iPad – A Truly Magical And Revolutionary Product? (iQuestions The iPad)

So the iPad finally came into existence… And… Well… It really seems to be the same story as the Nexus One. We get a device that is being dubbed “a truly magical and revolutionary product”, but in fact does not introduce much anything new. I unfortunately cannot see the magic in it yet. Yes, it is wonderful and kills for me the future of netbooks, but it is not a SuperPad like Google wanted to brand the Nexus One – superphone. Here are some questions that you need to ask yourself and that need a good amount of answering:

1. Is it a truly magical and revolutionary product? By the dictionary definition of revolutionary – certainly NOT… :/

2. The price is low, but is it low enough? Will it sell/appeal to the average person? I think its a bit of a tough sale. Wouldn’t you buy a really really good netbook for $500? Cause you can… Or even a full-fledged laptop…

3. AT&T? With so much critique on their network its a bit sad to see Apple going again with them… But it was only natural. Its at least good not to have a required contract. However – I am not sure how their network will hold up now with all the iPhones and iPads on it… Explosion imminent…

4. Virtual keyboard? Will it introduce new types of wrist-related injuries – tendinitis type iPad?

5. Would you really play a video game on this? Really? Really? You would not get an XboX for $200? You would play in an awkward position with your hands all over the screen? Ok.

6. Do you really really need it if you have an iPhone and another ereader? Even without the ereader?

7. How much will it hurt you when you break it ?

8. And how about hardware features like camera, GPS, etc…? Are we to see those in iPad SS (for superspeed)?

There’s more to come, but feel free to chime in the comments! My friend, PetPand, chimed in her blog.

Bringing People Together – Twitter, YouTube, and Haiti

While I was watching the world come together tonight on YouTube, I couldn’t help but think how differently things are done nowadays. Different – but not in a bad sense at all, on the contrary! Its really amazing how social technologies are in the core of events like MTV’s Help for Haiti. I used to be one of the people that would shun tools like Twitter with disdain. Where is the practicality of sending a status update in 140 characters or less? Well, it turns that there is much practicality that can be found in Twitter. Turns out that lives can be saved in 140 characters or less. That people can unite for one cause by simply adding “#helpforhaiti” at the end of what they have to say.

It has already been talked much in the news about how effective Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs have been in disseminating useful information about key global events. From Iran’s elections to Haiti’s disaster, social tech has proven indispensable for people who want to know what happened with their relatives in the ruins of Haiti, how things are going there now, how to help, etc… More people have the chance to easily join a cause and with little effort make change!

And change nowadays is made in the numbers, exponentially. That’s why I believe there is much hope in social tech for bringing change and more and more young people should look into it seriously as a way to affect what is going on around them. The time of physical protests isn’t long gone, but nowadays online protests can mean much more! They can grow exponentially and make things happen! I hope the new generation will continue to use those tools to bring people together for good. And I hope once started – we won’t simply forget all the status updates and tweets, but move forward with the realization that the world becoming one is possible, that people working in harmony for good is possible, and that we should never let religion, race, sex, or anything stand in front of peace…

Ok – so much for the “movie” words. All I have left to say is that I am a pretty stingy man when it comes to donating money to charities, but even I donated for Haiti. I hope you did the same! Sometimes $5 can make the biggest difference in one’s life. Wouldn’t you want to be that difference?

http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/

The Demise of The Native App? (or The Second Coming of HTML)

Did you hear? The native app is dying this year! No more iPhone marketplace! It seems like we are going back to where we started from with iPhone development – the web-apps. Yes – really! How you ask? Why? So quick? Well, yes. The second coming of HTML (or maybe 5th will be more appropriate ) will bring justice to those undeserving native apps! HTML 5 has come into play and is slowly gathering steam and is making people all over the world steam up with their predictions for the death of the native app. Some say – as early as end of 2010, we will be having apps mainly in HTML rather than device specific programming languages (native). Before I continue with this lengthy and condescending (to people that make those claims) joke and to end my introductory paragraph, let me say one thing.

No such thing is going to happen any time soon. Granted – for me – soon means within about two years, but two years is a damn long time and a damn enough time for new things to develop and start up in this darn age we live in. So the native app is definitely not dying this year. And please, before you tell me how it actually is – consider just a couple of thoughts on the matter.

First of all, if you are not sure what HTML5 is, let me explain it to you in one lengthy sentence (heavily wikipedia influenced): HTML5  is the next major revision of HTML that has been worked on since 2004 and aims to to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich Internet applications and introduce some new and wonderful mark-up. Since we all like the “.0″ in stuff, you can think of HTML5 as HTML 5.0 .

