The Blog of an African NERD

LaDainian Tomlinson and Troy Polamalu Nike ad

Am really loving this ad. However it is what happened after watching the ad that bugged me out a bit. I knew I had heard the music from somewhere, which immediately brought be back to the song “Blueprint 2” by Jay-Z. I was quite curious who the original composer was as it was apparent this was a sampled beat, which lead me to Wikipedia, which then led me to Amazon.com mp3 store to purchase the original composition among others. All this within 5 mins after the commercial was played, synced to the iPhone and ready for listening while cruising down the highway. It is really amazing how everything thing is coming together in the digital age.

An interesting iPhone comparison

Microsoft's am a pc ad campaign

Glad to see Microsoft finally responding. I hope its not too late.

Treo 800w's awesome today screen

You mean to tell me that these 3 search fields can’t be consolidated into one smart search field like this or is Palm being bamboozled and forced to have the live search on the home screen?  This whole thing is getting so stupid. HTC, stuck with the same archaic Windows Mobile has been able to create touch flow 3D and this is what Palm has come up with? It’s just painfull watching all this nonsense as a stock holder.  I hope the Matias Duarte dude will fix this foolishness.

5 Tips for MacBook Air users

While the iPhone gets all the glory, the coolest thing from Cupertino is the MacBook Air. I can’t tell you how many times I have been stopped at the airport or café because of this laptop. With all the coolness, there are flaws and annoyances to over come. Here are some tips I came up with for those of you planning the unusual of running Vista on the MacBook Air

1.Get Back Some Space
The max hard drive space on the MacBook Air is a pathetic 80 gigs. Thus if you plan on running Vista with Boot Camp, it is just not enough particularly if you have a sizeable media library. So what you need to do when you first get your MacBook Air is uninstall as many apps on the Mac OS along with their accompanying files. Uninstalling apps like the iLife suite along with all the iDVD and Garageband templates will save you a ton of space you will need when its time to set your partition size.

2.There is a reason it is not called a laptop anymore
Forget putting this thing on your lap. It heats up so much, It will burn you in minutes. So consider getting a table like this. Now what if you are on the go? The Targus Laptop Portable LapDesk is a perfect solution. It comfortably sits on your lap and will dissipate all the heat and more importantly, it allows you to use a mouse

3.USB blues
Worried about the one usb port?  You can get a usb hub like this  when ever you need to connect multiple peripherals to your MacBook Air.

4.Back Lit keyboard blues
Keyboard illumination or Back lighting on the MacBook Air sometimes does not work on Vista. So do the following: Place both of your hands across the top of the screen as shown here to force it on. Note, you might have to keep your hold across the top a shown in the image for a few seconds even after it turns on.

5.Leopardish U.I.

If you love the Leopard desktop look and feel, you can pretty much duplicate it on Vista
by simply downloading the Leopard wallpaper here. Then to get a dock like the Leopard, you can get ObjectDock for Windows by Stardock.

Marketing of Vista

Even with all its flaws, I have come to love Vista. As a power user, I really like the new search features among many other things. However, what puzzles me these days is Microsoft’s marketing of Vista.
Every day, Vista is getting ridiculed by Apple with their “Am a mac, am a pc” ads. Soon enough, this constant bombardment of ridicule will begin to takes it toll. What’s even weirder is Microsoft’s response, which appears to be next to nothing. You get the feeling that the thought process in Redmond is this:

“Who cares, okay you say Vista sucks, but you will get it weather you like it or not”

Anytime Steve Jobs talks about the Mac OS, you hear words like “it’s the most amazing thing we have ever done”, “it is light years ahead of anything out there”.  You just don’t see or hear that from Microsoft executives. I mean, where is the passion that you believe your product kicks butt? You would think by now there will be a massive campaign by Microsoft to calm down all the bad Vista energy.

Even though there is a lot that is bad with vista, the grass is really not that greener on the Mac side either .There is a good reason why there have been 3 updates to Leopard. That’s because it has its flaws too, and they are plenty. I run a mac now to test iPhone apps and I have already been acquainted a few times to the Ctrl + alt + del of the Mac to essentially  “Force Quit” . With perception being reality and Apple continuing with the constant bombardment of Vista, the long term consequences can be damming to future releases of Windows.

I found it in the iTunes Store, but bought it on AmazonMP3

I think its time for Apple to give up on DRM. Its pointless and sending customers to other music stores.

Flash 10 has me excited

If I recall well, Flash 6 was when video in Flash was introduced. We in the Flash community knew that online video would never be the same.  It took a few versions after Flash 6 to really get video where is should be and the results have been nothing less than spectacular. I don’t think people realize just how impactful flash video has been. Think about it; when last have you visited a relevant site ( except knuckle headed Apple)  that used Windows Media Player or Real Player to play video? Just as Flash 6 ushered in a new era of video, I think Flash 10 will do the same for 3D. As I said a while back, 3D is the next frontier for Flash and it looks like the folks at Adobe are on to this now. It may take a few versions, say by Flash 12 to really see the potential of Flash in 3D but am really glad they got things started.

