I’ve read other blogs on the profitability of blogging and I can testify that there’s no money in it.  The entire time I blogged I probably brought in less than $200 in ad revenue, a fact that eventually led me to remove the ads from my site.  Compare that to the $100’s I spend each month on website hosting services or the hours and hours I spent writing.  Certainly I was doing it for some other reason than to make money.

So back to the grind.  I have an iOS 4.1 update with Game Center support to complete tonight.

For info on my games check out www.badweaselgames.com.

First, make sure you are sitting down because I’m going to reveal some shocking things about myself here:

In 1983 I was in high school.  (Yes, I am that old)  Pretty much I was late for school every day.  (again…  I know.. very surprising!)  As “punishment” I got detention and had to stay after school.  Detention could be spent in a variety of rooms, my preference was the computer lab.  The trick here was that I wanted to spend time in the computer lab.  So it was impossible to “punish” me.  At some point I think they caught on and made me spend my detention in a different room, but that actually punished them more than me, so eventually they gave in.  But I digress…

The point of this post is that in the 1980’s when I programmed, I just tried stuff to see what would happen.  I had no fear of typing “Run”.  The result was that I made some cool apps.  But these days, in iPhone OS, where I’m not that swift on objective-c, or these days Open GL ES – I tend to be taking more of a ‘research-research-research’ approach and am not clicking “Build and Run” as often as I would of when I was 16.  At least that how I feel at the moment.  I can’t say that it’s fear – because I know that nothing will explode.  But there’s something going on.

What do you think?  Are you less creative or less adventurous with technical things than you were when you were younger?

Wednesday was a very big day for me.  Even though I worked late into the morning Tuesday night on a project for work, my wife kindly came in at 9:58 am and woke me so that we could watch the web as Apple announced the long awaited tablet.  For over a year I’ve “known” approximately what this tablet would be and have impatiently awaited it’s arrival.  After all the news was out I can’t say that I was blown away, but on the other hand I wasn’t extremely disappointed either.  It is mostly what I expected it to be.  I was bummed about several things, but also pleasantly surprised at the price.  And after a few days of reflection I have a couple of things I want to say about the soon-to-be-in-my-hands iPad.  So read on for my thoughts about the missing flash, missing camera, weird aspect ratio, the product category and a prediction for release day.

The Transparent Apple Game

I honestly believe Apple execs had the perfect iPad design with all the amazing bells and whistles, sat around a huge conference table about a month ago and said “ok, what critical features can we take out of version 1 and delay until version 2, 3, 4, etc?”  This is Apple’s MO and it’s completely transparent now.  The new “One More Thing” has been replaced with “taking out one critical feature”.  Steve Jobs thinks that if he releases the perfect iPad now there will be no reason to purchase another one next year.  And he wants us on the hook like a heroin addict coming back each year for a new fix.

I bet the rumors of the front facing camera and the idea of it logging you in by seeing your face are true, but just not for this release.  By removing the camera in version one, Apple keeps hold of our cahones and guarantees that we’ll come back to buy version two.  Especially if it has that cool face recognition feature that jobs can impress us with in a presentation.

But the problem is two-fold.  First is that we now know their game.  Second is that iPad is in too high a price tag class to pull the game off successfully.  In order to get the top of the line iPad today it will cost $830 plus $30 a month.  With tax and accessories thats about a grand on day one.  But if I KNOW that I’m going to be buying another new iPad in a year (to get the camera), it makes me think that I should only buy the cheapest one now.  In the long run Apple looses.

Product Class

It really brings me to this question: What Apple product class does the iPad fit in?  If you look at Apple’s website and click on “Mac” in the header it will show a sliding list of all Apple’s Mac computers. When the iPad is released will it be in this category, or will it be listed along with the iPhone and iPods?  I expect Apple to place it with the latter but I actually disagree with this classification.  The iPad really is about as powerful as my current couch computer, the Hacintosh Dell Mini 9.  I didn’t explicitly list it in my iWant post a week ago, but I really want the iPad to be something I can carry back and forth to work INSTEAD of my Mac Pro, and at home I want the iPad to replace my Mini 9.  The missing camera prevents it from completely replacing the home couch computer because we use it to iChat AV with the grandparents.

I expect Apple will migrate the iPad from being an iPod type device to being a mac computer.  With the iWork apps it’s clear that Jobs knows that he needs it to be functional to justify the price tag.  And I expect that a year or two from now the My Cloud computing features that I described in my iWant post will become a reality.  Let’s even call it a prediction for 2011.

The Name, No Flash, and Other Annoyances

I can’t say that I was happy to see the name iPad.  It’s so laughable and obvious that I don’t even have to say it.  But only a couple of days later I’m already over it, used to it and I think most everyone else is too.  It’s sort of like when your 4 year old starts telling poopie jokes.  It’s funny for about a week and then you don’t want to hear it anymore.  When you stop laughing they eventually stop joking about it.  It’s the same here.  Jokes are funny the first time you hear them, not the 100th.  The iPad joke can’t last more than about a week or two, and by the time it actually hits the streets it will have been a passing fancy.

The no Flash thing on the other hand is really getting old.  I don’t know how these guys can say with a straight face that it’s the best way to view the web.  I had really hoped that the tablet would have Flash.  But it doesn’t really surprise me that Apple is going to be greedy and prevent us from watching Hulu for free instead of buying TV shows from them.  Again, Apple is transparent.  We get it – you want to make money on every aspect of the product.

Still while the missing Flash is a huge annoyance, it is software, and software can always be fixed.  Someday Apple could change their stance and put flash in mobile safari, or someone could write an app for that, or the web could migrate towards html 5.  Not to mention that this thing will be hacked in no time.

My last little complaint is that there’s only one mono speaker.  I suppose the reason they did this is that the device can be used in any of the 4 orientations and so stereo speakers wouldn’t be oriented correctly 3 out of the 4 ways.  Do you place the speakers for a portrait or landscape orientation.  The correct answer by the way is landscape for movies.  But other than movies and maybe games it will probably mostly be used in a portrait orientation, as the docks hold it upright, not sideways.  Also, this can be fixed with the right 3rd party speaker dock or carry case.

