac) are recognizing the Kindle without any problems. Not in the Kindle’s favor is the fact that, after unplugging the Kindle, other USB-based mass storage devices (USB keys, my digital camera, etc.) aren’t having any problems. If they were, I would not have been able to suck the following image of the Kindle’s display in a corrupted state out of my Nikon D70 (continued below):

(continued from above) The corrupted screen eventually went away after I clicked the Kindle’s Home button (a button on the keyboard that takes you back to the Kindle’s home page where all the content you have loaded into it is indexed). I’m not exactly sure what sequence of buttons I pressed to arrive at this corrupted display in the first place (so I’ve been unable to reproduce it).

I’ve been sending a ton of questions Amazon’s way as I prepare to do a much more exhaustive write-up of my findings. But one of those questions that’s relevant to issues like this is whether Amazon can patch the Kindle with new software (for added functionality or to correct bugs). It should be noted that the Kindle is a Java-based device and, just like with other runtime platforms (Flash, .Net/Silverlight, etc.), the Java architecture is really well-suited to devices like the Kindle into which new software may have to be securely loaded over a network. That doesn’t mean that all of the applications on the Kindle are based on Java. When asked about that, Amazon spokesperson Andrew Herdener told me that “Many of the applications for Kindle are written in Java.”

Even if some of the applications are not written in Java, that doesn’t mean that the Kindle can’t be updated. When asked if Amazon could update the Kindle’s firmware, Herdener said “Yes, we can do updates over the air, over USB, and from SD memory card.”

By over the air, Herdener is referring to the Kindle’s built-in connection to Sprint’s EVDO network (a fully transparent networking connection that Amazon refers to as WhisperNet). As implied earlier, the Kindle can be connected to a PC via USB — a feature that’s also useful for transferring other files to and from the Kindle (eg: one of the supported file types like TXT files or MP3s). And finally, underneath the back cover of the Kindle is a single SD memory card slot. While on the topic of that slot, I asked Herdener whether it explicitly supports the High Capacity version of SD (SDHC) and he responded that “Although not officially supported, some HC cards do work.”

More to come. And if you’re interested in discussing the Kindle, feel free to chime in on the raging debate taking at the end of my last blog on the ebook reader.

December 6th, 2007

More reflection on the Kindle: Did Amazon just answer an unnerved media industry's prayers?

Posted by David Berlind @ 3:33 pm

Categories: General, Hardware Infrastructure, Mobile, Personal Technology, Software Infrastructure, Web technology, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Media Company, Advertisement, Screen, RSS, Industry, New York Times Co., Amazon.com Inc., Content, Kindle, Times

This is a replay of a conversation with my father who spent most of his life as a media executive (though not with any company that I’ve ever worked for).

Dad: Oh, you have the Kindle?

Me: Yes. It’s pretty neat. Raises a lot of interesting questions though

Dad: Based on what I’ve read, it sounds like a catalyst that’s really going to change things in the publishing industry.

Me: True. But bear in mind that it’s not the first ebook reader.

Dad: But you can get the newspaper with it.

Me: Yes. For example, the New York Times.

Dad: When you read the New York Times on the Kindle, does it have advertising?

Thud.

Leave it to an ex-media exec who hasn’t even touched a Kindle — my father no less — to ask one of the most incredibly obvious questions that the Kindle raises; a question that completely escaped me until last night’s phone call. It’s a brilliant question because of the answer’s implications and for anybody who’s involved in the media industry or who likes to watch it (like me), it’s a real conversation starter.

Looking at a typical New York Times story on the Kindle — which I did today (see image, right) — the answer is no. What could that mean?

Before the blogosphere, RSS, and even the Web rolled around, the established media had most of its business model questions answered. To get the New York Times, you had to pay a nominal fee. But the majority of the Times’ revenues came from advertising.

When the Web came around, you didn’t have to pay to get your “copy” of the Times (and you still don’t) and that convenience of reading it online, for free, is brought to you, courtesy of the Times’ online advertisers. Along come blogs and RSS and the business model gets a little dicier. The Times’ runs a great many RSS feeds (as we do here at ZDNet) but they don’t carry the full text of the story. They don’t have ads in them either. It’s a pain point for any media company: could the nugget of information you pass for free, through your RSS feed, be enough to satisfy your readers’ informational need and might they stop visiting your Web site as frequently as they were before? What’s the remedy if RSS is doing more harm than good? Perhaps you do like InfoWorld: you send the full text of the story down the RSS pipe with an advertisement. It’s more convenient for the end-user (no additional clicks necessary to get the entire story) and the advertising is embedded.

