Chausse.org

Part of me can’t believe that this article wasn’t written for  The Onion and accidentally printed in the New York Times instead.  But, on a serious note, the lesson to be learned by the supposed “blogging deaths” is that the economics of blogging just really don’t calculate unless it is at least partially done for personal enjoyment.  Regardless of what you’re being paid, or how, a “blogger” is really someone who’s looking out 24 hours a day for relevant happenings - you just can’t live that way unless you actually enjoy what you’re blogging about.

This will always be the difference between bloggers and journalists.  You can be a journalist, covering things you’re not especially interested in, and still be a reasonably happy (or extremely happy, for that matter) person.  You have an assignment, you perform that assignment, and then you have personal time that’s all your own.  There’s no down-time for a blogger.  No matter how often you actually write, you’re always observing, thinking, analyzing.  A true blogger is a blogger 24/7.  If you don’t love what you’re blogging about, stop now. It’s not worth the stress.

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My apologies for the lack of posts lately, but the past month or so has been a very crazy time for me, in the best possible sense.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to discuss what’s been going on until now (for reasons which will become immediately obvious.)

Without further ado, I’d like to announce that I have just accepted the role of  Web Director at Harmonix. Harmonix, for those who don’t know, is the game company that developed Rock Band, as well as Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2 (plus the cool iPod game Phase, amongst other cool stuff).  I’ll be leading the team responsible for RockBand.com, as well as anything else Harmonix does on the web.

I am thrilled beyond belief to have been offered this opportunity.  Not only does this role truly encompass my extremely diverse range of professional interests, it has also reinvigorated my somewhat dormant loves of both video games and rock music, long buried under the twin pressures of work and raising a family.  Now that I can legitimately play video games in the name of "research," I have no excuse for growing up.

I begin the job on April 14th, at which point you probably won’t hear much from me on this site for a while -initially because I’ll be swamped with getting my head around my new duties, but I will also need to give some serious thought to my personal web presence.  It’s not like I’ve been elected pope or anything, but this is a role that will likely attract a lot of attention.  Rock Band has sold over 1,000,000 copies and, as an employee of Harmonix, I’ll also be working for MTV and Viacom.  While Chausse.org has always been a personal site that "does not represent the opinions of my employer," I’ve never worked for such a high profile employer.  I’d hate for one of my snarky comments to be misinterpreted by the wrong person and end up on the front page of CNET or something.  Anyway, Chausse.org will likely still be here for a good long time, just give me some time to figure out if any changes are in order.

Meanwhile, strap on plastic guitar, fire up your favorite video game system, and rock out.  I’ll see you on RockBand.com.

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If you have an older Intel Mac and decided to get a shiny new aluminum Apple keyboard, AND you use Boot Camp, you’re in for a bit of disappointment (as I was).  Without any official acknowledgement from Apple, older Macs are NOT entirely compatible with their fancy new keyboard, as they do not send power to it at boot time.  What does this mean? Well, it means you cannot hold down the Option key to switch boot disks.  You also can’t hold down the “C” key to boot from CD in time of crisis.

I went to the Genius Bar with this problem, and they admitted this problem and had pretty much nothing to offer me, except to let me return the keyboard, if I had my receipt.  Thanks, guys.  I guess the ultra-minimalist keyboard packaging doesn’t give you much room for a “Not actually compatible with all Macs, use at own risk” warning.

Of course, one workaround is to always use “Startup Disk” (or the “Boot Camp” Control Panel option on the Windows side), but a fat lot of good that will do you if you bollox your Windows installation, and can’t even get it to boot (which happened to me, and started this whole adventure).  Another workaround is to grab an old keyboard out of my garage and use that whenever you need to change startup disks.  But I don’t really want you rooting around in my garage.

Anyway, enough cursing the darkness.  Here’s your candle: Somewhere in this thread on the Apple forums, a simple workaround is offered: You can use the Apple Remote to switch boot disks! Just aim at the box, hold down the Menu button while booting, and voila:  Wireless boot disk selecting magic.

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Just a random bunch of recent pix. Enjoy.

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While reading an article partly about the iPhone user experience, a thought dawned on me about the virtual keyboard.  Like many other people, I was afraid that the lack of tactile feedback would be disorienting and difficult to get accustomed to.  And, like most people who have moved to the iPhone, I’ve found that it really isn’t.  That got me thinking about the whole nature of “touch typing”. 