The Odd Aspect Ratio

One of the things that really bothered me at first was the really weird 4:3 aspect ratio.  Seeing movies play on it just looked odd.  Since watching movies was one of my main desired uses, at first it seemed to me that it should have been closer to a 16:9 screen aspect ratio.  But now I believe that Apple was correct in their choice of screen size and ratio.  Here’s why:

Above is the Apple iPad playing one of my favorite movies, “Muppets From Space.”  The movie is roughly 16:9 and when played on an iPod you orient the device landscape and can either play it with black letterbox bars at the top and bottom, OR you can zoom in to the center and fill the screen with it (seen below).

In this movie and many others, zooming in doesn’t work because you’ll miss much of the action on the left and right of the screen.  Here we can barely see Rizzo.  However, if we were playing an older tv show or movie that has a 4:3 aspect ratio it would take up the whole screen.  So what if Apple had made the screen aspect ratio 16:9, what would that look like and what would it do to the iPad?  Let’s take a look:

Above is the iPad shrunken down to fit the aspect of 16:9 movie.  But now what would happen if I played a movie on this modified iPad that has an even wider screen aspect ratio, like Iron Man?  It would still have bars at the top and bottom.  What if I played a old episode of Remington Steel with it’s 4:3 aspect ratio?  Now I’d have pillar bars on the left and right.  The problem is that there are at least 3 different popular aspect ratios for movies and tv.  So which aspect is the right choice for a device like this?

Here’s the reality: If apple shrunk down the iPad to the above 16:9 widescreen, you’d just have a smaller device with less screen real estate.  You’d be getting less screen for your money.  And the main purpose of the iPad isn’t to be tiny – that’s the job of the iPhone and iPod Touch.  What’s the difference between shrinking down the iPad and just showing letterbox bars?  Either way you’re getting the same size picture on a 16:9 movie.  But shrunken down you’d get a smaller everything else, including much smaller 4:3 shows.  And check out what happens when you reorient that shrunken down iPad to portrait:

Compare the image above to all the shots in the Apple iPad Gallery (the second page of them).  You wouldn’t want to read an ebook or surf the web on that narrow of a screen.  And it would totally kill the cool double column-ness of the mail app. The 16:9 iPad would be too narrow for everything except 16:9 movies.  And there’s much more to this thing than movies.

A Final Prediction

There’s probably a lot more to be said, but I gots to get some sleep.  I will end with a final prediction about release day.  Sometime between now and 60 days from now when the iPad is released, probably on the day Steve announces it’s release, I expect some new feature will be added.  Excitement has been building towards this for several years but over the next two or three months it will level off.  Jobs will do something else to pump everyone up right before it hits the street.

Now that Adobe has come out swinging we know it won’t be flash. I also don’t expect it to be the camera, since Apple let people play with these last Wednesday.  Although, it’s possible that the 3G version could have the camera since no one has seen it yet.  (still I doubt that.)

If I had one guess it would be price.  It’s highly possible that Apple will announce a $399 base price on release day instead of the $499 tag.  That would really shake things up and get everyone frothing at the mouth.

Overall Impression

Overall I’ve still very excited about the iPad.  I’ve come to understand and agree Apple’s choice on the screen aspect ratio.  Most everything that is missing can be fixed in software and therefore added at any time.  I am bummed about flash missing but it wasn’t a surprise.  The only hard feature missing is the camera, and while I believe that Apple will add this in version 2 I’m not going to wait another year to pick one up.  Maybe someone will release it as a peripheral, which would be an ok solution for the times when I need it.  So I will buy one (or several) the day it comes out and upgrade later if I need to.  I’m an early adopter and always have been.  I was the first person in my circle to buy a TiVo, and I had an iPhone from the first day and have loved it ever since. I think the only time I’ve been burned by early adopting was HD DVD.  So I’m not that worried about the iPad.  The only question now is which model do I get and do I need GSP and 3G.

1. User Experience and Fatigue

Top on my wish list is of course just the fact that it will be the ultimate gadget from a user experience perspective.  Specifically what I mean by that is comfortable to use in many different situations, easy to carry and store, something that can be tossed around and not get scratched, and something that naturally becomes just as much as appendage as the iPhone has.  I expect nothing less from Apple.

My wife’s been experiencing some arm pain, similar to a carpel tunnel type injury, because of her use of the iPhone touch screen.  In the past I’ve suffered some from playing too many Xbox 360 games.  More recently I was getting sore from playing a game on the Wii.  Any new user input device can come with use-related injuries.  I hope that the new Tablet OS is comfortable to use and doesn’t create too much fatigue.

Example: I actually painfully wrote my first draft of this post in the notes app of my iPhone, in bed, while my wife was asleep beside me. Hopefully I haven’t painted a creepy picture, but night is often when I get inspiration to write and a laptop is simply too large and bulky to take to bed. I always sleep with my iPhone near by.  And lately I’ve been wondering if a 10 inch tablet would be more or less conducive to bedtime work (and typing) than the iPhone.  Ease of typing is a huge concern when considering how one would (or will) use touch screen tablets in the real world.

2. Power Cords / Interface Cable

As silly as it might seem I would love to see the tablet use the same interface connector as the iPhone / iPod touch. I already have so many of these laying around. Already have them in my cars, next to my bed, at my office, and at home.  I don’t want to all the sudden need a new set of cables. Sony kills me wih all their different batteries and power adaptors. Recently I spent 3 hours trying to find a lost power cable for my video camera which is why I did a writen review of the webstation instead of a video review. I did find 3 other Sony power cable and 2 other Sony battery chargers. But they’re all slightly different and incompatible.  Annoying!  So please Apple – keep to your own standard.

3. Powerful Processor.

I felt the iPhone 3gs was a significant improvement over the original iPhone in terms of speed. I hope the tablet will be MacBook pro fast. If it’s going to be more costly than a well equipted netbook it should be more powerful as well.

4. Real Flash Support.

Come on, mobile safari is fine for the iPhone but this thing needs to support hulu, the real YouTube, and flash gaming.  I know that Apple’s MO is to try to ‘encourage’ media buying from and for the device, but I hope it’s not at the expense of blocking hulu or any other media that I might want to play on it.