Finally, every established media company (and even the newer ones) has at one point or another fancied the idea of charging a subscription fee for access to online content. Some have stratified it: this new stuff is free, but the old stuff (if you’re researching) isn’t. Like I said, they’ve fancied the idea. Most media companies have been paralyzed to come up with a way to wrangle a subscription fee out of audience members for the digital version of what they have to offer. The same goes (or is going) for the non-digital versions.

I remember when the Village Voice in New York City once charged money for its newspaper. Now its free (this change happened in the mid 90s). Like other papers in its genre, the Village Voice is an ad-supported venture, both online and in print. This, if you ask me, is where most newspapers (and probably most media companies) will end up. And if you also ask me, Amazon’s release of the Kindle could be the watershed event that pushes them there.

Maybe not right away, but eventually.

That’s because no reader is going to put up with ad-bearing content on the Kindle. The screen is just big enough (and the range of user-selectable typefaces for displayed text is just wide enough) to support very easy reading. Any bigger and Amazon would have missed the sweet spot it targeted: the basic size of a paperback. Any smaller and, especially at the larger typeface sizes, the display would have been too small. Users would have been aggravated by the number of times the Next Page button had to be pressed to read anything (today, they’re just aggravated because of how the Next Page button is too easy to press — which it is). There’s really no room for ads. And besides, there are plenty of other opportunities in the Kindle (some being taken advantage of already, others not) to pimp something off on Kindle users. Amazon already sells books through it. There’s no reason Amazon can’t sell everything else that’s available via Amazon.com through the Kindle as well.

So, where are we?

Thanks to the Kindle, you can now read the New York Times without any advertising. Let me repeat that. Thanks to the Kindle, you can now read the New York Times without any advertising. The same goes for the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. The user interface for finding stories of interest is still a bit Neanderthal. But, the Kindle’s size and form factor make it just right for consuming the digital versions of a newspapers. Given how convenient it is (subscribed-to newspapers just show up in my Kindle now matter where I am) and how ad free it is, the Kindle version of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal represent the first time in more than a decade that I’m seriously considering paying for a subscription to both (NYT: $14.99 per month, WSJ: $9.99 per month).

Now let’s put the shoe on the other foot.

It took Amazon to do it (and the Kindle’s convenience is the enabler). But finally, media companies have a way to charge subscription fees for the digital versions of their content — fees that given the convenience and ad-free environment, I’m guessing many people will be willing to pay. Amazon, of course, gets a cut. But when I look at this and realize how CNET as a media company (ZDNet’s parent) has at times struggled with that same question of how to offer existing or premium content to our audience members on a paid subscription basis, Amazon is showing us the way. It just took a client device like the Kindle — with all that networking and commerce infrastructure so transparently tucked behind it — to make it happen.

So, where do things net out?

For starters, the Kindle makes it very clear that, provided the convenience factor is right and the usability is good, content consumers will very likely trade their money for non-ad-bearing content. On the other hand, you don’t need to read many newspaper stories on the Kindle before arriving at another important question: “Now that I can do this with the Kindle, why would I ever pay for ad bearing content again?” In other words, why would you ever pay for a printed newspaper or magazine that’s full of ads when you can have the same exact content in your Kindle for less money?

As scary as that may sound to anyone relying on ad bearing content to make a living (newspapers, magazines, bloggers, podcasters, etc.), the Kindle really makes the business model question simple: There’s a paid version of the content with no ads and there’s a free version of the content with ads. When a Web browser was the only choice for consuming a potentially ad-free digital version of some media outlet’s content, the end-user devices (PCs or PDAs/Smartphones) simply weren’t compelling enough to break the business model into these two separate approaches. PCs (even portables ones) aren’t really designed with reading in mind and such reading is nearly impossible on PDAs and smartphones. Perhaps Nokia’s N810 wireless tablet comes close to being such a device. But even that is more a general purpose device than one designed with reading in mind.

The Kindle (along with the accompanying infrastructure) really breaks that mold. And to be fair, the Kindle won’t be alone. There will be other devices like it, some from Amazon, others not. As a result, content consumers will very likely be inspired to accept nothing but the two alternative approaches. As it turns out, that might not be so bad for publishers either since finally, there’s a consumption device out there that’s compelling enough to motivate audience members to actually pay to get the content.

<sidebar> One question I have asked Amazon is, if I’m a content publisher (big or small) and someone subscribes to my content on a paid basis (for consumption on the Kindle), what if any information do I get about that new subscriber. When I get the answer, I’ll publish it here. </sidebar>

Finally, the Holy Grail would be if this model rubs off on application providers as well. Today, when I see a new Web app that’s ad-supported, one of my first questions is “Can I get the non ad-supported version by paying a fee?” Today, the official public relations handbook instructs most execs to respond with the boilerplate “That’s something we’re considering.” We’ll maybe now that the Kindle might be setting the expectations of end-users, they’ll consider the idea a little more seriously.

December 6th, 2007

Shrewd moves: Will Adobe's 90 percent price drop on its media server wag the Flash dog?

Posted by David Berlind @ 1:12 pm

Categories: Apple, Entertainment, General, Mobile, Personal Technology, Software Infrastructure, Web technology, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Phone, Price Drop, Media Server, Sun Microsystems Inc., Rich Content, Handset, Server, Flash Media Interactive Server, Flash Plug-in

In case you missed the episode of the Dan & David Show that my colleague Dan Farber and I recorded this past Tuesday (early, because Dan is off to Taipei), one of the news bits we discussed was Adobe’s 90 percent price drop on its high-end Flash Media Server. It wasn’t until we brought the topic up in the middle of the podcast that the ramifications of that price drop really hit me.

As I reported earlier this week, Adobe announced version 3 of its low and hi-end Flash Media Servers. As a part of that announcement, Adobe announced new pricing for the more clusterable of the two servers: the Flash Media Interactive Server (FMIS). FMIS involves a load balancing architecture whereby the server that receives a request to deliver a Flash stream (for example, a video) is different from the server that services that request. In Adobe’s parlance, the “receiver” is called the “Origin” server and the “servicer” is called the “Edge” server. Prior to this week’s announcement of FMIS 3, this sort of configuration — what I refer to as quasi-clustering (Adobe’s Flash Media Server product manager Kevin Towes didn’t use the term “cluster” in my discussions with him) — was not cheap. A copy of FMIS cost $45,000. If you needed to configure a cluster of five servers (one Origin, five Edge) to handle a certain load of video requests, that would set you back a cool $225K before other costs (hardware, a high performance Storage Area Network, high performance Internet connectivty, etc.).

In other words, as markets go, FMIS was really only available to a small niche of customers with a lot of money to spend. Now that the price of FMIS has been slashed by 90 percent (to $4500), that niche could easily grow. When you realize at who’s expense, it isn’t hard to see that price drop for the brilliant power play that it really is.

For I don’t know how long, Adobe’s Flash has dominated the market as the go-to platform for delivering rich content to the desktop. Many of the original implementations (by content providers) delivered animation to end-users. Earlier this decade, when we invented something called the Internet X-Ray here at ZDNet (case studies that animated business processes and data flows on the networks of end-user corporations like UPS), Flash was the only developer solution on the market that could accommodate our needs. It didn’t hurt to know that most of ZDNet’s readers had the plug-in that was needed to consume the content. The Flash plug-in is on more desktops than any other plug-in, ahead of Sun’s Standard Edition of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) which never was a real contender for delivering Flash-type content. As platforms go (platforms that developers would target), only Microsoft’s Windows enjoyed more ubiquity.

In terms of total global footprint though, Java has reigned supreme thanks to the presence of its Mobile Edition (JME) in handsets. Invariably, in public appearances, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is always quick to remind his audiences that when most Internet users experience the Internet for the first time, it will be through a handset (phone, PDA, smartphone, and now, other devices like Amazon’s Kindle) and how Java’s presence in more handsets than developer platform greatly increases the odds that Java will play some role in most Internet user experiences. This point invariably leads Schwartz to the logical conclusion that lots of Sun-built Java infrastructure will be sold as a result, the profits of which will accrue to Sun (although I should point out that Sun’s competitors such as IBM and HP have solutions that can also scalably drive large Java-based user populations).

One challenge for Sun (and Java) however is that more and more of those first time Internet experiences are rich in nature. They’re either rich applications (now called Rich Internet Applications or RIAs) that involve lots of animation and graphics or they involve the delivery of video and or audio. Today for example, there’s a lot of video getting delivered to handsets in a way that bypasses Java altogether. It’s a spectrum of content and applications that Java was never really well-suited to. At least from the content developers point of view. But Flash is. Not surprisingly, in recognition of its market disadvantage from a functionality point of view (and looking to leverage its existing relationships and dominating global footprint), Sun is looking to fill the gap with a much more Flash-like version of Java called JavaFX. Conversely, in an effort to attain the same sort of global footprint that Java has across desktops, notebooks, and handsets, Adobe wants in on the handset business and is now driving hard on a mobile edition of Flash called Flash Lite.

