Digital Cookies

Try and Buy… Why I went to Android and keep on using bittorrents

moombe — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:05:03 +0000

There is one thing that I dislike when shopping : no being able to try out before taking a decision. Nowadays, whenever you buy a car you will test drive it. If you buy a house you visit it first. You buy new food, usually you buy it because you have tasted it some places. And it is all but normal. Surprisingly, when you get into electronic devices, manufacturers don’t want you to test, at least here in Europe. You can see handsets & smartphones in shops, but in 95% of the cases you can’t turn them on or test drive them for a day. You need to “trust” the seller.

Buying software should be the same thing : trying before buying. Usually when on a desktop or laptop system, you have shareware versions or full software programs that you can test drive (for 1 month, for 1 day, for xx unit processing). But for a mobile device such as the iPod Touch or iPhone, this is not possible. You have to “trust” the marketing description and “trust” the buzz. And what I found out, is that most of the softwares I had acquired for my iPhone I just did not use. So at the end, what did I do : I sold my iPhone 3GS and went for a Nexus One, because what is great with Android is that you can test drive any paid application. No need for try & buy special versions, no need for developers to maintain 2 versions of their software : you just buy the application and if within 3 days you don’t like it, you just return it and you get reimbursed. As a result, I just use all of the applications I have on my Nexus One.

In a way, bittorrent is for me like the Android Market, but for media (music, video). When I like what I’ve downloaded and, for a music album for instance, will listen to it more than 2 times, then I’ll go out and buy it (or buy it on an e-platform) or I’ll buy a concert ticket next time the band does a gig in towns around it. And if I don’t like the album, I delete it. Sorry Apple and Amazon, but being able to listen for 30 seconds only of a track before buying it is not enough. Remember when we had not electronic media, we went in record shops and could spend hours in it listening carefully to full tracks before deciding to buy.

I still want to have that freedom to take time before taking a decision to buy. I think the media industry should understand this and stop being so protective. By doing so, just just throw us all in the “pirate & hacker” pool. Some, however, do understand this. Thanks Google.

Sorry Mr Schmidt, you’re rude

moombe — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:01:27 +0000

This morning I turned 39. Many mails and other signs from friends and family, and also many “happy birthday” mails from all kind of platforms around the world : user forums I had subscribed too (some of which I didn’t even remember, so actually specifying your birthday when registering to a forum is a great way to remember it months or years later), blogs, web 2.0 platforms of every color and taste. But, in that forest of wishes, there is one party that is missing : Google.

And I just can’t believe it. I mean, I live everyday with your company, Mr Schmidt. I use heavily Google Calendar, Google Mail, Google Maps, Google Earth, Android (on my Nexus One and Archos 5 IT), Chrome, Picasa, … Every moment of my online flow of activities is captured by one or another of your bots and other services. You know part of my life, in some ways. And that consumer commitment from my side could at least be granted by some recognition, like a simple “Happy Birthday”. But no.

So, Mr Schmidt, before you continue stating that Google is a company that doesn’t do evil… Think twice about all those users you have left crying in sad grey rainy mornings… And in the morning, I’m sorry to say you’re rude and impolite.

Augmented Reality puzzle pieces

moombe — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:08:45 +0000

It’s been a couple of months since I read a lot about Augmented Reality. Owning an Android device (HTC Dream) and an iPhone 3GS, I was at first really amazed by the “first” mobile AR applications such as Wikitude or later player Layar. Past the “wow” factor, I have to admit these applications are in fact barely useful in every day life. First of all because of the inaccuracy of the location as GPS are not accurate enough (so would need absolutely near field image recognition, more on this later) but also because holding a device looking like a brick (whether an Android smartphone or an iPhone) in front of you is just… not feeling natural.

So months ago I came across these Vuzix WRAP 920 video glasses, which were said to offer see-thru capability. Now THAT is interesting for mobile AR : couple such glasses to your iPhone (or other smartphone providing video output – unfortunately not on Android’s side of the moment) and you can directly overlay information layers on top of a real world vision, and not a low res low reactivity cam. OK, these WRAP 920 will not finally provide see-thu capabilities as Vuzix lately corrected, but this is only a delay as they stated they should be able to sell such in 2010 or so.

OK, so we have good mobile smartphones and will have even better once they start using these Snapdragon/Zii Cell/Tegra processors. We will have soon enough affordable see-thu glasses. And we have companies such as Metaio or Total Immersion with promises to deliver “unbelievable” AR mobile applications – and by looking at some videos and demos of these 2 compagnies I’m very much tempted to believe them.

BUT, I have one question… If my smartphone is in my pocket and I’m wearing these see-thru glasses, how do I operate my smartphone ? How do I know where I need to click or drag or interact with the AR content, taking into account these smartphones try to mock the iPhone by having the least possible hardware buttons ? So I started to think about a kind of little wireless/bluetooth controller that would integrate accelerometers, trackball and buttons and which would be small enough to rest easily in my hand. And then I came into THIS post on Engadget : a nice little Bluetooth motion sensor “including a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis gyroscope, GPS, and dedicated microSD card slot — not to mention some built-in Bluetooth to let you use it with a variety of phones and other devices.” Well, I think this is it : the missing controller piece !

Now there are only a few things to say :

Vuzix : hurry up, we’re waiting !
HTC : integrate Snapdragon/Zii Cell or Tegra on your next Android devices + include video-out
Apple : stop being so stubborn about your iPhone OS SDK… Listen to AR programmers and free the needed APIs !
Sensaris : go to ISMAR09 and show yourself. OK, too late for ISMAR09, but I think you should try to make yourself known in the AR world, you have an opportunity here…