WATCHING:
March of the Penguins
Luc Jacquet, director

Well done, but – given all the buzz about this movie – a disappointment.

My review: A really, really well done National Geographic-type special, about an animal I knew little about, filmed extremely well under what must have been brutal conditions.

But that’s it. I borrowed the DVD; I doubt I’ll ever watch it again.

Maybe all my Disovery/History channel watching has tainted me…

All movies

Over at ongoing, Tim Bray has a good (high-level) review of Robert Scoble’s (and Shel Israel’s) new book, Naked Conversations.

Bray’s review is good (and the first I’ve read so far), but it brought up the related and non-related impressions with me. Most have little to do with the book, so bear with me, I’m just venting/spouting:

• Scoble’s book (Israel is essentially his editor/translator, and I’ve no problem with that) is about business blogging, about how it can help businesses. Bullshit.
• Blogs – like RSS, SuperBowl ads and so on – are solutions in search of a problem. I’ve already seen enough of the rise of both splogs (spam blogs), spam comments on blogs and ads in RSS feeds to realise that those businesses, uh, leveraging these tools are not leveraging: They are obfuscating and removing value from same. Yes, blogs can have a very positive impact on businesses – both Scoble’s and Bray’s help their associated companies (Microsoft and Sun, respectively) in very positive ways – but that does NOT mean every business should have one. Sometimes you need a Yellow Pages’ ad; sometimes you don’t. Yellow Pages are a powerful tool, but not for everyone. Sometimes you need a billboard/TV ad/etc; sometimes you don’t. Ditto for business blogs. (Full disclosure: I’ve always been a fan of telling every business to get a domain name and have – at least – a one-page site with some contact info/company info. Low cost, reserves your company name for future expansion, what’s the harm?)
• Splogs are a real problem, especially until search engines can figure them out and rank accordingly. Both Bray and – especially – Scoble are not afraid to be honest about their respective companies and ding them when needed, and that’s good for tech companies. For makers of baking equipment, or Payless Shoe Stores (etc), I dunno. (And that’s just because I don’t know…you know?)
• RSS: If you have something to list, hell, get it out there. RSS is opt-in, so that’s powerful from a user point of view (makes marketing cringe, agreed). And if no one links to the feed, well, you lost the time creating the feed, but…you’ve also learned something. So that’s something. But DON’T expect it to be the silver bullet to solve all your company’s ills. It’s just another tool.
• The problem with business blogs is the same as with (many business) web sites: Once corporate reads a WSJ article about it, there’s this rush to develop same and for the first couple of months the site/blog is updated and then…isn’t. Stale content is worse than no content in some ways, especially with blogs. And I’ve seen the stale-content-syndrome over and over on a first-hand basis dozens of times. Honest. Intranet/extranet/Web site/blog/newsletter and so on: The focus so-often seems to switch to something else.

While I totally agree with Scoble that blogs can help some businesses, it all goes back to the Abraham Maslow quotation:

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Ever notice how lots of average folks like/love Google Maps, but there isn’t a lot of talk of “monetizing” them?

Little (if any) smaps (spam maps; my term)?

Yet the integration of Google Maps, as well as Wikipedia, as quietly continued, is producing value for the end users as well a site owner and – for the most part – had not been subverted(the false entries; self-editing etc. are still issues on Wikipedia).

WATCHING:
Three Kings
David O. Russell, director

About a disillusioned bunch of soldiers in the Gulf War, wondering just what they accomplished over there. To them, it seems the so-called successes they’ve had have not really helped the people as a whole.

Oh – and this is about the first Gulf War, early 1990s, not today’s (2006) Gulf War.

Dark comedy with very stylish cinementography; it probably resonates more today than when it did upon its release in 1999/2000, if for no other reason than the deja vu factor.

All movies

I’ve been operating on caffeine and adrenaline the last couple months, and the posts have been few and weak.

Not that anyone cares, besides me.

The trick is post often, in staccato bursts – but I’ve just not been able to do such.