5. My Cloud / Mobile Me

I’m crossing my fingers for a killer remote desktop / screen sharing app.  Get this concept: if you could use the mac tablet with a mobile me / back to my mac account to access and control your main home mac from anywhere, in a way it would be like being able to take your home computer with you everywhere you go.  In a way it would be just as good (or maybe better) than having the tablet run the full Mac OSX.

I read someone online mention that if the tablet ran the full os it could take sales away from the desktop computer business.  I think it’s safe to say that it won’t “run” the full OS X.  But I think if the tablet acts as a controller or a window to your desktop computer, it actually promotes desktop computer sales.

It also opens up a new possible business for Apple: renting virtual (cloud) Mac OSX computer desktops to tablet users.  Rather than purchasing a $5000 mac pro, purchase a tablet and rent the power of a mac pro that you access via your tablet.  I believe that improvements could be made to the concept of remote desktop that would enable it to be more like actually having that computer inside your tablet.  Things like how files and data are shared between the two devices, and how input data could be recorded at a higher frequency – could make it possible to even use photoshop remotely.  But in this concept the remote computer is in a farm somewhere in the cloud.

6. Remote for Apple TV

The Remote app on the iPhone is one of my favorite apps.  Think of this app but bigger, better and stronger and for Apple TV.  The convergence between the computer and the TV could be solved by using the tablet as an input device for a computer that sits on your TV.  About 4 months ago I saw this (http://www.vimeo.com/6712657) interesting video of the 10/GUI user interface concept.  The basic idea is that the screen is duplicated down to a touch screen where your keyboard would be.  Watch the video.  This concept would work great as an interface for your TV as a computer.  Right now web surfing on a TV is a horrible experience.  Using this MO it could become second nature.  The Apple TV could become a device to visualize your tablet’s screen to your TV and conversely the tablet could be the ultimate remote for the Apple TV.  This marriage could honestly be a game changer.

7. Tablet as a Phone

Ok, I think this is a stretch but it’s possible.  So of course I don’t want to pay for both iPhone connectivity and tablet connectivity.  It’s possible that the tablet could be a ‘phone’ and inlcude a small handset or headset that wirelessly connects to the tablet.  Not bluetooth please but something with a much longer range like wifi.  And the handset would need a small touch screen so you could dial with it and search contacts (like an iPhone Nano).  But all the real work would happen in the tablet.  It’s probably impractical but it’s still made my list.  Another option in this same vein would be for the tablet to get it’s 3G from your iPhone, which is more of a traditional tethering concept.

8. eBook eMag reader – NOT eInk

I’m not much of a book or magazine reader, but this video (http://vimeo.com/8217311) got me excited about what electronic magazines could become.  Still eInk does me no good.  eInk doesn’t emit light except for backlighting models which look about as good as my Newton.  I think if you want an eInk reader that’s easy on the eyes go buy a Kindle or a Nook.  Maybe Apple can have an ebook mode which changes the lighting on the display and makes it easier on the eyes.  Still, it needs to have a beautiful screen for watching movies.  That’s more of a priority for me.

9. Front facing camera

Please.  Everyone knows why and everyone wants this.  And we don’t want to wait for the 4th hardware version.  Just give it to us.  Thanks!

Conclusion

My overall hope for this tablet is that it will have many many real uses.  Not just be a big iPod Touch or another gadget that I’ll buy and carry around and surf the web with.  But be the one device that basically does it all – an honest game changer.  Apple has a huge opportunity to change the way we use computers here.  I just hope that they don’t disappoint us all on Wednesday and just announce a new iLife.

First let me do the whole reviewer disclaimer thing… On what can only be described as a moment of weak ignorance, I ordered a Camangi WebStation.  That was December 4th and I paid full price.  Normally I wouldn’t plop down almost $400 for a product that no one has seen or tested yet, one that in the early videos looked quite questionable, and one from a company that I’ve never heard of before.  But I did.  Against all common sense I hoped that it would be a decent solution to use until Apple gets theirs out.

At the same time I also contacted Camangi in an attempt to get an early “review unit.”  We did correspond back and forth a bit but ultimately they decided to not supply me with a “free” unit but rather promised to simply ship my purchased unit to me via a faster method than everyone else’s – so that I could review it (hopefully) before they start arriving to the 1000′s of people who ordered them. Therefore the unit I reviewed here is the one I paid full price for, and my buyer’s remorse is certainly adding to the sting here a bit.  But then again most things I discuss on this site are items that I’ve purchased.  So take that bias in to account if you feel it’s relevant.

My Couch Computing Concept

Our previous current couch computer is the hacintoshed Dell Mini 9.  It works well, is fairly fast (for an atom processor running OS X), it’s fully a mac, and cost about $300-$400 retail.  And it’s small.  We mostly use it for quick imdb lookups while watching tv and movies, and my daughter plays flash games on it.  So in my perfect world, the ultimate couch computer would be a smallish tablet, no keyboard to get in the way, easy to stow between couch cushions, but would be as fast and responsive as the dell or as an iPhone.  It needs to have full web capabilities, support flash video (unlike the iPhone), hulu, youtube, and all that.  It should also act as a PMP so that my daughter can watch videos on it in the car or wherever.  It needs to be multi-useful.

So I’ve been excited about getting this unit in – and I spent all Christmas watching the DHL tracking reports to see when it would arrive.  But on the other hand I didn’t have high expectations for it.  It has very little RAM and a tiny processor.  In my correspondence with Camangi I asked over and over about it’s capabilities, specifically with regard to playing video – but they would not answer those questions.  This made me begin to think that the reason they were avoiding my questions (and didn’t want to send me a review unit) was because they didn’t like the true answers.

The Missing Video Review

This was going to be a video review and I will post a video as soon as I can.  Last night was one of the most frustrating evenings I’ve had in a while and I was unable to get much video shot.  To really see this thing on video would prove what I’m saying here, so I want to get some kind of video posted. But in the mean time I did mess around with the WebStation long enough to know what it really is, and wanted to get this review out as soon as I could.  So let’s get started…

What’s in the box

The package arrived via DHL in a small brown paper box, inside which was the retail box.  The box contains the WebStation, a carry sleeve/pouch, a pair of cheap earphones that appear to have a microphone attached, a cloth to wipe the screen, a quick start guide, another booklet containing legal disclaimers, the power supply, and the stand to use it as a picture frame, which is basically a suction cup on a stick.