So we have this wonderful new and shiny HTML that will enable us to further the capabilities of web-apps. Also with the prolification of more and more APIs that will be able to access core device functions, we can do more and more things that native apps can do! This is great and while it will be a huge step for web-apps and will probably result into heavy growth of web-apps numbers, we are forgetting a few key factors that native apps still have in hand. Factors that will ensure that native apps don’t die… just yet…

First, we have the ability to take control of device capabilities and the sheer speed that we can do that with native apps. Native apps will simply be able to access much more of the device and do it a nice and unnoticeable way. Native apps will forever load faster, use the GPS faster, interact faster, and just be so damn faster than web-apps. Which leads me to the second and very important point.

We need quite some fast broadband access. Not your average AT&T 3G. We need serious speeds that can download content quicker to our devices so we can use the apps. Be it a button, an image, a core file, a script – it all needs speed in order for us not to sit and wait in front of our mobile device, wondering when the “search” button will respond to our clicks. As of now, unfortunately, we (the US) don’t really have that mobile access on a large scale. And honestly – the numbers of growth (or lack of it as in our case) that you can see in this Gizmodo article is kind of pessimistic (and making me tear up a bit). How come Romania, a country that stands far behind the US economically, have twice the broadband speeds of US, I don’t know… Speed though will be a big hurdle to jump over when it comes to replacing native with web…

Third, how many of you are familiar with HTML5 right now? How many do you think would have seamlessly transfered to it within 11 months? This is where the other hurdle stands in. HTML5 adoption is not as easy as everybody just taking a few days off work to read a guide and then setting off to create and transfer applications to HTML5 web format. It will take a bit before we can start seeing clean and nice code from a lot (underline that) of people, which could signal trouble for native.

So there you go! HTML5 will make it easier to go into apps and will help with bringing them to par with the “competition”, but will it really kill native? Not yet – that’s for sure. What will result from it might be much more web-apps that do stuff nicely, but all those nice and fast multi-functional apps will still be native. I mean – what would you really rather use? Facebook’s iPhone app or the mobile version of their site? Native will always be quicker and better/smoother. And then we are forgetting one more thing – why would you not want to transfer an app to the native domain if it is getting increasingly easy to do so? HTML5 can give you the great base to build your app upon, but to add the needed speed and functionality, you can always go native. Take a look at PhoneGap if you don’t trust me. The fight is still on…

Update 1/19/2010 as per SBF02:

One huge hurdle web-apps have in front of them before killing the native app would be games! I am not sure on the number, but I bet a lot of the apps in the iPhone appstore are actually games. Everybody that I know who has a mobile device has some sort of games on it. I don’t think that however HTML5 fares out, it will be able to compete with the capabilities native languages will offer app game developers! Granted, maybe we will see a shift where “basic” apps will transfer to the webosphere and native apps remain more and more game oriented, but once again – I don’t think this is happening any time in the recent future. Native and web offer their own distinct strengths and none can kill the other just yet…

Stay Away From Twitter! (Twitter’s Slow Growth Means Something)

Mashable’s article on Twitter’s growth provoked me recently to think about the people that use this social tool. I have been on Twitter for about a month now and I’m liking it more and more as a useful information-gathering social tool. One of the main reasons I like it for is the fact that not “everybody” is on Twitter, the fact that most of my friends are not on it and that most people that do sign up, drop out and forget about it in less than a month. I think this is a great thing! On a second thought – I hope this never changes and Twitter doesn’t grow with the terrible (terribly good ) rate it did in the past! Why you ask yourself? Why shouldn’t everybody that’s on Facebook or Myspace join Twitter? Why shouldn’t we all be one happy family that tweets and shares information?

Well, we should! But only if we really had information to share. And not only that – if we had useful information to share.  Browsing through my Facebook account and news/live feeds made me realize how much I did not care about most of the stuff on there. Not only that but from my so called “friends”, I kept in touch with only about less than 5% on a regular basis. It was convenient to have people as friends and look them up on a per-need basis, but as a source of information, albeit personal one, I would not really browse much through Facebook pages and profiles. It seems that farms, mob wars, quizzes, stupid horoscopes, love apps, etc are what is generating most of the content in my feeds. Not like this for Twitter. The friends/followers/following system there is set up in a distinctly different way and is much more selective, if you wish, but to the benefit of always presenting only needed information, rather than randomness!

It seems (at least to me) that most people who go to Twitter on a regular basis actually have some more “useful” information to share (or at least make the attempt to and persist in tweeting). Twitter, albeit very simple in nature, requires from its users persistence and constant involvement. If one is too laid back or too “lazy” to tweet and read others’ tweets, one looses interest in Twitter quite quickly. Simply put – Twitter does not offer the picture-sharing, personal-information-stalking, mindless-social-game-playing, and social-”intercourse” that Facebook and Myspace offer. It is really a place to share short bits of information on mostly social matters. Often it is simply personal information, but in 140 characters it somehow manages to pack more meaning than the average Facebook status update.