The results of this battle (where Sun and Adobe are coming from their relative positions of strength)? Handsets like the Model 6263 that Nokia just unleashed through T-Mobile may look like your run of the mill handset, but they’re anything but. The 6263 has both the mobile Java and Flash Lite platforms built-into it. Not only that, even though T-Mobile doesn’t yet have its HSDPA high-bandwidth 3G network in place for pumping all that rich content and applications (rich content and apps that could be consumed by either the Java or Flash runtimes on a phone), the phone is 3G-ready for when that day comes. The phone is also a music machine, supporting stereo music as well as the stereo wireless headset profile of Bluetooth and it has a microSD slot for expanding its memory.

I’m not saying that this is the only device of its sort on the market. But, clearly, we’re at that tipping point where ordinary looking clam shell handsets like the 6263 are anything but ordinary. They can simultaneously support 3 distinctively separate Web applications platforms (Java, Flash, and one that I failed to mention: XHTML for Web browsing) and can connect to wireless broadband networks — making them capable of doing most anything on the Internet and doing most of it pretty well.

But with both Java and Flash looking to steal the other’s thunder (and let’s not forget Microsoft, who with Silverlight, will want to join the party and probably can given how robust handsets like the 6263 are getting), who is going to win?

Enter the 90 percent price drop on Adobe’s Flash Media Interactive Server.

It’s a shrewd move by Adobe but it makes perfect sense if, now that Sun and Microsoft are both presenting market threats to its Flash platform, it wants to leave nothing to chance in terms of that platform’s popularity. By dropping the price so dramatically on the high-horsepower version of Flash Media Server, Adobe is making it accessible as a rich content delivery platform to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of rich content providers — especially providers of video and audio — who might never have invested in those servers before.

In true wag-the-dog fashion, provided the price drop works and content providers buy-in, Adobe’s $40,500 per server price cut will not only help guard Adobe’s existing global Flash footprint (those considering Java or Silverlight for their applications will really have to think twice), it could help improve it by driving up the amount of Flash-based content being served up through the Internet which in turn will drive adoption in Adobe’s weakest spot: mobile. For example, how many more Flash-based content providers would it have taken for Apple to realize it had no choice but to support Flash in the iPhone?

Shrewd move Adobe. Very shrewd.

December 4th, 2007

Amazon's Kindle: Much needed revolution or book industry power play?

Posted by David Berlind @ 3:53 pm

Categories: Apple, Entertainment, General, IT Matters Podcast, Mobile, Personal Technology, Podcasts, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Industry, Amazon.com Inc., Amazon Kindle, Quality Solutions, Digital Music, Digital Media, Podcasts, E-books, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics

Like Apple’s iPods and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) from which they can so effortlessly acquire their content, the transparency of the automation and infrastructure that makes Amazon’s Kindle work so effortlessly with the Amazon.com Web site is a marvel in terms of the user experience. But the same technology under the hood that makes the iPod’s seamless connection to the iTMS so convenient is also the one that keeps competitors at bay and the one that has been a significant leverage point for Apple over not just the portable digital media player market, but also over the music industry. In other words, in recent years, that proprietary connection between client and server has also become the source of much consternation.

With the Kindle, it only takes a few book purchases to notice the same degree of convenience. In fact, it’s even more convenient than the way Apple’s technologies work. With an iPod, you need a Windows machine or Mac running the iTunes software to act as an intermediary for gathering content from the iTMS and loading it into the iPod. It’s up to you to set that PC up and get it networked. With the Kindle (which, given Amazon’s participation in the digital music and video business, could easily be a harbinger of an Amazon-built iPod-competitor to come), the only thing you have to do is establish an account on Amazon.com, enable it for one-click purchases, and turn the Kindle on. There’s no intermediary required and the networking element of it isn’t even remotely your problem. It’s all built-in. Just turn on the Kindle and start shopping for books.

Nothwithstanding problems with its industrial design (the “Next Page” button is too inadvertently depressed, causing indigestion for many), from a user’s point of view, the Kindle’s turnkey lack of friction is something to behold. It works better than Apple’s approach (although we could argue that, compared to ebooks, multimedia is far more demanding on a device’s battery and therefore, excluding a wireless radio from iPods was a good design decision). To Apple’s competitors, not only do certain Apple technologies (like its FairPlay Digital Rights Management [DRM] system) lock them out, all that whizbang under-the-hood integration represents an impenetrable enigma. In the Kindle, not only does Amazon’s flavor of DRM play a role, given the built-in networking, the whizbang under-the-hood integration is even more of an impenetrable enigma than what Apple has to offer.