My first impressions were that the WebStation hardware seemed sturdy enough. It has 3 physical buttons on the front: home, quick menu, and return.  On the right side there are ports for headphones, mini usb, a reset button, a normal sized usb, and DC in.  On the left side are physical volume buttons, on the top is a power button, and on the top back is a micro SD card slot preloaded with an 8GB stick.

(same side from the back…)

On major thing lacking in the box is a real user manual.  The quickstart guide does tell you how to unlock the device, something you’d probably never figure out on your own.  But it’s very slim on details and instructions.  For example, I still have no idea how to load music on the device.  I assume that I need to add a “Music” folder to the memory stick, but that is a complete guess.  Another example is that I was surprised to discover that it would charge off the USB cable when it’s plugged in to my mac.  But also debaffled by the meaning of the “beep-beep-beep” when the screen went to sleep while plugged in to my mac.

Powering it on

When you first press the power button at the top, it takes about 7 seconds before you see the word “ANDROID…”  Total boot time is 54 seconds.  You are then presented with a lock screen that shows the time/date.  Unlocking it takes you to the Launcher, which is a menu of app icons.

Speed and Responsiveness

You have to admit that we’re all used to the way the iPhone works and in a way it is the standard upon which all other touch based gadgets are measured. Since the loss of my 3GS iPhone I’ve been back to using my old original edge phone and have been struggling with the comparitive slowness of that old thing. But the old edge phone screams in comparison to the WebStation.  Actions like touching and dragging to scroll windows are taken for granted on the iPhone, and the WebStation does do that touch scrolling thing, but seems to skip along the action.  One way to describe it is if the iPhone operates at 30 frames per second, the WebStation probably runs at about 5 to 10.  I also found myself accidentally triggering buttons when trying to scroll.  Something that DOES happen on the iPhone occasionally, but was happening A LOT on the WebStation.  And with the overall slowness of the unit, getting into the wrong menu is a pain because then you have to slowly navigate out of it as well.

Here are some speed/usage comparison examples between the WebStation and my old first gen iPhone:

Photos – First off, it’s not a multi-touch display, it is a resistive single touch screen.  So zooming in and out is done via on-screen zoom icons, not multi-touch pinch actions.  The fair comparison here is the responsiveness of touch-dragging scroll around on a photo.  When you first touch and start to drag it takes several seconds before the unit seems to know that you’re dragging.  Then it catches up and does it’s best to keep up with your finger, updating the screen about 5 to 10 times per second.  This sluggishness is generally felt everywhere in the UI.

Typing – When you click on a field where text can be entered, a virtual touch keyboard appears on the bottom of the screen.  Typing is best done one letter at a time, making sure that the UI has got your letter before moving on to the next.  If you type too fast sometimes the keyboard will just go away.  It seems to not be able to keep track of touches faster than about 5 per second either.  Of course this kills my couch computer concept as it’s sort of frustrating to even enter text.

I’ll cover web browsing and video playback in their own sections..

But first I have to say that I was excited about the WebStation being Google Android based.  I don’t even mind it NOT being multi-touch.  I think the overall interface is good, but the processor just can’t keep up with a real user.  If this was powered with the Atom processor from my Dell Mini 9 it would be a completely different story.  But the way it is now the sluggishness is just too much of a factor.

Web Browsing

I think the biggest test should be basic web browsing.  After all, the product is called the WEB station, and therefore should be optimized at surfing the web. The first test was to simultaneously launched both the WebStation and my old first gen iPhone to the home page of this website (tomorrowland.com).  Both devices were on my home wifi network.  The iphone loaded the page about 20 seconds quicker than the WebStation.  Then trying to test scrolling on the WebStation I touched and dragged the screen and instead of it scrolling it launched a link.  In order to ensure that you’re going to scroll you have to touch and hold until you see that it’s scrolling, then drag your finger.  Something that I would find hard to do when going back and forth between using my iPhone and this thing.

The next test is what sites work and what doesn’t.  Well, just like the iPhone, FLASH does not work.  This wipes out hulu and youtube and even my own tomorrowland.com/podcast page, and unlike the iPhone there is no youtube application.  This also wipes out all flash games, which was one of my desired uses for the WebStation.

I’ve already complained about the typing and the scrolling.  But one other thing I noticed is that most apps are web apps.  The ebook reader, and the app marketplace both use the web browser to do their thing.  So if one is slow they all are.

Video

All my hopes and dreams are crushed when it comes to video playback.  It’s no wonder the people at Camangi completely skirted all of my questions about video playback.  My big question to them was can it play full screen video at 30fps.  The answer is a big fat no way!  Not even close.  With the lack of a user manual to detail the specifications for the most compatible video formats I guessed and loaded a couple of samples.  The unit did come preloaded with the promo video from this page, but looks atrocious when playing back.  It seems a shame to not make use of that 800 x 480 pixel screen with movie watching.

The first video I tried was a 3 minute, 22 MB H.264 video running at about 1 Mbps.  Frame size was 480 x 324 at 30fps.  I suppose it was encoded to work on an iPod.  The audio played fine but the picture lagged very far behind, causing it to be grossly out of sync.  The video frames that played did so at about 5 or 10 fps.  Skipping to the middle of the video did catch it up, but it’s clear the device is not powerful enough to play video.

The second video I tried was a movie that was encoded to play on a PSP.  It also played very slow visually while the audio played normally.  It was also very much out of sync right from the beginning.  Very disappointing.