So the slower growth that Mashable talks about does not surprise me! Initially people jumped on the Twitter wagon thinking it would be the next Facebook thingy. However, they were wrong! And slowly and steadily, Twitter is seeing some sort of a user shift that does not depend on how much promotional activity Twitter has or how hard they try to retain users – it depends on what Twitter inherently proves to be. From a personal observation, Twitter seems to have gone from a “place to share your current state of affairs” to a “place where you can look for real-time answer and information on variety of social topics”. It is a considerable switch. I, for one, did not join Twitter until it was a place where I could actually find legitimate information about what interested me from legitimate people (some of them pretty high in the corporate ladder) and could start giving back to that information stream!

In short, I do not have a problem with people who denounce Twitter, who do not want to join Twitter, who join it and then leave, who simply do not belong to Twitter. Maybe Twitter growing slowly is a good thing? Maybe Twitter can be used in a much different way than other social tools? Maybe it can actually serve a positive, educational role in our society? Maybe it can be a tool for gathering useful information without having to sift so much through junk? I don’t know. What do you think? You decide…

Social Reading and Copia – The Next Step in e-Reading?

I was recently introduced to the Copia Ocean e-Reader (showcased at CES 2010) that attempts to start a whole new way of social e-reading. I must say – I’m excited about how this whole thing will fare! For those of you who want a quick overview of what the reader is, posted below is a short clip by TechVi from CES 2010:

If you visit their website at – http://www.thecopia.com/about.html you can view another video (by the company itself) that furthers what the device and the company are looking to achieve.

It pretty much boils down to a pretty versatile device that allows you to search and discover books in a somewhat of a netflix-style suggestion-browsing (what a phrase!) and also combines smart social networking technology to let you “share” with and learn more from your actual friends. Technically, the reader itself does not introduce anything new or innovative – wireless access (both wi-fi and 3G), touchscreens, e-paper, SD slots, etc. The thing that is notable about Copia is that whole idea of reading socially. Copia will enable you to make your book club more effective and even do away with physical meetings! It will let you see what your friends are reading and give you up-to-date recommendations on what you should read next (that can come from the program or your friends!). Copia will also let you share those little side scribbles we all love to do and engage in discussions  on every aspect of your reading collection.

I can’t help but compare Copia with Netflix and even Twitter and those companies always come up in my mind when I think of the social e-reader. The whole concept of social reading is quite smart and for one – terribly useful! It’s really like a Netflix of books where your friends can suggest actively the books you should read next. It’s like going on Twitter to find new people to follow (for you are a glutton for information) by looking at what common people your friends are following, or what people they are favorite-ing or listing… Now  to exemplify the whole concept and explain my excitement, I will walk through a couple of scenarios that can be made possible using Copia.

Scenario 1 – I am reading “The Stranger” by Albert Camus on my snazzy Copia Ocean 9 and it is a pretty enjoyable experience. I jot down several notes and thoughts that I have while reading the book. I get excited towards the end and wish I could share my thoughts about the book with somebody and maybe even engage in a discussion. Well.. I can do that. I pull up the main screen and connect to my facebook and twitter accounts to see which of my friends have Copia and are possibly reading the same book. Luckily – one of them is! A minute later and I have already started a discussion with him, sharing with him my margin notes and thoughts. All of this – I can see on my reader, even though I choose to have the actual discussion on my computer screen so I can type better. Excited by the book, I pull out a quick “map” of what is “near” it so I can choose my next read. I compare the books I have read and am planning to read with my friend and find more than 80% similarities! He quickly suggests a book he has read that is not on my read list and it seems close enough to the Stranger according to Copia’s suggestions. Taking his advice and fired up by our discussion, within a few more minutes, I already have the next book that I am reading! All of this, not only making my reading experience satisfied, but making me learn more about one of my friends and engaging me on a social level!

Scenario 2 – I’ll try to be more concise . Me and a few of my facebook buddies discover on Copia that we have a lot of books in common – enough for us to realize we would enjoy what others are reading. So we decide to form a book club where we don’t necessarily need to meet physically or at a certain time, but can read the same book and discuss it online, plus see in real-time where each one of us is with their reading! With a few clicks we are off and decided on what our first book will be! All of us can download it instantaneously to our devices and read it whenever and wherever we want. We take notes, mark down chapters, and share all this when we want to our online group so we can engage in thought-provoking discussions! With everybody’s busy work schedule and random free times when we can read, it is an instant ‘win’!

As you can see from the scenarios above, Copia’s model can prove to be very useful and hopefully successful! Of course – it all depends on the fact that people have to be on Copia before they can engage in all this. Unfortunately, this will be a much slower process. However, I do think Copia is starting up in the right time and if it is persistent will see the start of a new way of e-reading that can benefit readers in many ways.

What do you think of Copia? Comments are more than welcome! Cheers!