So, naturally, the next question is whether or not the Kindle’s iPod-like rise to stardom (the $399 devices are already sold-out at Amazon.com) will also result in an iPod-like ecosystem where the Kindle becomes a defacto e-book standard and Amazon becomes the the power that the rest of the book industry must reckon with. Given how collegial he is, you could argue that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is more the “do no evil” type and would therefore be more predisposed to allow his competitors to participate in the Kindle ecosystem than Steve Jobs is to allow Apple’s competitors to compete in the iTunes ecosystem. Then again, right now, the only place a Kindle can get its ebooks from is Amazon.com and the only device that can access the Kindle service online is Amazon’s Kindle. In this respect, the Kindle is actually worse than the way Apple has things set up. At least in the Apple world, you can experience the content you’ve acquired on your PC (in fact, on multiple PCs) and you can even burn some CDs (although the feature has its limits). With the Kindle, there is no corresponding software client for Windows or the Mac so that, in the event the only device you have with you is your PC, you can still read the same books that you have on your Kindle.

Another step backwards for the Kindle, relative to the iPod ecosystem, is that when iPods came out, they supported the prevailing music file format (and the one that still has the biggest global footprint): MP3. The Kindle, on the other hand, eschews the book industry’s international standard for ebooks, the International Digital Publishing Forum’s epub standard. Epub formatted books are not consumable on the Kindle nor are PDF files (PDF files can however be e-mailed to your Kindle’s dedicated e-mail address and Amazon will attempt to convert them and load them into your Kindle. For PDF the email conversion feature is experimental). The Kindle is capable of viewing its own AZW file format, TXT files, and unprotected .MOBI files or .PRC files. It can also consume audio content formatted in MP3 or Audible.com’s AA format.

In terms of the power-play like questions that Amazon’s Kindle raises, most of them start with the unique relationship that Amazon has with book publishers. It’s already a force to be reckoned with in the book business. Now that the Kindle is out, does Amazon represent even more of a threat to the status quo than it already did? While I know enough about standard and proprietary file formats to know that they’re often the tools of vendors looking to establish market advantage, I hardly know enough about the book industry to say whether Amazon’s Kindle is good or bad for it. So, to the extent that the Kindle is very much a Dell-like supply-chain story, I asked Fran Toolan, the president and founder of Quality Solutions to indulge me with a podcast interview. Quality Solutions is deeply involved in the supply chain side of the book industry. According to the company’s home page:

Quality Solutions offers the most powerful and comprehensive integrated Title Management database available for tracking book titles from acquisition through editorial, marketing, production, and other processes.

It sounds very supply chain-esque to me which is why I asked Toolan to come and share some of his insights into the Kindle and the impact it will have on the book industry. To listen to the podcast, all you need to do is press the play button on the Flash-based player above. Alternatively, you can manually download the MP3 file via the Flash-based player’s menu. Or, if you’re subscribed to ZDNet’s IT Matters series of podcasts (see how to subscribe), the podcast interview should already have been downloaded to your PC, your MP3 player, or both, depending on how you have your podcatcher setup.

December 4th, 2007

Video: Amazon's Kindle in a crashed state -- must the content be reloaded?

Posted by David Berlind @ 1:59 pm

Categories: Entertainment, General, Hardware Infrastructure, Mobile, Personal Technology, Video, Web technology, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Amazon.com Inc., Video, Amazon Kindle, Corporate Communications, E-books, Pocket PC, PDAs, Marketing, Personal Technology, Handhelds

For those of you who have been around long enough to experience some of the earlier PDAs based on flash memory like Palm’s initial Pilot and later, devices like the iPaq that were based on Microsoft’s PocketPC operating system, then you’ll remember what a drag it sometimes was when those devices became so inoperable that you had to issue what is known as a hard reset to return them to a functioning state. Like other personal devices that have come before it, Amazon’s Kindle ebook client (downloader, reader, etc.) is a flash-based device that, like anything else with an operating system (the Kindle is a Java device), is going to crash from time  to time.