Harsh Conclusion

My suspicion is that the unit is basically a digital picture frame loaded with a cell phone version Google Android with a touch screen.  It came with a phone headset complete with a mic and answer button.  All through the menus there are mentions of things like “baseband” and “ringtones” but it’s not a phone.  And the weird thing is that I don’t think the processor in it is even powerful enough to run a phone.  Had they marketed it as a touch screen digital photo frame with a web browser and sold it for about $100 it would be somewhat reasonable.  And before you think about complaining about how hard I’m being on it, consider this: The WebStation is $390.  For $199 you can get an iPod Touch.  If mac made a 7 inch iPod touch it would blow this thing out of the water.  Completely.  Or for about the same price you could get a Dell Mini 9, or an Archos 7 – which are completely different products, but still something to consider.  Or you could save your money and wait for Apple to release the iSlate and I suspect that will be THE CE product of 2010.

Of course there is more to the WebStation that I didn’t have time to cover, but to be honest the rest really doesn’t matter.  The weather app is nice and works well.  So far I haven’t figured out how to load music on it and so haven’t been able to try out it’s ‘cover flow’ mode.  But essentially it’s about as powerful as a digital picture frame, and that’s very sad. Basically my plan at this point is to call American Express and find out what I can do to return and refund.  In my opinion the Camangi WebStation is a total fail and I can’t recommend it to anyone at any price.

I will update this post with some videos as soon as I get a chance.

Also – Thanks to gizmodo for ‘reprinting’ this review on their site.  It’s always nice to get a link for a hard night’s work.

It’s no secret that I have a movie theatre for a television and that we enjoy watching movies at home. But I’m also the parent of a small child and we have a fairly strict policy of what we allow our child to view. Still, we enjoy getting cozy on the couch for a good family movie. So the issue becomes WHAT to watch. The challenge is to find movies that are clean and appropriate for her while at the same time are able to hold my interest.

As I said, we’re careful about what television shows she sees. I’ve even vetoed some Blue’s Clues episodes because of the way they often handle conflict, encourage entitlement, and promote drama and whininess. And don’t even get me started on The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and how they routinely teach ’scientific’ principles that defy the laws of physics.

Everything she watches is played off TiVo, giving us the ability to skip over commercials. Although I must admit that it is mostly so we can avoid her falling for kids advertising and wanting every cheap toy that is pushed in her face. So we simply remove the pushing. We also don’t watch any non-kids shows when she is around, which basically amounts to ‘when she is awake.’ And if the TV is playing live-tv, it’s always on the food channel – which has proven to be a completely kid-safe channel.

For movies, as a general rule I believe in the MPAA rating system. G-rated movies are probably fine for her.  PG, or Parental Guidance, means that it might or might not be appropriate – and we need to pre-view the movie to know if it’s cool before she sees it. And I figure she can probably watch PG-13 movies when she’s 13 – but we’ll see when we get there. With only G movies to choose from, the short list gets stale fast. The problem with the PG rating is that it’s too wide a range – movies can be fine for 6 year olds or barely appropriate for 12 year olds. Overall I think there is a serious shortage of good family movies. And it’s a genre that is not target by indie film makers, which is why I have a passion to try to eventually fill that gap.  But I digress…

Every now and then we take “G” to Best Buy to pick out a new movie, but most of the time we leave empty handed – unable to find anything that fits both criteria of A) being something I want to watch AND B) is also appropriate for her to see. For example one day I noticed ‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’ was on the cheap isle and considered getting it (even though it was DVD and not BD) but didn’t when I saw that it was PG. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I just can’t remember much about the content. I knew it was about some kids get who shrunk down, and there’s a giant ant, but couldn’t remember if they used any choice “PG” language that I don’t want her picking up and repeating at her Christian school. So I didn’t buy it.

Then recently I stumbled on Common Sense Media, which is a web site devoted to helping inform parents so they can make decisions about what is and isn’t appropriate for their kids. I’ve seen other sites that do this, but I really like the way that CommonSenseMedia.org handles it. They attempt to give the movie a specific age rating rather than just the general MPAA rating.

Of course any rating system is subjective and depends on the values and standards of the person doing the rating. But their system gets you into a ballpark and give you explanations for why they gave it the rating they did. It also helps to read their page about their ratings.

Every child is different and every parent is going to have a different way at looking at things as well. For us some language is an issue because of the school thing, and we know that scariness can be an issue for our child as well. Looking at their reviews of a few movies I’ve seen and already have opinions about gave me a good idea of how close their system is to OUR reality. Here’s a couple quick examples:

Bolt – Is rated PG and Common Sense gives it a 5. The only issue for us was the fire scene at the end.  They mention it although they don’t stress enough how perilous it is. It makes me wish that they separated their Violence and Scariness section.

Monsters vs Aliens – Is also rated PG  and Common Sense gives it a 7. They peg violence, scariness and language – and I suppose they are correct.

Ice Age 2 – The Meltdown – Also rated PG, Common Sense gives it a 6. I actually stopped this movie early on and didn’t allow my daughter to watch it. This one I think they’re off. They don’t peg language enough and completely miss mentioning the “DAM!” joke and don’t stress the scariness enough. (those underwater monsters are scary.)

Honey I Shrunk the Kids faired well, and now I know that, at least according to Common Sense, language isn’t an issue. Now if the movie will only come out on Bluray I can buy it and watch it with my daughter.

Of course parents should probably watch movies before letting their kids watch them, but at least Common Sense Media is a start to weeding out certain flicks beforehand. And in a case of “Honey…” it jogged my memory about a movie I had already seen.

High Tech Monorails is a documentary I edited for my friend Rob Kelly.  It’s airing on Travel Channel and Travel HD several times this month starting Sunday at 7pm PST.  Set your TiVo and be sure watch it!

The show covers several of the world’s best monorails including the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal Germany, which was built over 100 years ago.  It also takes you to China aboard the 1.2 billion dollar mag lev that reaches 270 mph, and to Las Vegas where a monorail was built to connect the back side of the strip’s casinos.  And the film talks about how Los Angeles was offered a free monorail in the 60’s but turned it down due to pressure from the oil companies.  And it asks the question “why aren’t we using these technologies more today.”  All egos aside, it’s a delightful way to spend an hour.  I hope everyone gets a chance to check it out.

Hit the link to see a clip from the show…

Ok!  So I’m including this next section to tease Rob a little, plus having edited the show, this is one of the oddest things I’ve seen all week…

I figured there was probably a clip of the show on youtube because there’s a clip of everything on youtube.  I searched youtube for High Tech Monorails and I found this golden little gem of a clip:

I can’t wrap my head around this but it’s a show about japanese people watching High Tech Monorails. Hmmm.

