Well, I’m finally getting ready to go back to work tomorrow, after the holiday break. It’s been a whirlwind of travel, family, friends, get-togethers, etc…including the inevitable after-Christmas shopping. I really am at the point now where I have too much stuff, and one of my goals in 2009 is to trim down, ala Bruce Sterling’s suggestions in The Last Viridian Note. However, as weird as it may seem, many people simply refuse I don’t need anything as an answer when asking for gift suggestions. Even donate to a charity in my name doesn’t work much either (we did have one of those, which was awesome and much appreciated!).

So my fallback is gift cards, especially for general stores like Target or (even better!) Amazon. Companies have worked hard to remove the stigma of just buying a gift certificate, and now I can get things that I know I want, when I want them. With places like Amazon and Target in the mix (vs. a game store, mall shop, or something like that), I can even buy general household purchases. I make MANY purchases via Amazon during the year, and I can choose to use these gift cards for such mundane (but again, appreciated) purchases as coffee! Big win.

So back to the sales. We still end up with some store gift cards, and the after-Christmas sales are kind of a tradition for us to try and get some good buys with them. This year, I tried to use the trips as a barometer of consumerism, in light of the recession, continued economic crisis, and general worry over employment, housing, and bills that is going around.

So…I have data, but I don’t know how to interpret it. *grin* The malls were completely crazy this weekend, and when I was out running on both Saturday and Sunday, the traffic was much busier on main thoroughfares (which lead into local shopping areas) than I normally see at these times of the day/week. It appeared people were buying, but most people didn’t seem to happy about it; almost chore-like. In addition, there isn’t much good info from the holiday sales numbers that I see, and the aggressive sales that businesses have been pushed into can result in deflation if prices are driven TOO low, and employment, salaries, future inventory, etc. have to be cut. I don’t know how the post-holiday store layoffs of seasonal employees is going to impact things, but it can’t be good.

So I guess it’s wait and see, but the local (and subjective) confidence numbers are something I want to trend for a bit. I’m calling it 5 out of 10 right now; we’ll see how it goes.

Sheesh…time flies. It’s already almost January 3rd, and I’ve not posted to my own blog since December 18th! And I’m actually very interested in getting my thoughts down more consistently and in a more organized fashion this year. All too often, I either never manage to develop a thought into any sort of post at all, or at best, dump a micropost style message out (via Friendfeed or identi.ca). Or if it’s too long for those, it often ends up in a comment thread elsewhere. Which I certainly don’t mind doing, but I need to make sure I bring stuff back home as well!

I’m definitely going to be playing around with the lifebits concept this year, using varying services but syndicating the content through my personal namespace (kenzoid.com). I look forward to letting some ideas that have been knocking around in my head out; who knows what might work out? *grin*

Happy New Year, all!

I’m not good at moderation. It took me until about the age of 30 to really internalize that lesson, but since I have, I’ve been a happier person. Nothing earth-shatteringly different with my life, but I tend to be a little better focused.

Except when I’m not, of course. *grin* I’m not a hugely obsessive gamer, but I’ve had my share: Doom (back on the Atari Jaguar!), Warcraft (the original RTS), SimCity (long ago), Second Life (for awhile, years back), Team Fortress (both Classic and 2), WoW (for a while in the beginning), etc. And I have to admit, Fallout 3 has the potential to do that; I’m really digging it. To the point that it’s affecting my other hobbies, including a coding project that I’m working on for the Android platform. I simply can’t dig in for the deep dive that I need to push this project into high gear while I have Fallout in the back of my head, calling me…

So I decided about a week ago that I’m going to give up gaming cold turkey for awhile. I’ve learned it’s the best and easiest way for me to focus properly. So for now, no gaming until the end of January, or my Android project is done (v.1 at least), whichever comes first. Luckily, I enjoy coding as much as I do gaming, so this is less a hardship than a choice of hobby time allotment. Wish me luck!

OK, so I just finished Anathem last night, and it was a marvelous read. Really. I rattled off some mid-book thoughts a few days ago, but I’ll be writing up a more extensive review soon. One of the best books I read this year, definitely.

I love books with background material available, and of course Anathem has a bunch at Neal Stephenson’s site. Nif-ty. I especially love books with their own wikis (like Accelerando and The Wealth of Networks), but any sort of useful online addendum makes me feel warm and tingly inside. Thanks, Neal. (though he appears to have some uptime issues…irk. I hope the widget caches.)

I enjoy listening to Stephenson’s voice, and I like Anathem quotes, so the video widget (also below) was a no-brainer! Check it out; as an example, the ‘Bulshytt’ definition rules, and definitely gives the flavor of the work.