So, one question I had when I first unboxed the Kindle and starting using it was, when it crashes, what’s the recovery like? How graceful is the comeback? Will resetting the device wipe out its memory? And if it does, will I be able to log back in to Amazon.com and re-acquire an content that I had previously paid for and downloaded. Well, I didn’t have to wait too long to find out the answer to that question. Yesterday, after connecting the Kindle to my PC (via a USB wire) to test the Kindle’s file transfer and viewing capability (in addition to its own .AZW format, the Kindle supports .TXT, .AA, .MOBI, .PRC, and MP3 file types), it crashed. The user interface simply froze in place and as you can see in the attached video, the digital paper continued to show the last page that was on the Kindle’s screen just before the crash. Toggling the Kindle’s on/off switch did nothing to revive the device. So, I turned to the manual which instructed me to remove the Kindle’s back cover (in the video, you’ll see how this reveals the battery and an SD slot) and insert something sharp like a paper clip into the reset hole.

What happened next? The Kindle’s screen went blank, then it flashed a bunch of times, then it presented the Amazon Kindle splash screen and then, it booted to the home page where, as you can see, all of my content (admittedly, not much, but I have so far purchased two books) was still there. Cool! The Kindle gets good marks for crash recovery.

December 3rd, 2007

Between H.264 & 90% price drop, will Adobe's new media servers mean more YouTubes?

Posted by David Berlind @ 9:01 pm

Categories: Entertainment, General, Hollywood On Demand, IT Matters Podcast, Mobile, Podcasts, Software Infrastructure, Web technology

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Media Server, Server, Video, H.264, Adobe, Net, David Berlind

Today, Adobe announced the third versions of its two Flash Media Servers: Flash Media Interactive Server 3 and Flash Media Streaming Server 3. While the two servers represent a range of improvements to both products, the most significant of those improvements are the built-in support for H.264 support (and its delivery to all Flash clients including Flash Lite 3, the one found on handsets) and a whopping drop in price for the Interactive Server — the one that’s quasi-clusterable (for scalability) and offers intelligent caching — from $45,000 to $4,500.

So what’s significant about that? For starters, running a streaming media service, be it for your own content or as a host for others’, thanks to Adobe, may no longer be the province of outfits like YouTube, Brightcove or media companies like CNN or Disney. Prior to shaving the cost by more than $40,000 per server, assembling a cluster of Adobe-based Flash media servers in a way that can scalably service hundreds if not thousands of simultaneously connected clients could easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Today, for what used to be the cost of one Flash Media server, companies with ambitions to be the next YouTube can now buy 10 such servers: one an “origin” server (the server that receives the initial request from a client), and the others “edge” servers (the servers to which the origin server, in an act of load-balancing, off-loads requests for servicing). Adobe’s media servers run on Intel/AMD-based machines that run Windows Server or Red Hat Linux. Of course, just because the cost of Adobe’s servers is now dirt cheap doesn’t mean that the high-bandwidth storage and networking infrastructure that the servers must connect to won’t set you back some serious coin.

To find out more about where Adobe is heading, I caught up with Kevin Towes, the company’s product manager for Flash Media Servers for a podcast interview. To listen to the interview, you can stream it from the Flash-based player above (it’s a coincidence our player is Flash-based - we’ve been doing it the same way via CastFire for a long time), manually download it through one of the player’s menu options, or if you’re already subscribed to ZDNet’s IT Matters series of podcasts (see how to subscribe), it will be automatically downloaded to your PC and/or your MP3 player.

One of the issues Towes and I cover is the shift from delivering what has been traditionally thought of as low-def video on the Net (and on-demand) to hi-def. What is hi-def video on the Net? In the TV world, hi-def is thought of as being at least 720 lines of vertical resolution if not 1080. But on the Net, the definition of hi-def is the subject of some debate. In the the interview, Towes defines 480 lines of vertical resolution as being hi-def for the Net, a full 2x the lines of vertical resolution found in the 320×240 sized video windows that were once commonplace on the Net, but are now less so (YouTube video windows are approximately 480W x 362h). Just for grins, take a look at ABC’s self-described HD channel for streamed content. I’m not sure how they do it (well, it involves a plug-in), but they do it well and wouldn’t it be something if all Net-based video-on-demand involved as many bits and full-screen video without caching problems.

Speaking of “streaming,” Towes and I talked about the differences between streamed video and progressively downloaded video and why today, so much Net-based video is still choppy when, with some better caching, it doesn’t have to be that way. From Towes’ point of view, there’s no single culprit since so many factors play a role. But, while the company’s servers support 1080 and 720 modes, Adobe’s sweet spot for streamable “HD video,” if you ask ask him, is apparently 480 lines of vertical resolution that require no more than a 3 Mbit/second bit rate (preferably 2 Mbit/sec).