ANYWAYS!  For a REAL clip you can go to hightechmonorails.com

I watched, hoping for a BSG-style re-imagined remake of the 80’s original and I got the feeling that’s what they were going after. For some reason I can’t quite tell yet if they succeeded. I didn’t watch much of the original miniseries (or any iterations thereafter) but remember enough know a few spoilers. So I was glad that the pilot covered a lot of ground and I think it got us far enough along the story to hopefully be able to kick into full swing next week.  In comparison I felt both BSG and Sarah Conner Chronicles had excellent pilots and got things rolling right away. I think it might take a few more episodes to see how well I’m going to like this. But at least they got me willing to give it a try for a few more weeks. For now we’ve got a season pass. What did you think?

OCTOBER, 2009

Imagine you’re on vacation enjoying a day at Disneyland with your family.  You get your iPhone out of your pocket and it’s in your hand.  You set it down on the seat next to you for a second to help your 4 year old, then a few seconds later you suddenly realize that it’s gone.  You think “Wait a minute… where’s my iphone?”  Then you question yourself “where did I set it down and why would I set it down?” and then you re-step your path, ask around if anyone saw it, check all your pockets like 10 times, look in the stroller and all around.  It’s gone!  Now what?

What would you do?  “I have mobile me” you say?  Well, so do I – but there are some harsh realities to that.  If you’re an iPhone owner I suggest that you read on, find out what is and isn’t possible, and think about what you would do, because it could happen to you.

[Author's Note - Please forgive my seemingly random use of Blade Runner quotes.  I put them in to lighten up a rather long article and hoped that readers would just get it.  I've decided to point them out because I realized that without being in the know, they come across as me being overly dramatic.  So watch for them, and enjoy...]

Reaction time is a factor in this so please pay attention…

My first instinct was to assume that it was stolen.  Why?  Because it happened so fast.  I didn’t just misplace it.  I literally had it in my hand one minute and then about 30 seconds later realized it was gone.  In comparison, several times during our visit to the happiest place on earth one of us saw another guest drop something and we immediately picked it up and said “Sir, you forgot your bikini calendar.”  Ok, that particular thing only happened once, but my point is this is what normal honest people do.  Had some honest person witnessed me turn my back on my $700 pocket computer, they would have alerted me to the dreaded mistake.  Instead someone saw an opportunity and lifted it.  And it only took a few seconds.

But a part of me still didn’t want to believe it, and the people enjoying the day with me encouraged me to hope for the best.  Maybe it’s here in the stroller somewhere.  Maybe it was picked up and taken to lost and found.  We looked over and over the same places.  We texted it a message “Please call xxx-xxx-xxxx and return for a reward.”  We called the phone several times.  But within about 30 minutes calls went straight to voicemail.  The phone was turned off.

#1. Acceptance. Is it lost or is it stolen?  This probably effects how you should react.  If it’s truly just lost and an honest person finds it, calling it and texting it about a reward would probably work.  But if it’s stolen, that tactic will likely just alert the thief that you’re looking for it and cause them to turn the phone off.  And while it’s turned off you can’t track it.

What if I go north?  Disappear?  Would you come after me?  Hunt me?

You’ve probably read of success stories where people used Mobile Me to track and recover a stolen computer or iPhone.  Well, Mobile Me failed me.  In case you’re not in the know, Mobile Me (or dot mac) is a paid subscription service ($99/yr) from Apple that, among other things, comes with the back to my mac and the find my iPhone services.  The idea behind find my iphone is that it will track a lost phone.  You log in with a computer and can see on a map where your phone currently is.  You can also remote lock it, send it a message with a sound, or you can remote wipe it.  From experimenting with it and from reading those success stories, it seems like it would be THE way to get your iPhone back.  But there are some significant limitations.

#2. No app for that. I was traveling with several other people who also have iPhones, so I immediately borrowed one and tried to log in to me.com using Mobile Safari.  Remember how the iPhone has the REAL internet in your pocket?  Well that’s not exactly true.  You can not access the REAL Mobile Me service from Mobile Safari.  You can only access it via your mail, contacts, calendar and photo applications.

It was the most frustrating thing in the world to know that someone was getting away with my iPhone, and it’s trackable, but I can’t track it because there’s no app for that.  Here’s a quick petition to Apple: If someone is out and about and their phone goes missing they’re not going to have a laptop and an internet connection with them.  But they might have another iPhone around because people with iPhones are friends with other people with iPhones.  So there needs to be an easy way to track the phone from another phone.  Had I been able to react faster, promptly track it before it was turned off, I could have possibly gotten the local disneyland/anaheim police to help me right away.

Of course I thought of calling a friend who might be at home or near a real computer to have them track the phone.  But guess what?  All my contacts are in my phone.  How many phone numbers do you have memorized?  It was about 2 hours before I finally reached someone who could log in and try to track the phone.  But by then it was turned off.

#3. Find my iPhone only gives the current location and only if it’s turned on. Ok, now this is probably obvious but a turned off phone can’t be tracked while it’s turned off.  So, when my friend logged in to Mobile Me there was no location available.  But it had been turned on all day – why not show where it was right before they turned it off?  Well, here’s the part that you might not think of: it does not constantly poll every iPhone on the planet for it’s location, waiting for people to log in and request it.  It only shows the last known location and only AFTER you log in and ask for it.  In other words, if your phone is stolen and immediately turned off, when you log in to Find my iPhone it won’t have any data collected because it only collects data (or starts to collect data) when you’re logged into the Find my iPhone screen.

And even after you’ve ‘activated’ the feature, it doesn’t store any historical data.  So you can’t see the path that the phone traveled or see where it was an hour ago, or even see how long it was turned on or off.  It only shows where it was the last time it knew where it was, and if it’s currently on or off.  So if your phone is stolen take lots of screenshots of the Mobile Me page.  It’s the only ‘proof’ you’ll have of where it was.