Who is going to buy Palm’s next SmartPhone?

Jon Rubenstein is supposed to work magic at Palm, bringing along with him some ex-Apple employees and having us all excited about the rebirth of Palm. But has anyone asked the simple question: Who on this planet is going to buy whatever they come up with in 2009? Lets take a look at potential customers.

Corporate/Enterprise Customers
No secret hear, only a minuscule amount of companies deploy Treos for their employees and Blackberry is now the standard.

Current New Treo Users
You know, not to long ago, the Treo was a hot name and lead to many new users. Even Jack Bauer was using it. Heck, I got at least 7 of my friends and company investors to get Treos. That was the good news. Here is the sad news. They are all now migrating to Blackberries and iPhones.

Wooohooo, we already have 1 million new Centro Users!!!!
Well maybe there is hope here, but at the measly price of $99, am not sure if Palm is getting the kind of customers that will upgrade to the upcoming high end Palm Smartphone coming out in 2009, particularly if those folks down the highway at Cupertino keep evolving the iPhone and even build a nano like iPhone before then.

Diehards
There is a smaller( and getting smaller) group called the diehards. If you are still a Palm diehard like me, you either deserve a standing ovation for tolerating all the crap Palm has been feeding us these past 4 -5 years or you are just too dumb to see the light.
I was forced to use the iPhone because it was a business opportunity for my company, but even with all it's glamour, my 755p has never left my side, probably due to the keyboard and key third party apps like ( pdanet, treomemo, etc)
But even diehards like me have gotten wary, particularly since it just feels like Palm has been treating us like..( only if i could say exactly the word)..Simple things like releasing an OS Update, they totally screwed it up. Apple has released 5 updates to the iPhone in less than a year while our friends at Sunnyvale can’t even fix fundamental flaws in the Palm OS and it’s not like we are asking for new features.
Even worse, The Treo online forums in the early to mid 2000s was filled with passionate users and developers voicing and sharing super amazing ideas that could have revolutionized the Treo line up. Heck, if Ed Colligan had just read a few TreoCentral forums back then, he would have figured out that a multimedia Treo should have been built. Something we were screaming for. Now due to the colossal miscalculation by Palm Executives, the whole company is on the brink of fading away. This ain’t funny men, I own a good amount of Palm Stock.
In all, am a diehard, so I must root for Palm, but then again, I ain’t stupid and am really wondering if its time to dump all my Palm Stock cause this supposed Rubenstein miracle might be too little to late.

In summary, forget all the analysis, there are just no good vibes coming from Palm. Nothing seems right. Even Product code names like zeppelin( treo 800w ) depict catastrophic future failure . How can you code name your product after something that was bogusly big and slow when the current trend is all about being super fast and super sleek. I mean, are these people thinking backwards??? If they can’t even get the product code name right, how can they even build something credible?

In a common sense world, the next iPhone should be a QWERTY Smartphone

Common sense dictates that the upcoming iPhone should be a QWERTY Smartphone with an actual physical keyboard. In my opinion, the current iPhone virtual keyboard borders between a complete bust to manageable, depending on how much time you are willing to give to adjust to it. As a Treo user, even though I have adjusted quite well to the virtual keyboard, by and large it still is a pain and I don’t think current enterprise smartphone users will have the time and patience to get used to Apple’s virtual keyboard.
After all, there is a reason they call them “Crack”Berry. Have you ever seen a BlackBerry user typing rapidly to respond to an email just before a plane takes off? Try that as a relatively new iPhone user and you end flinging the damn iPhone in frustration. Enterprise users don’t care about the razzle dazzle interfaces of the iPhone. They need to get their work done fast and the iPhone virtual keyboard is just a huge hindrance. The auto completion feature that is supposed to make up for the typing inaccuracy sucks half the time.  In fact, the main reason I still keep my Treo apart from key 3rd party apps is because of the physical keyboard.
I find it hilarious how Apple executive Phil Schiller threw in his enterprise presentation
“for those of you that don’t know, typing on the iPhone is awwwwwesome”  When in reality, half the time, typing on this thing stinks( my opinion )

While Apple’s new enterprise features look impressive, they run a high risk of totally flopping because of the lack of a physical keyboard. Plus, with all the recent defections of a few former Apple executives and employees to Palm, you would think Apple has blood in their eyes and are just chomping at the bits to bury Palm for ever( If I were Ed Colligan, I’d be scared to death at this prospect). All these lead to a super thin Apple signature designed qwerty smartphone.
Now of course, we are dealing with hard headed Apple here with more than enough arrogance to think they can shove a virtual keyboard down the throats of enterprise users.