Not to be forgetten, Towes and I also talked about the Flash Media Interactive Server’s little cousin: Adobe’s Flash Media Streaming Server — a far lower cost ($995), non-clusterable solution for streaming stored or live video in on-demand fashion. Towes and I covered a wide range of other video related topics and talked about the other measures that content providers can take to improve Net-based video performance as well as something called Device Central — a technology from Adobe that, once a handset running Flash Light 3 communicates its profile (handset manufacturer, model, network type, screen dimensions, etc.) to an Adobe media server, dynamically selects the most appropriate version of the content to ensure the best user experience on that given handset.

The pair of servers, announced today, won’t be available until the end of January. Sometime between now and then, I hope to get a demonstration up close and personal. In the mean time, check out the podcast interview.

November 30th, 2007

Some brutal honesty about the iPhone's faults, and about that need for 3G (or 3.5G)

Posted by David Berlind @ 2:07 pm

Categories: Apple, Entertainment, General, Mobile, Personal Technology, Telephony, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Apple iPhone, Web, HSDPA, Phone, Network, Battery, AT&T Corp., Apple Inc., Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, 3G

Back when the iPhone came first out and I bitched and complained about its significant faults (lack of a replaceable battery was tops on my list, but the slower of AT&T’s two networks and the soft-keyboard were others) to the point that I recommended waiting for v2.0, I took a bit of heat. Depending on who wrote to me (e-mail, via the Web, etc.), I began to think that I was the jealous bully who got up and kicked the other kids’ blocks over in kindergarten. A lot of that inbound came from people I didn’t even know and while I always like to hear alternative points of view from ZDNet’s readers, I really started to think I was the one who was nuts when people that I’ve grown to know and trust — ones who bought iPhones on their own — started telling me I was the one on drugs.

How much of what they were telling me was true and how much of it was just an unwillingness to admit that the damn thing has its faults? Or maybe they just weren’t taking advantage of everything the iPhone does and if they were, they just might find out that they might have been better off waiting for 2.0, provided 2.0 gets it right. For example, why buy an MP3-capable smartphone with a Bluetooth radio in it if that phone can’t work with stereo Bluetooth accessories (headsets, speakers, etc.).

<sidebar> There’s some speculation that the actual Bluetooth radio in the iPhone capable of supporting the A2DP stereo Bluetooth profile, it’s just that the derivative of Tiger that runs on the iPhone doesn’t fully support it. This theoretically could change if Apple offers an OS upgrade to a special iPhone derivative of Leopard.<sidebar>

But forgetting the Bluetooth stereo support for a minute, my biggest issue with the iPhone was its lack of a removable battery. If for example, you were using the iPhone to do all the great things that it can do, sometimes simultaneously (after all, if you’re not going to, why drop so much coin for it?), there was no way in my mind that the phone’s battery could last as long as you’d expect one that’s not replaceable to last. I forgive phone manufacturers like Motorola (I have the Q) who make phones that do lots of things (make calls, check email, browse the Web, play videos and music, take pictures, etc.) and as a result, drain batteries dry before dinner time. That’s OK (although I wish someone in the truth and advertising department would start to require the equivalent of a battery disclosure label, above right, on devices like the smartphone….. see more on my mock up here).

The laws of physics are working and while plenty of people think of Apple CEO Steve Jobs as though he’s some sort of god, even he can’t change the laws of physics in a day. What’s unforgivable to a lot of people is the idea that their phone won’t be available to them as a phone by the end of the day. For this, many people depend on the availability of replaceable batteries. I have two for the Motorola Q that I use and I keep them with me most of the time.

For people with big fingers (me in included), I also had a thing or two to say about the soft-keyboard. There are now several innovative handset designs out there that have figured out a way to conceal not just a hardware-based numeric keypad, but a separate hardware-based keyboard as well. Not that this is something I really expect Apple to change in v2.0, but Helio’s Ocean (see my video here) comes to mind. It’s very innovative and couldn’t Apple do something similar? I’ve used Apple’s soft-keyboard and like the idea that I if I press the wrong key, I can slide my finger to the left or right to get the correct one. That’s impressive (I wish other soft-keyboard would do the same thing). But it’s not the same as having the hardware keyboards.