Eventually my iPhone popped up for a minute – clear across the park near the Small World ride.  Once you know it’s traveling and you know that it’s in the hands of a thief, what do you do now?

#4. Choose one: Protect the data or try to recover the iPhone. Cold hard reality: Apple’s not really providing a CSI-style ‘track my stolen iPhone’ feature.  They are providing a find my lost iPhone feature.  And as much as they might be ’selling’ it as a theft recovery feature, it’s missing some key options to really make it such.  I’ll get to those suggestions later.  In the mean time, Mobile Me does some decent tools to help protect your data in the case of a theft, and a few tricks up Apple’s sleeves.  See the overall options in the image below…

Yes you can Remote Wipe it, but that will permanently delete all media and data on your iPhone, restoring it to factory settings.  Once you do that it can no longer be tracked, locked, or display messages.  In other words, this option basically gives the thief a shiny new clean iPhone, ready to be activated.  Just like they bought it on ebay.  This choice is a complete acceptance that your iPhone is gone and you’ll never get it back.  And realize that the longer you wait to remote wipe it, the less likely it will remain on option.  I did not make this choice.

We’re so happy you found us.

There is some good news.  As popular as the iPhone is, most people really don’t know that much about it.  A common thief who would steal an iPhone probably doesn’t really know what all it can do – or they wouldn’t steal it.  Because who knowingly steals a tracking device?  And this means that they will eventually turn it back on – and if you’re on it, you can see where they are, capture it as a screenshot, and deal with it.  So let’s get to some of the positive realities, because Apple does have some nice features in Mobile Me that make it worth the $99 a year.

#5. Remote Lock is a good thing, do it as soon as you can. Even if the phone is turned off, remote lock it and the moment it’s turned on it will be locked with a 4 digit code.  This probably isn’t as hacker proof as a remote wipe, but it’s good enough for the average dumb theif.  After 6 incorrect codes the phone forces a 1 minute time out before they can try again.  Enter an incorrect code again and it forces a 5 minute time out during which the phone is completely unusable.  The next incorrect code is a 15 minute time out and so on.  This should do a good job of preventing a brute force trial and error hack of the code.

Another good feature is that barring any jailbreaking tools iTunes will not let you into a phone that is locked.  You have to enter the unlock passcode before you can do anything with it in iTunes.  So your data should be fairly secure, unless of course the thief is savvy enough to get around the lock.  I suspect there is a way to completely reset the phone to factory conditions, but doing that would hopefully also result in wiping your data. Not to mention that they’d have to turn it on to do this – and then they’d probably be giving up their location.

#6. You can also send messages to the phone along with a sound – albeit a fairly soothing sound.  I guess I was expecting the iPhones buzzing ‘Alarm’ sound but instead it sounds the submarine ring.  If the phone is in a time out phase, the message will stay up until the phone is unlocked, but the sound can be easily stopped.

Of course the phone has to be turned on for the message to be delivered.  But sending a message does a very cool thing: it queue’s the message and will deliver it as soon as the phone is turned on.  And it will send you an email telling you what time the message was delivered.  This is the way that all of these features work, including remote lock and remote wipe.  They all report back via email when the action has been completed.  So by sending a message to a turned off phone, you will have an e-paper trail of when the phone was turned back on.  And if you’re keeping an eye on your email, this will also alert you to log in and check the location of the phone.

#7. Removing the SIM card does not necessarily disable the Mobile Me features. This is somewhat good news but also a mixed bag.  The phone CAN report back to Mobile Me using Edge, 3G or WiFi.  So if the SIM card is pulled it can still display messages and report back it’s location, as long as it’s connected to the internet via WiFi.  However, unfortunately the iPhone probably won’t automatically connect to the thief’s home wifi network.  Still, it is a cool edge over the thief because it makes it very risky for them to EVER turn the phone on.

Milk and cookies kept you awake, eh Sebastian?

Resuming my story, later that day my phone was turned on in the Disney parking lot and after that I didn’t expect it would ever pop up again.  I had locked the phone and sent messages to it claiming that I could track it.  So I never expected the thief to be stupid enough to turn on the phone at his house… but the next afternoon it was turned on in a residential neighborhood in La Verne.  And Mobile Me located it twice in approximately the same location about 20 minutes apart.  So now what to do?

Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch.

When I found the location of the phone I was only about 20 minutes away from it.  But I’m not quite brave enough to go knocking on the doors of thieves.  So I called the police.  At first they were uninterested, stating that 100’s of items are stolen from the park every day.  But when I told them that I had tracked it to a house, they asked me to fill out an online police report and gave me the number of a detective to call.

#8. I’ll probably never get it back. It’s back to the harsh realities and this is the main one we just have to accept.  I’ve given the detective all the data I collected.  He’s being quite responsive, called me several times with follow up questions and seems interested in the case.  Because of the $700 cost of the iPhone it is considered grand theft and could carry a serious penalty.  However, as you can see the tracking data returned a fairly large circle which probably encompasses 10 houses.  The detective isn’t going to go door to door searching for the phone.  He might hit the main two houses at the corner of Peyton Rd and 9th steet.  But who’s to say if the culprit even still has the phone.  After getting messages like “we tracked this phone to your house and are calling the police” they might have freaked out and tossed it in a dumpster.

UPDATE – Under the heading “You know the score pal.  If you’re not cop, you’re little people.”  I did hear back from the detective who said that they actually went to city of La Verne looking for my iPhone.  They contacted the residents in the grid of the tracking area but they were not able to locate the phone.  No one admitted to being at Disneyland on the day of the theft.  He suggested that I contact AT&T and report it stolen – which I had already done.  He also entered the serial number into a national database of stolen property.  I greatly appreciate his efforts.  He took it seriously and did more than I expected him to do.  But it does go to show that these Mobile Me features are not enough to actually recover a stolen phone.

Did you get your precious photos?