OK, it’s only been a few days, but I’m already happy enough to call the new Google Tasks addition a win. Sure, it needs tweaks, and integration with other tools, and a API, and coordination with my G1, yada yada. But for now, it works, it’s simple but gets the job done, and I’m already logged into Gmail so it’s right there. And with the I Want Sandy fiasco, I was in need of a todo tool reboot anyway, so the timing was perfect.

Thanks, Google!! It looks like the gBorgification of Ken will continue…*grin*

I’m with my buddy Dave Slusher on this one…Twitter has bought Values of n, primarily to get Rael Dornfest it seems. I say that because, with him in pocket, they decide there’s no need to keep the enormously cool and useful Values of n site I Want Sandy running. So it’s being shut down in two weeks. Dave’s not happy; neither am I.

That’s enough. Bite me, Twitter. I started pushing updates through to you again when Friendfeed made it easy, primarily because I get googlejuice for kenzoid from my twitterURL, but also just to be a good netizen. But it’s not worth it to me anymore; shutting down I Want Sandy just because you don’t care about it is the last straw. I’m part of your network effect, but I’m not going to participate anymore. My tweet linking to this post is my final shot.

You may not miss me, of course…but I’m ferdamnsure not going to miss you. I’ll feel better knowing I’m not enabling you. Later, tweets…it’ll be nice when you all get a clue and move on; to FriendFeed, to identi.ca, or wherever. If you do, look me up!

As I continue to explore the potential of my G1 googlephone things continue to surprise me, which I like. In particular, I’d been chomping at the bit for some of the first podcatcher apps to come out; I listen to a lot of podcasts. Unfortunately, the apps haven’t hit the sweet spot, though it’s not entirely their own fault. The Android music app doesn’t presently separate MP3s in any way, so files downloaded to the SD storage by a podcatcher automatically show up in the music player. That’s cool if that’s mainly what you use it for…but I had several hundred meg of music favorites on there as well. And well, a random playlist that goes from The Psychedelic Furs to The Police to Cassettes Won’t Listen…to the Democracy Now podcast just doesn’t quite do it for me. As much as I like Amy Goodman, sometimes I don’t want to concentrate on current events, I just want to relax to music. *grin* So until I have the ability to section off podcasts (via genre, or directory on the card, or SOMETHING), mixing music and podcasts on the local storage isn’t working out.

I’m trying another tack, however. I’ve removed the music from the G1, and I’ve got only podcasts on there for now. I can still listen to music, though, thanks to the imeem mobile client. It knows enough about my favorites and preferences to give me a nice personalized stream of music, and the buffer is sufficient to take me through pretty much any deadspot, even though I only use 2G (easier on the battery), and I take MARTA to and from work, which puts me in subway tunnels part of the time. Nice! Of course, I have been using Pandora and last.fm much longer than imeem, so I’m hoping they release Android clients in the future; I expect they may give me even better recommendations. But in the meantime, imeem works great, and allows me to try out podcast listening on the G1 w/o media library confusion. FTW!

It also gives me a hint as to where this all may be leading. I was really surprised that 2G streaming was sufficient for a nice audio music stream. (disclaimer: I’m no audiophile; I have no idea what the fidelity is. Good enough for me, though). That gives a lot of options for connecting people to the jukebox in the sky: 2G, 3G, wifi, wimax, and whatever’s next; and as connectivity and coverage continues to improve, it’ll only get better.

I used to see that model as unneeded for media, since storage seems to outpace everything; with an 80GB iPod, who needs a tether to the cloud, after all? But if we can figure out a reasonable payment model for a celestial jukebox (and I definitely consider free as an option here), you can use local storage for a massive cache of your absolute favorites, AND always have the latest and greatest stuff available at literally a moment’s notice; no desktop sync required. I like exploring this concept, and I now think there is indeed something to this, especially once you consider adding video, etc.: imagine streaming new episodes of your favorite shows (from Primeval to The Guild, saving what you want to share or rewatch, and releasing the rest back to your online DVR!

And to think, old-school media thought that Tivos and satellite radio were disruptive….*grin*. The creators that internalize these changes soonest have a bright future ahead. For starters, I need an MP3tunes Android client, and soon!

So…I bought an Android G1 a few weeks back; in fact, on opening day (though I didn’t go completely crazy and pre-order. *grin*). I’ve been interested in the phone-as-computing-device/portable-always-on-computer paradigm for a long time; I had a Newton, the original Palm, several of the Linux Palm-wannabes (that weren’t), and a Nokia 770. The notion of welding one of those onto the side of my cell phone has always been very attractive.

