Yes to running to get to know a city

I couldn't agree more with Brad Feld on this one - running around a city is the best way to get to know it.   In fact, I make a point in every city I go to, new or not, to explore as many mornings as I can by taking a nice long run.  I'm an explorer in general when travelling, but running is of course a bit quicker, and I make mental notes of places to explore more later in the day.

Interestingly, I find that I can run almost twice the distance in a new city on a trip than I can at home.  The new sights, sounds, and smells somehow take away the boredom of running the same paths you've been on many times.   I actually am not much of a runner, but always run when I travel.

My favorite cities to run around have been Tokyo (which is totally safe, and even more interesting if you run at 6am when all the bars are closing and the streets are filled with drunk teens), Barcelona (which you can see a bunch of different districts in one run), London (which has some great parks to run through), and San Francisco (there's nothing like a run on the entire Embarcadero in the morning).

Chromebook just got infinitely better, and this is the future of Android

I've been using a Samsung Chromebook Series 5 500C for some time now, but to be honest, I was getting ready to sell it because I just couldn't get used to having only one browser open at time.  Especially with multiple Google accounts, it just didn't mirror how I work on my Mac with multiple Chrome profiles for every Google account I use.  Fifteen full page tabs just feels weird.

The newest release into the Chrome OS dev channel just changed all that.  It allows for multiple Browser windows to be overlapped, and includes a ribbon launcher on the bottom of the screen that makes this feel more like a computer.

To get the newest release, you go to the wrench, select "About Chrome OS", select "more info..." and choose "Dev - Unstable".  The next time your Chromebook looks for updates, it will download this version, which although it is called "Unstable" has been pretty stable for me.

This all got me thinking...this is probably one of the biggest reasons I don't take a tablet seriously for getting real work done.  That is, the multitasking presentation that exists today on iOS and Android just doesn't make sense for how my brain thinks about multitasking apps.  I need to see the multiple windows to remember they are there.

The closest I've seen to this being solved is Chrome on Android.  There's an affordance that's always there to tile the multiple windows, and it just works so much better than having to remember that button is down there to see the other programs that are running on Android.   And having to double button on iOS - I wonder how many people know that is there.   The simplicity of iOS doesn't work for me. My brain craves something more complex.

If Google can solve the multi-window problem in Android like they have in Chrome for Android, and merge that with Chrome OS, then I think they will actually have a powerful weapon against Apple.     When I can effectively use my Android phone as a Chomebook, then this starts to all make sense.

The Motorola Atrix kind of has a feature like this when you dock it, and although it looks pretty klunky now, perhaps this is one of the things that Google really bought from Motorola mobility, especially if they patented it.

I expect the next iteration of the Xoom tablet, to be a Google tablet, sold like they started selling the Galaxy Nexus yesterday.  I expect Chrome to be front and center on said tablet, to pave the way for the Chrome OS/Android merge, with this Moto docking technology coming in the background.

Chrome on Android is already so good, I definitely use it more than I use native apps on my Galaxy Nexus, so this doesn't seem like a stretch.

This post was written entirely on my Chomebook.

[n.b.:  this is all conjecture - I don't have any knowledge of this as a strategy from my time working at Google]

Breckenridge at Dawn

DSCN0826, originally uploaded by steveobd.

I've been playing a lot with HDR photography. Here's one from a recent trip to Breckenridge from the foot of Peak 8 at dawn.

30 Minutes was all I could take with a Windows Phone

Every six months or so, I get this urge to try a Windows Phone again, so today I took my SIM card out of my LG G2x and popped it in my htc HD7 to try it out again.  I was going to try to use it for a week, but  I couldn't use the phone for more than 30 minutes and I had to rip the SIM right back out.

It's got one thing going for it:  it's super snappy and fast.  Way faster than both Android and iOS.  And I love fast.  But otherwise, this is the worst user experience around.

One of the reasons I got the urge to try the phone again was that I needed to check something in my hotmail account, which I rarely use.   Even after logging out and logging back in with my Windows Live account, the phone continued to show me that I had no hotmail messages even though when I went to double check on the web, I clearly did.  You want apps that just work, and I got apps that just didn't work.

I went in to update the 10 or so applications I had installed, as the phone told me they were in need of update, but I got a "Windows Live service is down" - sorry.

The IMAP client to Gmail is just horrible.

Maybe this is the best experience around if you have an Exchange account, but I don't get it.