Let me take this moment to stress just how shitty is it to steal a phone or a camera at an amusement park.  I was from out of state, on vacation with my wife and daughter, taking memorable photos and videos of my family with that phone.  Those are now lost forever.  The video of my daughter talking about her first roller coaster ride – gone.  (Insert your favorite Blade Runner quote here)  Then there’s the fact that I needed that phone to communicate with my family while on vacation.  All my numbers are in it.  How many phone numbers do you have memorized these days?  People couldn’t reach me, and my wife and I couldn’t easily separate at the park.  And finally, how much vacation time and energy got wasted trying to figure out what happened and take care of it?  Not to mention the $700 loss.  It cast a dark cloud on the rest of the trip.  So in the words of Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China, ’son of a bitch must pay.’  But that’s not the movie I’ve been quoting – and the son of a bitch probably won’t pay.

Ooh, that’s no way to treat a friend.

Oh yeah, I still have 2 remaining harsh realities to get to…

#9. AT&T is no help. If you call AT&T and report your iPhone as stolen, they’ll disable your SIM card and your Mobile Me features will be disabled as well.  This is similar to the #4 Choose one above.  Because reporting it stolen might actually prevent you from remote locking it and all that.  The harsh reality here is that AT&T is not concerned with recovering your lost or stolen device.  They only care to prevent an unauthorized user from making or taking calls on your phone, and racking up a big phone bill.  Stick with the Mobile Me features because Remote lock takes care of preventing outbound calls, (but allows inbound calls), but still gives you time to try to track it.

Eventually you will need AT&T to activate another other phone anyway, which will deactivate the SIM card in your missing phone.  I waited as long as I could stand it to do this, and by the time I did Mobile Me had shown Location Not Available for over a day.  And without a charge, my battery would be long dead by now anyway.

I spoke with an AT&T rep and asked if there was any way to put the iPhone’s IMEI on a ’stolen’ list to prevent it from being re-activated by another person.  She basically told me that this can not be done and that my iPhone can be re-activated by anyone using a new SIM card.  She had a few other iPhone facts wrong, so I’d love to hear an official word from AT&T on this.

#10. Replacement cost is a full $699. I pre-ordered my 3GS from Apple and got it the day it was released.  That means that I’m not eligible for a new subsidized phone until Feb 2011.  But there is a trick to getting a new $299 iPhone today.  Since I’m already on a family plan, I can add a new line for $10 a month.  That new line is eligible for a subsidized phone if you sign a 2 year contract.  If you do all of this at an AT&T store they can make a switch-a-roo and activate your new iPhone on your current number and give you a cheap phone (or no phone) on the new number.  You’ll have to pay the $10 a month for 24 months, which is $240.  But $240 + $299 is only $539 – which is $160 less, and you get to pay it off slowly.  Still, I’m going to try to hold out as long as I can and wait to see what’s announced next year.  (we’ll see how long I last).

Can the maker repair what he makes

Even though (so far) Mobile Me has not helped me get my phone back, I do have some improvement suggestions that could aid theft recovery.  The detective who is working on my case kept asking for the most current tracking information, and a narrower circle.  If I could track it to an individual house, and show that it is currently there, he’d probably go knock on their door.  But realize that it took 3 or 4 days to even be able to discuss it with a detective.  And by the time I did I had already re-activated a new phone on my old number.

• The main suggestion is to have a way of tracking your iPhone from another iPhone.  That is a critical requirement to being able to react quickly.  It should be a core part of the maps app to see all of your other iPhones registered in Mobile Me.
• Mobile Me should assume that if you remote lock your phone, it’s maybe been stolen.  Either that or there should be a separate option to put the iPhone in an ‘I’ve been stolen’ state.  In this mode it could stealthy update it’s location every 15 minutes and Mobile Me could store the last 100 positions (a day’s worth of movement).  In fact, if triggered it could go into a low power mode where the phone pretends to be turned off, ignores the on/off button, keeps the screen black (except for the delivery of messages), and continuously reports it’s location to the system.
• Also when in a ‘theft recovery’ mode it should find a connection by any means possible.  I keep ‘ask to join networks’ turned off.  But once triggered, if that SIM card is removed it could look for any open wifi connections and send back it’s location
• Easy one – Instead of only sending you back an email saying “your phone is now locked,” it should send all kinds of data, including the remaining battery power, information about failed pass code attempts, time turned on or off, and most importantly it’s location information.  It’s crazy that currently you have to take screenshots to keep the location history.  But a data rich email would be very solid evidence.
• And it seems like Apple or AT&T could do IMEI tracking on stolen devices.  If the policy (or law) is that stolen devices can’t be reactivated, or that the original owner has the right to track and location their phone even after it’s been reactivated on a new phone number, I think it would seriously cut down on phone theft.

Let me tell you about my mother…

Well, this has been good therapy.  While I’d love to see the perp caught and the phone returned, in a larger world view it’s not that important.  At some point you have to (#1) accept and let it go.  I try to live my life not allowing my stuff to own me.  Those who don’t know me well might not believe it about me, because I do own a fair amount of stuff.  But it’s true that my philosophy is that I own things, things don’t own me.  It’s an important distinction.  Still, I’m supper bummed to have had it snatched away, and I’m not anxious to spend the larger part of a grand to replace it.  It was an avoidable mistake on my part and therefore regrettable.  And I was being very careful on this trip to keep an eye on our stuff.  But in the end I’m just glad that my DSLR wasn’t taken, or that someone wasn’t hurt.

One friend says that any problem that can be solved with money isn’t really a problem.  Someone with a poverty mentality might take that to mean that money isn’t a problem (to get). Or that only someone who has money would believe that because money comes easy.  But to me it means that problems that can be solved with money are petty and not important.  The important parts of life are people, relationships, health, and faith.  I can buy a new iPhone… or … -gasp- go without.

The main advice everyone gives is obviously to update to the latest version of wordpress and all your plugins, but once infected it’s too late for that plan to help.  Other tips are to of course use a strong password and to disable the default admin user account.  But first I had to remove the ‘back door’ admin user – which was giving the virus access to my site. Then I went through the 10 tips closing up vulnerabilities where possible.

One place where I almost hosed myself was that somewhere in the process I accidentally reduced my admin account’s privileges to that of a normal author, without first creating a new admin user.  After that blunder, logging back in as admin was impossible – so there was no way to create a new admin user.  Ultimately I had to hack back in to my own site (via the mysql database) and create a new user with admin capabilities.  Ahhhh, technology!