Of course, the iPhone has dominated that exact space for 18 months now…but I don’t have one, and never had much hankering for one. I’m not an Apple junkie, and I never swallowed the iTunes pill; all my MP3 players (and I’ve had many) are non-iPods, and I only used iTMS for a little while when it was both a) the easiest way to get “regular” music legally, and b) was easily crackable (via Hymn, back in the day). Don’t need it now…Amie St. and Amazon handle my music purchasing just fine. And I guess I’m a bit of a elitist contrarian when it comes to tech…if The Masses are digging it, I tend to run the other way and look for something with a command line interface. Not necessarily the smartest thing all the time, but it is what it is. At least I understand myself. *grin*

With the iPhone out of play, I started getting a little excited when I first heard about Google’s Android platform. A F/OSS phone platform, with real backing…sweet! I’d been considering the Openmoko phone for perhaps 6 months at that point, but I had a sneaking suspicion that I was getting ready to buy another ill-supported, semi-functional uber-nerd device. This time, I really wanted something that supported a thriving ecosystem, but with F/OSS secret sauce. Android looked promising.

I waited, and I planned. I read spec sheets and Engadget rumors; all seemed mostly well. I d/l’d the SDK when it came out, and though I didn’t submit to the first app contest, I was able to confirm that the platform would be something I could cleanly and easily write code for; satisfying another of my nerd requirements. The mostly open Android Market (not to mention the 3rd party market ecosystem) again soothed my libertarian urges better than Apple’s tightly controlled App Store. It started coming together.

So October 22nd came, and all my requirements for myself had been satisfied. The financial meltdown didn’t fill me with enthusiasm for signing my own cell phone contract (I’ve had a phone for many years, but it’s always been paid for by my work, since I’m an oncall-type support person [database administrator] ). But T-Mobile’s plan wasn’t too bad, and my friends and family had recently had started (mostly productive) SMS use, which wasn’t included in my work phone plan; so I needed to deal with that anyway. In addition, I hope to do some minor app coding, which could eventually pay for itself…so there’s that. Besides, I went in, talked to the very nice lady, saw the phone, and…it spoke to me. Really much like the Newton, so long ago, spoke to me. And I signed.

And I’m totally digging it.

Like I said, it’s been a few weeks now, and I thought I’d drop my two cents. I have no desire to give a feature-by-feature breakdown and comparison of the phone; I’m sure Gizmodo and Engadget have links to that. And for personal reviews, I’ve read the ones that fell out of my subscribed RSS feeds, and found them all worth reading: Jamais Cascio, Christopher Blizzard, esr, and my RL buddy Mischa. So I’m not feeling the need to tread that ground again. But everyone has their own personal twist on what they think, and I’m happy to discuss the specifics of what the phone has meant and done for me. Maybe one or two people might even find it useful. *grin*

Note: I realize that much of this is not G1-specific, and that’s for the most part intentional. I’m really not here to chest-bump Apple fanboy vs. Google/T-Mobile fanboy…this is more about what a new gizmo has done for me personally, and also the emerging ecosystem of nextgen smartphones. So while I can’t stop you from commenting with the iPhone done that for a year, suck it, I’m honestly not trying to play in that pool.

First off, it’s been of tremendous benefit to me with respect to managing towards Inbox Zero. Let me say that another way: before G1, not so much. Now…inbox zeeero. Snap! I have a gmail account, but I initially intended to use the onboard IMAP client and continue keep my gmail and regular (kkennedy@kenzoid.com) accounts separate. Configuration issues, UI challenges (managing IMAP folders, for example; yuck), and missing functionality (notably lack of push notification) finally led me to drinking the kool-aid and forwarding my regular email into the Googleplex. Zoinks!

I have issues with this, but sweet juicy peaches, the email productivity boost has been enormous! And honestly, occasionally one just needs a shakeup. I’ve been a IMAP mutt mail client user for a LONG time…at least 7 years. Yep…a text only email client. In 2008. Which definitely has advantages, but also it’s share of weaknesses. One of the biggest is that it’s been SO easy to ignore annoying junk, like mailing lists that I’ve been on forever, no longer read, but never bothered to remove myself from, that I…well, never bothered to remove myself from them. And while it’s easy to ignore such cruft with a text only client, they’re even easier to ignore if you unsubscribe.

Marry that with push notification, some judicious tagging and REALLY good spam filtering (I use bogofilter on my own box, which is good; but Google is better), and suddenly, my Inbox has gone from 15-40 messages hanging around most of the time to zero. Boom. Me likey. I like it when I get shaken up, when my years-old habits get dragged out into the sunlight, shaken out, and given a once-over for mites and moth holes. Keeps the old brain flexible. So even with some misgivings, I’m sticking w/ gmail as my primary email point for awhile (note to contacts: this doesn’t require a change for you in any way. Keep using kkennedy@kenzoid.com as best and primary contact address; I do the tweaking behind the scenes).