The "Metro" UI to me doesn't work because it wastes too much space.  I don't need title bars and fonts that take up 10% of the screen.   It works okay on the Xbox, but not so much on a phone.

I think a lot of this does have to do with perspective.  I saw this article by Danny Sullivan, who I respect and think knows what he is talking about, on how Android needs a better email client and it is amazingly the opposite of what I think.  

If you use Google apps or Gmail as your primary method for calendar and email management, there's nothing better than the Android interface, and actually the iOS mail client is terrible.   It doesn't bring the Gmail experience to iOS at all, but then again, I don't think Google's iOS Gmail client does either, as it doesn't support multiple accounts (last time I checked).

At any rate, I've seen the new Lumia phones, and although they are nice, I can't see myself ever using one of these phones.  

Where Microsoft is really getting hit hard: new developers

I've been talking to a lot of college engineering students these days, both through NUvention Web and also via other ties into Northwestern, and the one thing I've noticed is that Microsoft is a company that is totally absent from their periphery when it comes to programming enviroments and technologies.

When you give students a chance to build something, using Microsoft technologies isn't something that would ever even enter their mind.  First choices seem to be Ruby on Heroku or Python on Google App Engine.

It makes me think Microsoft is in a world of hurt from the developer standpoint.  Try finding a new college computer science major who wants to learn .NET technologies.  I haven't found one yet.  This seems to me to be a problem for the longevity of the company, as engaging developers is important.

This isn't a surprise to me, but I'm just recording it here as another data point.

It's all about thin

While cleaning out my basement last weekend, I found my first laptop.  It was a Thinkpad 750Cs with a passive matrix screen, and a 170MB hard drive, I believe.  Yes, that's MB.

I was working for Andersen Consulting at the time, and working 16-18 hour days on top of an hour and a  half commute, so working on the train was absolutely critical.  This could barely run the ParcPlace Smalltalk distribution we were developing our architecture on at the time, but it was still useful.

I haven't touched this machine in years, but besides it being really really heavy (I can't even find a google search that will reveal what it weighs) the first thing I noticed about it was that it has almost the exact same footprint as my 11" MacBook Air.

I've used smaller and bigger laptops, but I find this size is about right for what I need.  The utility of that dimension hasn't changed.   But the thinness is what has and makes the MacBook Air such a useful too, especially for travelling.   Apple really got this right.

I find it's the same thing with phones.  Thinner the better.   They can be a little bigger on the height and width, but the depth has to be as thin as possible.  That's probably why I'm enjoying the Galaxy Nexus right now.  Huge screen, great for email and reading books on the Kindle application, and thin enough to be unobtrusive in the pocket.

Sony and AdWords Remarketing Really Want me to Buy a Nex-5N

A few days ago I did a search for the "Sony Nex-5N" camera, and most likely clicked on the promoted (when ads move from the right column to the top, they are called "promoted") text ad that Sony is running on Google search.   This took me to Sony's site on the Sony NEX line, as expected.

I didn't buy the camera from them, but they sure want me to.   In fact, whenever I go to any site that has a block of Google AdSense text ads, there's an ad for the Nex-5.  Here's four examples from sites you probably recognize.

from PCMag

from LA Times

from Chicago Tribune

from CNET

Spooky?  no.   Is Sony reading my mind?  Invading my privacy?  no.

This is Google AdWords remarketing at work. And it's working beautifully.  It's like my own private reminder that I want to buy this camera as I browse the web all day long.  It's stuff like this that is making Google's Display business $5 Billion per year.  From the AdWords help:

Next, a small piece of code called a remarketing tag is embedded on your homepage, for example. This code tells AdWords to save visitors to your "Homepage List." When people visit your homepage, their cookie ID is added to the remarketing list. Once the remarketing tag is in place you can create an AdWords campaign that targets messages only to people on your "Homepage List" while they browse the Web. Your remarketing messages won't be shown to people who aren't on the list.
The remarketing tag can be embedded on any page within your website, not just the homepage, so you can develop more detailed audiences. For each remarketing list that you want to create, embed a different tag. If you want to create a "Homepage Visitor" list and a "Completed Conversion" list, you need two separate tags -- one to go on the homepage, and one to go on the conversion page. Learn more about remarketing and users' cookies.
There's a balance between creating very detailed and broader remarketing lists. While detailed lists allow you to further target your message, you'll get the most scale and volume with broader lists. Read more on strategies for your remarketing lists, and learn how to tailor your creatives to these lists.

I'll let you know how the camera is.