Think back to high school (those of you who actually took typing classes).  What was the “sales pitch” the teacher gave you about “touch typing”? Well, it made you more efficient by stopping you from having to repeatedly move your eyes from the keyboard to the screen (or, er, paper - at least when I was in high school).

Now think about the iPhone.  Where’s the keyboard? Where’s the screen? Your eyes never have to move more than 3 inches to jump between the two.  AND, with the large visual pop-up key feedback (the real stroke of genius), you can rely on your peripheral vision to ensure correct keypresses, and still never take your eyes off of the entered text.  Apple simply took a negative limitation of a mobile device (limited room for both display and input), and turned it into a positive - the ability to support a virtual keyboard by replacing tactile feedback with peripheral visual feedback.

Turning limitations into advantages is a hallmark of both great marketing and great user experience design.  Whenever you’re in the process of designing a transformative product like the iPhone, always be sure to ask yourself “What old rules no long apply?”

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Remember the Commodore 64, the best selling computer of all time? Remember how cheap it was? $200 when its competitors were 5-10 times as expensive? Well, there’s a great story in this free Play Value podcast about the history of Commodore. 

Apparently, founder Jack Tramiel was such a ruthless businessman, obsessed with vertical integration, he drove prices into the basement using this clever little trick:

1. Buy parts in bulk from a small company on credit
2. Neglect to pay the company for the parts
3. Wait for the company to nearly go bankrupt
4. Buy out the company dirt cheap
5. Forgive their own debts
6. Rinse, repeat.

Pure, unadulterated, evil business genius!

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This was too fun to pass up. Create your own album cover according to the rules set forth here and post it somewhere… This is mine. Could it BE any more emo?

I can’t stop laughing at this one though…

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Check out this quiz and this video.  I can’t say much more without revealing the secret, but these both demonstrate how oblivious the human mind (yes, even yours) can be.

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Peter Elkind of Fortune just wrote a scathing article about Steve Jobs in Fortune Magazine, but this post isn’t really about this.  It’s about this included quote from former Apple CEO (and sacker of Steve Jobs), John Sculley:

“Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This was a lunatic plan. High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.”

This wasn’t just an offhand comment to the press.  It’s committed for posterity in Sculley’s memoir: “Odyssey” (13 used copies are currently available for $0.01 if you’re looking for further inspiration.)

And this is why he really should have stuck with selling “sugared water”.

Filed under Apple, Humor, Marketing 9 Comments »

It has nothing to do with OS X.  Well, not in the way most Apple fans think.

I recently stumbled across two different, unrelated articles which point to the same conclusion.  In order for comptuters to truly shine, the software MUST be tied to the hardware.

The first article, “Has Vista Lost all Credibility?” talks about how product development and product marketing conflicts between Intel, Dell, and Microsoft led to a lot of the faults of Vista (and provides 158 pages of internal email evidence backing it up).

The second article, “Why I Quit“, by former Linux kernel developer Con Kolivas, talks about how even with complete control over the software, the PC platform architecture has become so convoluted over the decades that machines that are technically 1,000 times faster, they’re 10 times slower in “doing stuff”, like playing audio or moving windows.

This problem is only getting worse, and Vista has proven it once and for all.  The open “Wintel” architecture used to matter, when people were regularly building and upgrading their own systems, but those days are long gone.  With $250 PC’s at Wal-Mart, the average user is as likely to upgrade their own computers as they are their pocket calculator.  PC’s are disposable commodities now, and people are fine with that.

Apple knows this, which is why they developed the Macbook Air the way they did.  You can’t even (officially) replace the battery in this thing.  It’s a sealed, black box for the average user, and even though it comes at a premium price, people don’t care.  They want the illusion that the computer is just a single thing that just does what you want, whether it’s powered by Intel, Motorola, or magical fairies.

True innovation in computing (in this day and age) will only come from an integrated hardware and software platform.  The Amiga was a quantum leap ahead of its contemporaries (as Con Kolivas points out) because of its hardware innovations.  Apple is currently the only company following this path, and this is why Macs will become the defacto home computer within 20 years, regardless of how cool OS X is.

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in a handstand…
on the horns…
on a goat…
on a can…
on a tightrope…

Happy weekend, friends.