As a result, I have so much to say that most has left my radar screen. (Yes, you should thank me for this…). Either that, or it’s just not relevant any more (“Hey, did you see how the Battle of Midway went?!).

More bulletins as events warrant….

There are times when you can’t really comment, but just accept. Just view what is there and…uh, get over it.

Why is this West Coast Chopper frame (and other parts) in a bedroom?

Don’t ask…

Hot looking frame and wheels; progress will be reported.

Sidenote: Wouldn’t ‘Bike in the Bedroom’ be an excellent band name?

OK, let’s start this year off with something that will make me look silly at the end of the year – whoo hoo! (View my 2005 Prognostications Scorecard.)

Without any further ado, my (mostly tech) prognostications for 2006:

• Google, Google Everywhere: Google will continue its ubiquitous presence on all things Internet in the coming year. Google will continue to roll out a handful of projects this year, but one will be huge – one that changes the way we approach things on the Internet (much as Google Maps did. How did we put up with Mapquest?), probably in a very big way. (Which one? I dunno…but I think there will be a networking debut that will make a big splash.)
• Another bad year for security: I don’t know the answers for all the ills of the internet (and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you), but I don’t see things getting better, overall, in 2006. I don’t expect anything dramatic (cyberterrorism!!), but just a slow increase in the baggage of spam, phishing, viruses and so on that we have today – which is worse than we had at the end of 2004.
• Another solid year for Apple: Last year, I predicted a decline for Apple. Boy, was I wrong. Let’s see if I do better this year. (UPDATE: Last year I prognosticated a decline for both Apple and Sun; for the latter, I said Sun would still not figger out how to make money on Java. I was right in 2005 [re: Java], I expect to be correct in 2006 [re: Java], as well.)
• Privacy concerns grow: Between fighting the War on Terror through increased reliance on computers/networking (with their hackability) to phishing type schemes and RFID tools (for clothes, toll booths and so on), our personal privacy is shrinking. This is now alarming more than just the so-called alarmists. I think this is going to get worse before it gets better – just look at the recently uncovered Executive Branch spying program. While much of the debate is over whether said programs are legal, it still leaves one with the impression that there is probably a heck of a lot more going on than we know about. By our government, other governments, employers, cybercrimminals and so on. Welcome home, Mr. Orwell…
• Web Services Gain Focus: This whole Web 2.0 talk, to me, is really a bunch of crap. It’s like someone has created a label and is now looking for something to stick it on. Web services used to mean strictly online apps (like salesforce.com) or SOAP and or AJAX apps, which required extensive user-side coding and open APIs on the vendor end. But today it also means, basically, any Internet-based data/app that you (the end-user/client) don’t totally own. For example, I’m writing this on Blogger, via a browser. I’ll then post it to my site. This blog text itself (and the templates) is only a part of my blog; I have other tools (homegrown) that I use to enhance this area. But Blogger is a Web Service, as far as I’m concerned. This area will see a big explosion this year, as APIs are opened a la Google Maps, or useful online servies such as Flickr (purchased by Yahoo! in 2005) appear or existing properties are made useful.
• Bold Prediction: Microsoft Vista will be released this year: Yes, it’s scheduled for release late this year, but this is Microsoft. I’m betting it will come out in time to get on new computers for the holidays, but will be – in some ways – a crippled version: Lacking promised features. This is the only way it’ll get on holiday computers. Early 2007 Vista SP1 will make it the Vista that was spozed to be initially delivered. (Hell, they already jettisoned the new file system to get it out only … years late…)
• Online Advertising Will Continue to Kill Traditional Advertising: Duh. Google and Yahoo combined (with Craigslist and Monster) are killing traditional advertising. There are two (main) results of this: Traditional media should attempt to adapt (they won’t, not this year); 2) This advertising sea-change will cripple a lot of traditional media. Meaning magazines and newspapers will suffer tremendously (TV won’t, not to that degree [this year] ). Pay-for-click advertising will continue to grow, and will affect – to a degree – traditional forms of advertising. Take TV commercials: Customers pay based on a show’s past performance (with some contractual language of viewer guarantees and so on). Why? Why not pay on the number of viewer for the given show that night? For the 18-24 year-old males/females and so on? Pay per view? Why not?
• Intellectual Property Rights Will be Hot Issue: This is another one of those areas where things are going to get worse before they get better. One the one hand, you have older companies (movie studios, for example) struggling – sometimes correctly (to me, the old Napster was stealing. I’ve always said that) – against the bits vs. atoms approach to content delivery. On the other hand, you’re going to have companies – like SCO – trying to use (alleged) IP to keep the company alive because technology has changed, and they have not. It’s complicated, not pretty and going to get uglier. Super….
• Another Internet Growth Year: I mean this in the sense of money going into internet projects, startups and so on. 2007 might see a correction (not as bad as 2000), but 2006 will be pedal to the metal. There will be a lot of action, a lot of it – in hindsight – incredibly bone-headed.
• People Hang Up on Dial-Up: For the most part, only two groups of people will have dial-up (on purpose) at the end of the year: Ma & Pa Kettle (need only for e-mail or to check an e-mail only bill); people who can’t get some type of broadband.
• Blu-Ray Wins over HD-DVD: Since all but Microsoft/Intel have agreed to support Blu-Ray, it wins. Game over.
• Digital Cameras Improve: Digital cameras will get smaller, lighter, cheaper and give higher-quality pictures. The interfaces, manuals and tools to actually get a digital print will remain unbelievably difficult for all but the geekiest or most determined. Paging Jakob Nielsen….
• Linux Will Not Make Significant Inroads on the Desktop: Getting closer (with better Open Office and improved KDE), but the lack of Mac like “magic installs” or Windows Wizards will hamper acceptance (what’s a config file??). The battle between KDE and Gnome has hurt Linux on the desktop/laptop – and Linus Torvalds has finally weighed in, but that’s probably not the end of it.