I also thought Apple’s TV ads that claimed the Web experience on the iPhone wasn’t the “mobile Web,” that it was “just the Web” was off the mark. Perhaps Apple has a different definition of the mobile Web than I do, but to me, when I think of “just the Web,” I think of the broadband experience you get on your PC when you’re sitting at home or in a WiFi hotspot. The iPhone has a WiFi radio and its Safari browser is so superb that, as long as you’re connected to a WiFi hotspot, I’d agree, it’s the Web (or as close as you going to get to it on a screen of the iPhone’s dimensions). But most of the people I’ve spoken to (OK, not everybody) agree that the majority of the time they have their iPhone with them, it’s connected to AT&T’s network and not a WiFi network. And the slower of AT&T’s two networks at that.

Here again, in fairness to Apple and the choice it made, it’s not clear that picking the faster of AT&T’s two networks would have made a difference. Yesterday, fellow ZDNet blogger Russell Shaw posted a blog under the headline The three reason why [a] 3G iPhone won’t matter that much. To be honest, none of what he said resonated with me. For example, I don’t understand the point about how the slower radio didn’t matter to the so many people that purchased the iPhone. Really? A lot of people buy products only later to be disappointed by some feature. If there’s one point about the iPhone where the friends of mine who own say, “well, that’s true,” it’s the point about the Web experience being very slow — more like the mobile Web — over AT&T’s network (whew, at least some vindication).

More compelling however (on the question of whether 3G will really make a difference) were the arguments made by Carl Howe who wrote about how there’s more to 3G networks than performance. Like latency. And that there are other mitigating factors that could impact the performance of the final user experience besides just the raw bandwidth available to the end user. He answered his critics a day later, but that doesn’t change the fact that there could be some truth to what he’s saying. A 3G network, or even a 3.5G network may not matter. Or may not matter much. A WiMax network would matter (hmmmm).

The rumors are pretty strong that Apple will have a 3G phone in ‘08. One potential downside is that the 3G radio might drain the battery even faster than the current 2.5G rated radios. Of course, we won’t know the truth about the total impact of a 3G radio on the iPhone’s user experience or battery life until a 3G iPhone exists and we can compare. So, I’ll back off on the “wouldn’t buy one until it has 3G” point for now.

Even so, I wouldn’t buy one just yet. That’s because I think that now that the honeymoon has worn off, people are being more honest about their iPhones. People like Thomas Nelson Publishers president and CEO Michael Hyatt who, under the heading Second thoughts about the iPhone, wrote:

I’m thinking very seriously about giving up my iPhone and going back to my Blackberry. I know, I know. I was initially so enthusiastic.

I’m certain that same initial enthusiasm was the source of a lot of pushback I got on my iPhone assessment. Hyatt continues:

Initially, it was a good experience. I loved the user-interface and Apple’s elegant and simple solutions. However, I am now beginning to wonder if I made the right decision. Today, after a full day of travel, I am frustrated and ready to give up.

Hyatt goes on to elaborate on five points that are getting under his skin

• The battery life is insufficient
• The keyboard is more trouble than it’s worth
• AT&T coverage is often spotty
• The calendar doesn’t automatically sync
• I don’t use the other applications that much

Quite frankly, neither Apple nor AT&T bear any responsibility for points 3 & 5. I have a zillion times over said that the three most important things to think about when getting a smart or cell phone are coverage, coverage, and coverage. If you are buying a phone that has trouble connecting to its service provider while you’re at home, in the office, commuting, or at one of your other favorite haunts, you’ll end up being very disappointed. A handset that can’t connect to its network is of little use to anybody and no network has perfect coverage everywhere. This is why I often suggest that before you go buying a smartphone for all its great features, find out what service it attaches to, find someone else who has a phone or handset that’s provisioned by that service, and ask to borrow their handset for a few hours. Then make sure it works in all your favorite places and along your favorite routes. If it doesn’t, think twice about buying anything that works with that network.

On point #5, it’s not like the iPhone’s features weren’t public. Shame on anybody who pays a premium for a bunch of features in any product and ends up not using them.

The first two points however (the keyboard one of which is somewhat echoed on O’Reilly’s site) hit very close to home. They’re two of the primary reasons I can’t own an iPhone and that I’m looking forward to a future version of one that has replaceable batteries and a hardware-based keyboard.

Contrary to common belief, I don’t hate Apple. If it solves those two major problems and makes the iPhone available on a network that actually floats around my house (primarily Verizon, but I just noticed an improvement in T-Mobile’s signal), I’d probably buy one in a heartbeat. A MacBook Pro too, if Apple gave it a pointing stick (as shown in this “prototype”).