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No, I’m not going to cease blogging or anything, but I’m suffering from a bit of Web 2.0 ennui - a personal bubble bursting if you will. The sheer number of people out there who think they’re working on the Next Big Internet Thing is staggering, when 99.99% of it just involves shoving the same information around in different ways. It’s all quite overwhelming. Do I want my RSS feeds in my email? My email in my RSS feeds? Aggregated or not aggregated? Perhaps this will pass, but I’m thinking this is actually a healthy development. It’s about time I develop some offline hobbies. If I may quote my own blog post from the last time something similar happened, (as inspired by Lloyd Dobler)

“I don’t want to blog anything, aggregate anything, or syndicate anything as a hobby. I don’t want to aggregate anything blogged or syndicated, blog anything aggregated or syndicated, or syndicate anything aggregated, blogged, or syndicated, or tag anything aggregated, blogged, or syndicated. You know, as a hobby. I don’t want to do that.”

Filed under Personal Notes, Web 2.0 2 Comments »

“FREE” sounds like a fantastic upcoming book discussing the problems of making money from digital content.  It’s not out yet, but BoingBoing.net reviews an accompanying Wired article.  The key thesis is this: There is no such thing as a market for digital goods, only a market for digital services. 

The book/article also discusses the huge psychological gap between products that cost nothing, and products that almost cost nothing.  I can certainly attest to this, as I recently signed up for JungleDisk, a data storage service backed up by Amazon.com’s “pay-as-you-go” S3 storage service.  Their rates are extremely low, and I haven’t really started using it, but I did rack up a $0.02 bill thus far (you’re charged a penny per 1,000 requests to list your files, a penny for 10,000 get requests)

Even though these three cents probably have me covered for months of requests, my first reaction when seeing the two cents on my account was an instinctive “Uh-oh, am I sure I want to commit to do this?”.  All over TWO CENTS.  Money I would hesitate to pick up off the floor.  Eventually common sense prevailed, but something in my “lizard brain” was triggered.

I’m definitely looking forward to this book.  As DRM dies a quiet death, the time is ripe for this book.

[Photo credit: me! I’ve been waiting for an excuse to use it…]

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Even better than the rotating snakes, and Mr. Angry and Mrs. Calm - check out The Big Spanish Castle.

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Beware the Rickroller.

Also, check out this video of Scarlett Johansson naked

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I randomly stumbled onto Sphinn.com and was about to write a snarky blog post (or at least a tweet) about it being yet another unpronounceable Web 2.0 site name.  Then I hung around for a bit and realized it was actually a pretty informative site.  Basically, it’s a Digg clone devoted to online marketing content.  Now, since 99.999% of “internet marketing” content is total crap, this is actually a pretty useful service, and I’ll be visiting frequently.

And it’s not that hard to pronounce… Just like “sphinx” without the “x”, I guess.

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Stuck owning a house worth less than your mortgage, and having trouble making the payments? Selling the house won’t really help, since it won’t pay back the mortgage.  Why not try “voluntary foreclosure?” Of course, you lose the house, but if you play your cards right  you can actually stay in your house for 8 months or so, payment free, on top of not having to pay back the mortgage.

Obviously, foreclosure is often a drawn out process, due to laws usually designed to protect the homeowner.  But a company called You Walk Away sells a $995 “kit” to help you intentionally complicate things for the mortgagor - extending your free ride as long as possible.  They will then supposedly help clean up your credit rating.

Legal? Apparently.  Unethical? Oh HELL yes.  But the mortgage industry doesn’t exactly have a spotless ethics record, either.

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Not only is “Y water” a healthy, organic drink for kids, the bottles become building toys when empty.

Brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.

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A while ago I posted about Cecropia, a game company which had pioneered a totally unique video game called “The Act“.

Using a simple knob, the player smoothly adjusts the silent protagonist’s personality, causing the characters around him to react accordingly.   All the action takes place in ultra-smooth Disney-quality animation, with absolutely no UI elements - creating the first true interactive cartoon.

Unfortunately, Cecropia has had a real problem with “The Act” - namely, how to market it.  It’s far too short to make into a console game, and the knob (which most users don’t have) is pretty much critical to the experience, which would require a special hardware investment for most people.  The animation quality is far too high to package into some kind of Flash game.  It really would make a perfect arcade game.  Unfortunately, the market for this kind of arcade game died out in the early 90’s.

So, anyway, they’re taking their technology in a new direction, facing up to the realities of today’s gaming market, and trying their hand at interactive Flash “advergaming”.  They’ve put up a demo on Cecropia.com.  I won’t tell you how it works (figuring it out is part of the fun).  If you’re at all involved in interactive marketing, get in touch with these guys.  What they’re doing is truly groundbreaking, and they deserve a lot of attention (and money).  And, who knows, maybe someday The Act will see the light of day, in some form or another.

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A little mechanical engineering humor for the weekend.

From vowe dot net.

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