Next: glory be, mobile browsers are now all grown up! Both the iPhone and the G1 have a for-real, non-crippled, modern browser (albeit still w/o Flash support…ick), and it ROCKS. I’ve browsed the web from mobile devices for years, with a Nokia 770, with blackberry browsers, even with WAP from a bar phone. It can be handy (in a pinch) but it’s seldom a preferred, or even really a usable, option. It’s just what you’re stuck with.

On my G1, though, it’s quite nice. Both the G1 and the iPhone use a webkit-based browser: modern, supports AJAX and other Web 2.0 jazziness, and even with EDGE the speed is acceptable (IMO). This means that, for example, I haven’t even looked for an Android Google Reader app…I point at the mobile interface for GReader, and It Just Works. The AJAX interface elements (starring, sharing, etc.) are completely usable, and the page layout is fine for me (I’m in luck, my eyes haven’t gone. YMMV, as the font is pretty teensy). I haven’t tried too many other apps, but I expect the experience to be similar, and I thank the iPhone for leading the way here. Many sites have optimized mobile pages for the iPhone, and those work well with the G1 in my experience.

I really find there to be little need for an separate application in many cases…if a service doesn’t need access to the phone hardware directly (GPS, for example), and is primarily an online tool (as they often are), the mobile experience is great as a webapp. Joy!

On the want to have front: the G1 shows me the potential of bluetooth stereo. Doesn’t have it, but I can now see how it would completely rock. In fact, I’m probably most disappointed with the G1 on the media front; it uses this crazy all-in-one audio enhanced usb interface, so the damn thing doesn’t have a headphone jack! (Thanks for nothing, HTC!) It all goes through usb, which means non-standard (and so far suckass) headphones, or wacky (and so far suckass) adaptors. It’s a pain.

In the meantime, I’ve seen bluetooth audio start to get support on other devices, but until now, I haven’t quite grokked it. The cable just hasn’t been that big a deal. But boy, bluetooth audio would freaking rock on this thing…I hope and expect my G2 (or whatever they call it) to support it. And now that I wear the little blinking headbud frequently myself, I do see how no-wires, but music anyway would be pretty sweet. Brings a new level to your own personal soundtrack.

Aside: it’d be super jazzy if a future Android update allows non-phone audio to be pushed to my existing bluetooth headset. I know the quality is bad (I’ve tested it with a bt audio connection to a desktop), but for spoken word podcasts it’d be fine. I wouldn’t want to listen to music at that quality, but half the podcasts I listen to are phone interviews ANYWAY…the audio doesn’t get much better, period. So that’d be a great little bonus to toss our way, Google! (I realize that it MIGHT be a hardware limitation with the chipset being used, but my fingers are crossed that it’s not the case.)

Finally, my big reveal…this li’l guy has confirmed for me that smartphones have finally come of age. *grin* (wow, call me prescient, eh?)

As noted earlier, I definitely do the gadget thing, but I tend to wander about on the fringes…sometimes ahead of my time, but often just out in the wilderness. But it’s been apparent to me for some time now that the iPhone has exposed a huge number of regular folks to the promise of these powerful, always connected devices. Much like the iPod was hardly the first MP3 player, yet provided the breakout to popular culture, the iPhone has done the same in the smartphone space. All the platforms (that survive) will benefit from this rising tide, and a great wave of application innovation has already begun. (witness the Pandora and Last.fm apps, Stanza, a plethora of innovative games, etc.) We will of course have a certain amount of fracturing via platform (when will so-and-so be available for Android?), but the positives far outweigh the negatives. What’s clear is that the smartphone’s day has come, and Android will benefit as well as Apple. I honestly believe this platform will make an impact.

So that’s my first braindump re: Android and my G1. I’m really enjoying it, and have started coding on my first apps already. Glad I bought it, and looking forward to continuing to experiment. I’m sure I’ll have more to say soon!

So, I’ve been gBorgified.

Voting went well today. I got up early to try and be in line when the site opened, but I actually ended up running a little late, and got there about 7:15am. It was pretty impressive; there was quite a line:

This is FAR longer than any line I’ve been in since I’ve been voting at this polling place (that’s only about half of the line outside the building; it continues around to the left out of sight). Outstanding!! Regardless of your choice/party affiliation, at least people are engaging.

It was about 2 hours, 10 minutes total for me from the time I got into the back of the line until I was finished and out the door of the polling place. There were no major problems at our site; we had about 10 voting stations, and they all appeared to be in working order. Once things got up and running after opening, the line seemed to move pretty smoothly. I saw at least one person that was required to vote provisionally; I think it was an ID issue (no drama, however…he just filled out the paperwork).

All in all, I’m glad I got things taken care of first thing this morning; I expect the lines this evening might be pretty intense. I’ll go home, go for a run, make some popcorn, watch some movies (including You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown *grin*), and tune into CNN later in the evening for the wild conclusion. Looking forward to it!