Overall?

It’s going to be a busy year, but it seems like a lot of the action will be in the boardroom, courtroom and court of public opinion, and not an impressive amount of new, breathtaking technology.

Hopefully, I’ll be way wrong!

LISTENING TO:
Live at the Gaslight – 1962
Bob Dylan

Live, very early Dylan. I picked up my copy at Starbucks.

I’m a Dylan fan, so I like this – but even those who don’t might like a couple of the cuts, including “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.”

Young, fresh, live, with background noise…this is a nice addition to the Dylan Library.

All music

Ever since I began this stero diet (never turn it on; just rip my CDs/iTunes to computer), the one missing link has been classical music.

I can still tell the difference – in some cases, at least – betwixt an MP3 and the original DVD, but – for most rock ‘n roll, that’s not an issue.

With classical, it’s more of an issue. The quiet passages, the fermata…hard to really capture with digital compression/decompression. I loaded up a Schubert CD (The Complete Impromtus) on the computer – big mistake.

Basically, there are two issues:

• Especially with classical, the “ripped” versions are aurally weaker.
• The shuffle concept fails. Even if I create a playlist of classical (or Mozart, or Copland….), I don’t want Movement X of Symphony Y played and then Movement Z of Symphony ABC next. Or second part of Sonota BB and so on. And shuffle is a big part of the whole “non-album” direction music is taking. But classical doesn’t work that way.

Thought I’d mention it…

Ansel Adams,
Clearing Winter Storm,
Yosemite

Ken Rockwell – a kickass photographer (nature, primarily) – has a great entry about how people think the latest camera (or circular saw and so on) will make one that much better a photographer (or carpenter yada yada).

Bullshit, he basically says.

He quotes some other photogs, and sums up with this:

Just about any camera, regardless of how good or bad it is, can be used to create outstanding photographs for magazine covers, winning photo contests and hanging in art galleries. The quality of a lens or camera has almost nothing do with the quality of images it can be used to produce.

You probably already have all the equipment you need, if you’d just learn to make the best of it. Better gear will not make you any better photos, since the gear can’t make you a better photographer.

Photographers make photos, not cameras.

It’s sad how few people realize any of this, and spend all their time blaming poor results on their equipment, instead of spending that time learning how to see and learning how to manipulate and interpret light.

That’s how Ansel Adams – with his now antique equipment – was able to get such great pictures. He trudged out to the ledge overlooking Yosemite Valley a billion times, in all kinds of weather, at ungodly times.

And when the time was right, he clicked the shutter.

And – my guess – a lot of times he never printed the negatives he took. That’s part of the job: Every picture is not a masterpiece. Even from a master.

Excellent article; read it to get over the “I need a 100-megapixel camera to take better vacation shots!” syndrome.

Via Jason Kottke, it appears that Suck.com has – after a long time with no new content – turned in to a porn portal. (More info from waxy.org.)

If true, it’s the end of an era. Suck was one of the first online content sites – some call it a webzine; I don’t consider it such – that just got the web, what it could do and how to present content online.

Well, Suck.com has been gone for some time now; only those who were on the Web in a big way before the March 2000 dotcom bust really recall it.

But it’ll be missed.

On the other hand, I hope someone got a great price for the domain (pointing or otherwise). Suck.com – while it means something to the old Webbies – is probably something people surfing for porn try just for shits and giggles.

(Update 12/30/2005: A nice history of Suck.)

I have not turned my stereo on in months. CDs I rip to my computer, and – along with iTunes downloads – that’s what I listen to.

OK.

Here is what I’ve been listening to lately, in high rotation of 5000+ songs:

• Rock Star – Hole/Live Through This
• Idiot Wind – Bob Dylan/Blood on the Tracks
• Praise You – Fatboy Slim/You’ve Come a Long Way Baby
• Portland Oregon – Loretta Lynn/Van Lear Rose (with Jack White of the White Stripes)
• Brother’s Love Traveling Salvation Show (live) – Neil Diamond
• Fountain of Sorrow/Before the Deluge – Jackson Browne
• Crazy – Alanis Morissette cover

These and Mozart’s Requim.

Next week I’ll try to make my 2006 Prognostications, but I thought it might be more fun – and instructive – to grade how I did last year.

Here are the points I made, my comments on same, with a mainly right/coin toss/mainly wrong score:

• Theme of the year: Security – Hmm. I don’t know. This was certainly a big part of this year’s tech picture, but I don’t know if it was THE theme of 2005. MS did spend a bunch to get an antivirus product rolling as I predicted, and the AOL commercials rolling over the holidays certainly point to the ISPs really using this as a value-added (almost required) service. I think I was more right than wrong on this one, but I still don’t have a true sense of what the year’s overriding theme was. I certainly was not wrong, but the story did not dominate tech news as I expected. I’ll call it a coin toss, but I was really more right than wrong, but not to the degree to win a “right” here. I think the security issues of 2004 made the 2005 issues more of the same-old-same-old, to a great degree. (Update 12/30/2005: Record year for security woes. I guess we are just getting used to it…).
• Google will have another remarkable year – Yep, I totally nailed this one. Google’s stock price basically doubled over the year (~192/share last year at this time; currently ~430), and – if security was not the tech theme of last year, Google everywhere was. I expected two big splashes from Google this year; there were the following: 1) Google Maps – Goodbye Mapquest, hello Google/AJAX; 2) Google Wins Stake in AOL – While interesting – a mix of the old and new Web – the old argument of “gaining eyeballs” has not gone away; 3) Google Analytics – The full potential of this offering is not yet clear, but it’s a free, simple alternative to many expensive, complex systems. I could go on for some time here (Google offers free WiFi in San Francisco; Google and Sun Shake Hands; Google Earth and so on…) Google Google everywhere…
• Google will do something remarkable with Blogger – I was wrong. While there have been incremental improvements in Blogger, such as auto-save and permalinks, nothing earth-shattering. Which still surprises me. I still expect something remarkable to come out of this (Pyra) purchase.
• Six Apart will struggle – Given the recent outages of Typepad/Live Journal (here and here), I think I gots this right. And I don’t know the reasons for the partnership, but I firmly believe one goal behind Yahoo/Six Apart partnership was Six Apart’s desire to tap Yahoo’s expertise with networking/scalability and so on. That’s a good thing for all involved.
• Blogging becomes mainstream – This has happened so suddenly and so persuavively over major non-blog properties (think Wired and MSNBC), and the sale of blogging properties (see Industry Consolidation, below) that – at this point of the year – it’s hard to imagine news anchors or tech companies without blogs of some sort. I nailed this one, as well.
• Industry consolidation a-go-go – Google Buys Stake in AOL, Oracle Swallow Siebel, Yahoo Partners with Six Apart, Yahoo buys Flickr, Yahoo De.licio.us, Dave Winer sells weblogs.com to Verisign. I could go on and on…
• Demise/decline of Apple and or Sun – I’m totally wrong on this one on two fronts: 1) Sun keeps trying to be relevant (here and here, for example); 2) Apple had a kick-ass year. For a company (Apple) that is still way smaller than – for example – Microsoft – it still garners more (non-litigation) headlines than MS, simply because of innovation and the “cool” factor. One impressive statistic: On Google’s 2005 Zeitgeist (a yearly affair and more…), four of the top 10 searches at Froogle (No.’s 1, 4, 8 & 10) for 2005 were for iPods. Wow.
• A serious Linux virus/Trojan will surface – Totally wrong. Why? Is Linux/Unix so secure that it’s less susceptible to Trojans? (I think yes); or is it that most virus writers still write for the best bang for the buck? (I think yes); or do the virus writers like to “stick it to the Man” (MS) and try not to hurt *nix (Yes, to a degree, but – if you’re writing viruses etc [for fun or profit], the platform doesn’t matter).
• This will be the year of broadband – Yep. This was the year that began with the beginnings of everyone online all the time; at the end of this year, we are at the point not of “if” everyone will be able to be on all the time, but “when” this will happen. Power over power lines, city WiFi proposals, all major telecoms with DSL plays and so on. In 2005 we turned the corner.
• Outsourcing – I wrote “Will keep increasing for manufacturing/development (why not?), but will decrease/not increase appreciably for customer service.” I still see this a true. Arguments?
• Upstart Start-Up – I expected another Google or Netscape to come along and just change our perceptions about how the web works/could work. I don’t really see evidence of such this year; I was wrong.
• RIAA & MPAA will again duck and miss getting hit with the clue stick – Oh, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Especially if you extend the RIAA/MPAA to incorporate media companies trying to incorporate DRM (which is where the RIAA/MPAA miss the boat): Witness the clusterfuck that was Sony and its DRM. Bruce Schneier (previous link) covers most of the insanity, and gives a very good overview of just how out of touch so many major industries are with technology. Frightening and amusing.

My score?

• Six correct – a couple right on the nose
• One coin toss
• Three wrong – a couple amazingly wrong

So only 66% correct.

No tech Nostradamus.

Let’s see how I do next year…

Once we defeat these pesky terrorists, we will be able to send the most powerful people on the planet, guarded by some of the best trained officers to Iraq (or elsewhere) with the full-blown announcements that trumpet the Secretary of Agriculture judging a livestock fair in England.

If our most powerful folks have to fly under the radar, uh, something’s amiss (note the mix of new organizations, including some right-leaning outlets):

• Cheney Surprise Visit To Iraq
• Rice makes surprise visit to Iraq
• Rumsfeld makes surprise visit to Baghdad
• Bush Makes Surprise Visit to Troops in Baghdad

As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!!!”

12/21/2005 Update:

• Rumsfeld in surprise Afghan visit