The Era of the Superphone! (Nexus One tries to differentiate)

The Nexus One is here! A new era has begun! Get ready for the future – touch-screens, apps, music, games, mobile internet, no keyboard, voice recognition, etc… Oh wait… We already have all that…

I can’t say I was not a little disappointed at the Nexus One, recently unveiled as Google’s next-gen Android-based phone. Not that it is not fast! Not that it is not sexy and it doesn’t feel right in my hand! Not that it is not powerful enough to do whatever I want with it – including call my mom with two clicks! No. Nexus One is a wonderful phone – a great piece of technology. But I can’t help but feel it got wayyyy over-hyped and delivered much less of that “innovation” we all wanted. However, this is not really Google’s fault. It is the market we are in and the level of technology we are at. It’s been just a few years since the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry, but we have already become numb to the plethora of similar (in very loose terms) devices that pop out every once in a while. That’s why the Nexus One did not really have that level of buzz and anticipation the iPhone received. Yes it was faster and more powerful and all that – but we kind of expect those things. We anticipate those things and in a way demand those things. If it did not have a 5MP camera and 1GHz processor we would be surprised. But it has them. So we are kind of fine with it.

So what does Google do? It pisses me off by using the term “superphone” to differentiate themselves in the market. Which is all great, but so so so untrue and far away from truth. Ok – this was an intentional repetition. I read Gizmodo’s take on the matter and I couldn’t agree more with them. Such and arbitrary and awfully sounding term. It is kind of a pathetic move from Google in my eyes. But then again Google has changed its image quite a lot and feels like it’s getting a bit “old”. The cool, hip guys seem to be getting more and more “corporate” and more and more “enronesque”. Google is starting to look like the creepy own-everything companies we see in scary sci-fi movies. But this is beyond the point.

Unfortunately the Nexus One is not really a superphone. It’s just the next “upgrade” of a smartphone. That’s how it all has always looked to me. Upgrades. We didn’t have a camera in the previous model. We have one now. We didn’t have compass, we have one now. Etc etc… I certainly hope this term does not catch on.

It is also notable to mention that the Nexus One is far from perfect and days after its launch generated hundreds of complaints for bad performance. Mainly with its apparently horrid 3G service.

In any case – what Google could have done to revolutionize the industry was not so much connected with this so called superphone, but with the way the phone was going to be sold. And here they kind of failed with the expectations – pricing the phone at levels, just under the iPhone. They could have been very smart with this. They could have done something with ads – sold at cost. They could have incorporated somehow Google Voice… I guess this would come along in the future – when the superphone 2nd generation comes about.

I gotta mention briefly though that the Nexus One did bring one quite amazing thing to the market and one that has a lot of potential. Android 2.1 – the first really usable and powerful android OS (in my opinion … If there is any possibility to revolutionize, Google, Android is the way! Better concentrate on making a superos rather than another superphone!

Ok – I’m out… My thoughts for the night. Cheers!

Edit 1/9/10 – Another nice post I found on Gizmodo

In the beginning there was the Word…

So I decided to finally get to this. I envisioned this site as an opportunity for me to share my thoughts and ideas in a nice and lengthy format, paired with photos and videos. However, working full-time and trying to juggle with some other personal projects on hand (and foster a good relationship with my girlfriend , I was never able to get myself to sit down and write a “feature article”.  This, of course, proved very unproductive and my site pretty much laid there with nothing on it. Well – NO MORE! I am officially starting this thing. If I can’t write articles with the length and depth I’d like to, I at least want to share my thoughts and throw them out there in the cloud. Maybe someone will join in the conversation and things can grow in the comments. I don’t know. But for now I will do what I can to fill this with actually useful content. Bare with me…

Another Pre-First Official Post – Sample of my videos/shorts

So I decided to bring back to this site a sample of some of the videos I have done. All done to show I don’t joke around when I say I have eclectic interests … What follows are 3 music videos (one original rap song, one original arrangement, one just singing), a short movie I did for my Intro to Video class about 5 years ago, and video highlights I did for the Athletics Department at Adelphi University. I am very interested in film and video and am currently working on several personal projects. Until they are done – enjoy the following:

Bulgarian rap by Stan Bogdanov – “Ne Znam”

 

One of my favorite songs by Ben Harper – Walk Away, sung by me for a roommate who passed away

 

The original song “Diamond and Glass.” After this comes my arrangement.

 

Adelphi University – End of The Year Highlights

 

A Short from my Intro to Video class

Pre-First Official Post ;)

I was supposed to write a short intro post to the blog, but don’t have that much time today. However, since I simply hate how it all looks – empty and lonely – I decided to post some links to photographs from my university and Bulgaria (my home country) done in tilt-shift style. In case you are not familiar what tilt-shift photography is, here is a quick video on it and a link to wikipedia’s explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt-shift_photography

And here are my photographs: