Facebook Connect Connecting the Connected

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Since Facebook’s launch of their new Connect service, thousands of Web sites have adopted it as an alternative to the likes of Windows Live ID, OpenID, and Google Friend Connect. This one is actually in the perfect position to win. Facebook Connect is incredibly easy to use; Facebook has over 130 million active monthly users; and people obviously trust the site with the most intimate of their data, otherwise they wouldn’t have 130 million active users.

Facebook Connect allows sites that use the API to access the users Facebook profile information and post information about their activity on the Web sites utilizing Connect to their Facebook profiles, all the while the user maintains total control over the data being shared. In one word – Brilliant. Everybody uses Facebook, so why wouldn’t they use their Facebook account to log into other Web sites they use as well?

The only thing that could conceivably stop people from using it, and in an important way weaving Facebook into the very fabric of the Internet, would be privacy concerns. Unlike OpenID, which is really the only log-in solution to solve this very problem, Facebook would be at the center of everything rather than a number of different organizations all overseeing the service. In a perfect world, Facebook might do something like enlisting the help of other trusted technology corporations to help maintain and operate Connect in order to decentralize it, but I’m doubtful that would ever happen. No matter what, Facebook Connect might just be the key to the single sign-on.

Windows 7 – Finally, Microsoft Gets It Right

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In case you haven’t heard, the new Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) was leaked to “torrenters” everywhere a few days ago. Since then, I’ve downloaded and been testing it. (Shh, don’t tell Microsoft ’cause it is technically kind of illegal.) Anyway, getting past the legalities, I can say that it definitely is a major improvement over Windows Vista.

The individual improvements are too numerous to mention in detail, but there are some in particular that stick out. First, I have to say that I am definitely a fan of the new taskbar, where there are only icons and hovering over them shows a thumbnail of that window. They also feature a few other goodies, such as displaying the status of a status bar within a window and giving options relevant specifically to that application when you right-click on them. You can even rearrange the order of the icons! (Figuring out that people might want that must have been hard for Microsoft

Also, the improvements in performance are definitely noticeable. I haven’t had a chance to test it on a netbook yet, but as I can I will definitely let you know how that works.

Finally, the new Aero Peek, which, by pressing Alt+Tab, shows you a thumbnail of each open window and allows you to quickly switch between them, is actually pretty nice to have. It creates an entirely new (for Windows, that is) multitasking environment and certainly helps increase efficiency.

Overall, Windows 7 is most certainly an improvement over Vista, and this time it’s actually worth upgrading to from XP. (I’ve been using the Windows 7 Pre-Beta (Build 6801) since it was originally leaked shortly after Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference as my primary operating system, using XP only for applications that aren’t fully supported yet in Windows 7.) It’s surprisingly stable for only the first beta, and it supports almost any application that works in either XP or Vista (Although, I still can’t find a color print driver for my printer that will work with it.) and I’m sure this time around there will be much better initial software and hardware support from third-parties. Right now, I’d say Windows 7 is on track to be a great operating system, and I can hardly wait to see it once it’s finished. (I’d also like to try out the multitouch capabilities, but I don’t have a multitouch monitor.)

However, I’d also like to see all of Windows 7 put into a slightly modified package and called Windows Mobile. Microsoft can make as good of a desktop OS that it wants, but if they can’t bring that to mobile, they’re going to lose in the long-run because it’s inevitable that the cell phone will be the next big thing in computing as we see a shift away from the desktop. Microsoft just needs to understand that.

Nice Review of New MacBooks

Since I haven’t had time to give you my thoughts about the new MacBooks, you can check out a nice review of them done by a friend of mine: http://tinyurl.com/6huswz

iPhone Pains for Android…

Well, Google finally managed to get their first Android phone, the G1, out of the bag (Now they just have to get it out the door…). At first glance, it doesn’t look like the kind of phone that would compete with the iPhone; it certainly doesn’t have the Apple “coolness” design factor going for it. Another thing that media critics pointed out immediately was its apparent lack of a video player. The only thing is, they missed the entire point of Google’s open platform – The idea is to spur 3rd-party development, so that people have a choice of different video players and can choose the best one and the one that they like the most. That’s Apple’s biggest problem with the App Store. By rejecting applications because they duplicate functionality of Apple’s apps is an incredibly poor decision on Apple’s part. (Not to mention it’s bound to bring out some anti-competitive lawsuits.) By not allowing competition, they are holding back the entire platform from having the innovative applications that it could. Google, on the other hand, hit that issue spot on. They want third-party developers to compete and improve on their existing apps. In fact, they even allow plug-ins and add-ons to improve even their most basic applications.

But apart from Android’s open development platform, they don’t really have much going for them. Sure the G1 has a slightly better camera, but nobody really cares about those extra 1.1 megapixels. About the only other thing that’s a plus for Android is the Amazon MP3 integration because it’s generally less expensive than the iTunes Music Store and (most of all) it’s DRM-free! The things that are going to hurt Android are much greater, though, (at least initially with the G1) such as the proprietary mini-USB plug for a headphone jack (that was just plain stupid); the fact that T-Mobile only has 3G in 21 markets (compared with iPhone 3G’s 200+ markets with AT&T); and also the fact that the phone only comes with 1GB (of removable) storage. That’s expandable to possibly as much as 16GB, but for that, you’re gonna have to shell out an extra $99. Another downside to Android is the fact that it’s essentially centered around a Google lifestyle – Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, etc. Certainly, Apple offers you their own lifestyle with the interoperability between iPhone, iTunes, Mac, and MobileMe, but they make it much easier, and offer more options, to use other services as well. Finally, the last thing that Apple has and Google doesn’t is the fact that Apple is already on the second-generation of the iPhone and has an install base of about 11 million units, as well as an application download store that’s based on a  5 1/2 year-old digital content store. Compare that with Google’s first generation product, which is accompanied by an application download store that’s not even really a store yet. (There will be no way to charge for apps, initially.)

I think that iPhone will continue to dominate the cell phone industry for quite a while, however Android will manage to put some pressure on Apple. Although, I think that pressure will just push Apple to further improve the iPhone. Eventually I think Google will manage to compete with Apple, but it’s going to take a while. The iPhone, or the iPod or even iTunes for that matter, didn’t get to where they are overnight (Ok, well maybe the iPhone kinda did, but nevertheless.); neither did Google Search or Gmail. The iPhone has had time to mature, and Apple has had many opportunities to learn about making it better, and I think they’ll use that information to push even further ahead of the competition. Even though Apple had the better operating system back in the 1980s, Microsoft managed to become the operating system that still over 20 years later would be used by 90% of computer users worldwide. This time, I think that Apple is gonna be the mobile Microsoft/Windows. No one has been able to touch them, and their share of the smartphone market is almost certainly going to surpass Windows Mobile for 3Q 2008, with potential to pass even RIM’s Blackberry. iPhone is going to be king of the mobile market for quite some time.

BREAKING NEWS: Gates, Seinfeld Connecting with “Real People”

So, as you have probably heard by now, Microsoft teamed up with Jerry Seinfeld for their $300 million Vista ad campaign. Sounds like a good idea, right? I mean, having one of the most respected (and funniest) comedians in the world in a commercial must make it both memorable and hopefully hilariously funny. I would agree, and say that these commercials are doing just that – they’re funny and you definitely aren’t going to forget them anytime soon. However, much of the media is disagreeing, saying that the commercials aren’t funny and that they have nothing to do with Windows – especially Vista, but I strongly disagree with their criticism.

As for not having anything to do with Windows or Vista, I agree, but that’s the point: they’re supposed to be funny and entertaining, so that you remember them, and when you remember the commercials, you’re no doubt going to remember the brand. Also, similarly to how Apple portrays themselves in their “Get a Mac” commercials, Microsoft is trying to show that they can have fun and be cool too.

Also, as far as much of the media claiming that the commercials aren’t funny, I don’t what to say. I certainly think that they’re funny, as do people that I’ve shown the ad to, and I know that anyone who likes Seinfeld will certainly enjoy them.

In conclusion, I don’t care what the mainstream media says, I think that Microsoft is doing exactly what they should be doing with this campaign, and they should keep up the hard work. Watch the ad’s (below) for yourself and see what you think.

iPhone OS 2.0: The New MS-DOS

With Apple’s launch of the new App Store, the iPhone has become a full-fledged mobile computing platform. Much like Bill Gates and Microsoft introduced a new, relatively easy-to-use operating system in the 1980s amidst the many incompatible software platforms that were available, which quickly became the standard in the computing industry, Steve Jobs and Co. have introduced a new, extremely easy-to-use, yet advanced, operating system (and being that they’re Apple: exclusive hardware to run it on) that certainly has the potential to become that Windows of the mobile devices industry. With Apple planning to sell 10 million iPhones this year and analysts expecting 40 million devices to be sold in 2009, the iPhone would be right on track to greatly surpass RIM’s Blackberry, the current smartphone market share leader. The iPhone already accounts for around 0.1% of all web browsing, from both standard desktops and notebooks, as well as all mobile devices combined.

Sure, even at 50-some million iPhones by the end of 2009, the iPhone would be nowhere near the number of Windows PCs in the world, but it would be at a similar market share among cell phones and other mobile devices. Apple has most certainly done a fabulous job with the iPhone and as long as they continue to improve it and maintain their humongous lead ahead of the competition, the iPhone has the potential to not only stir-up the mobile industry as it has already, but truly revolutionize it and become that industry itself. We may very well be witnessing personal computing history unfold with a brand new leader/standard for mobile devices.

UWB? Gimme a Break!

I’m going to be blunt: Ultra-Wideband (UWB) is going to fail. First of all, just by looking at the increases in WiFi speeds between 802.11b to 802.11g to 802.11n, the math indicates that the next iteration of the extremely popular wireless technology should be at around 1,886 Mbps* by around somewhere from 2013 to 2017**. At those speeds, over a combination of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, as 802.11n uses, and maybe even new frequencies, WiFi could certainly handle wireless streaming of full, uncompressed HD video at resolutions of 1080p or higher. It would theoretically even be possible with 802.11n. (However, some compression may be necessary there.)

Because you will be able to wirelessly stream HD video throughout your entire home, why would you need another technology just to stream the video from a receiver to your TV? The TV will simply have WiFi built in. Due to both this and ever increasing Internet connection speeds, optical media as a means of transporting audio-video data will become a thing  of the past as it quickly is already. Although Blu-ray won the HD format war with HD DVD,  it will most likely fail as far as becoming the standard for viewing movies. Online digital content downloads are certainly the future – it doesn’t take an expert to figure that one out. With Xbox LIVE Marketplace’s HD video downloads and Netflix streaming, the iTunes Store’s HD video downloads, and the PlayStation Network’s new HD video downloads, the Internet, along with the wireless connections to transport that media to your television, is the future of home entertainment. There will have to be some way to get the media to a receiver for your TV anyway, which will have to be wireless (WiFi seems like a good candidate, now doesn’t it?), so that same technology might as well be used to move the content directly to the TV – especially since UWB is a short-range technology and would absolutely have no chance of streaming the video over the Internet, like WiFi can. UWB will only work if there is physical media involved, which there definitely will not be.

*Math explanation: The increase from 802.11b (11 Mbps) to 802.11g (54 Mbps) was equal to 3.909090… times faster. The increase from 802.11g (54 Mbps) to 802.11n (300 Mbps) is equal to 5.55555… times faster. That’s an increase of 1.1316872427983539094650205761319 times in the amount of improvement between the wireless technologies. That means that the increase between 802.11n and the next iteration of 802.11 should be equal to 6.2871513488797439414723365340655 times faster. That would put the next WiFi spec at 1,886.1454046639231824417009602196 Mbps.

**Timeframe explanation: 802.11b and 802.11a were released in 1999. 802.11g was released in 2003. 802.11n will be released in 2009. That puts the various year differences at 4 and 6 years. If that pattern of increasing by 2 years continues, the next wireless technology could be released in 8 years. That makes the overall range anywhere from 4 to 8 years from 2009 (therefore, 2013 to 2017).

Microsoft (April 4, 1975 – June 27, 2008?)

As many of you probably know, today is Bill Gates’ last day as a full-time Microsoft employee. He is stepping down to be Non-Executive Chairman, which essentially means that rather than spending hours everyday at Microsoft, he will only be spending a couple days each week there. The rest of the time he will be busy fighting diseases, reducing poverty, and enhancing education around the globe through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, leaving Steve Ballmer in charge as Microsoft’s CEO.

Many people feel that Ballmer is going to do nothing but harm to Microsoft and that this is simply not the right time for Gates to leave. I agree. Not only did Microsoft really screw up on their last OS upgrade (Vista), but Microsoft has been on a downward slope since Steve took over in January of 2000. For instance, if you had invested $10,000 in Microsoft at their IPO, you would have had $7.3 million when Bill stepped down from his position as CEO. However, had you invested $10,000 in Microsoft the day that Steve Ballmer took over, you would now have $4,700.

In regards to Microsoft’s actual products, Bill Gates has always seemed to know what was best for both the company and the consumers that used the products. Every product from the first version of MS-DOS until Windows XP was a huge step forward in the personal computing industry. Even Vista offered many advantages to XP, along with some significant drawbacks. Personally, I prefer Vista over XP because of its improved user interface, DirectX 10 graphics support, as well as its many other technological advantages, but it was not excepted well by general consumers because the only way that the advantages really outweighed the disadvantages was with the higher-end “Ultimate” or “Business” versions of Vista and a high performance PC to go with. I think, though, that Microsoft has learned its lesson from Vista and will make Windows 7 much, much better. After that, however, things may get a little bumpy again without BillG around every day to oversee things.

Bill has really been the brains behind Microsoft all these years, from both a technology standpoint and a business standpoint. That’s why he’s the one with the $44 billion to give to charity, and I think that Microsoft is definitely going to miss him. Windows 7 will probably turn out OK because he has already been around for a major portion of its development and will still be on the Board of Directors, but I think that it’s very likely that it will be a lot like when Steve Jobs left Apple and had to return. Microsoft just can’t survive without its great leader. I mean, he’s the reason that everyone has a computer now, and you can’t beat that.

SuperPhone or SubComputer?

There’s a lot of debate right now over the future of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), so I figured I might as well throw in my two cents and set it all straight. Some folks say that everybody is gonna be dragging around a really small laptop with a ton of power, extremely long battery life, and a full operating system, such as ASUSTeK’s Eee PC or Apple’s MacBook Air; others insist that a smartphone-like device, similar to Apple’s iPhone, will be what the world carries in their pocket. Me? I’ll take the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I think that tomorrow’s laptops will be ultra-portable just like the Eee PC and the MacBook Air, or possibly even be similar to a UMPC. However, I have no doubt that people’s primary portable device will be a “SuperPhone.”

It simply makes more sense to just put a full (even more so than iPhone’s Mobile Safari) Web browser and, at least a somewhat more, complete operating system on a device like a cell phone that nearly three-hundred million people in the United States alone already carry with them on a regular basis. The iPhone actually comes very close to this. Essentially, all a phone would need to fulfill these requirements and be just as good as having a UMPC or Eee PC is to have all of the features of the iPhone, in addition to a full Web browser and a full OS. The key points that the current iPhone’s software lacks are the ability to view all of the Web 2.0 content on any page on the Internet, the ability to download any kind of file, including additional software, and, most importantly, the ability to easily develop and release applications for that device in order to expand its functionality. The operating system itself needs to be very flexible and easily allow features to be added via of 3rd-party software. The iPhone will be adding support for 3rd-party apps soon, but only from Apple approved developers. That’s not enough, anyone needs to be able to develop and release software apps for the devices. Of course, they also need to support much faster mobile broadband, which will come with 4th Generation wireless technologies, especially LTE (Long Term Evolution) around 2011.

I believe that within the next few years, we will see a major shift in the cell phone industry, which in part has already been sparked by the inception of the iPhone, toward devices that more and more resemble a mobile computer. They will have complete operating systems with many interesting (and some nearly useless) features just as desktop and laptop computers today, complete with full Internet browsers, and extensive third-party application support to enable even more features and mobile gaming. Ultra-fast wireless broadband will accompany this array of new features with speeds of 100 Mbps or more (12 times faster than the average fastest wired broadband of today). These new devices will also have elaborate touch screens which will provide a brilliant user experience. Anything you can do on a computer, you will be able to do on your cell phone, or whatever they end up being called. However, as cell phones resemble computers more and more, security risks increase, but I’ll save that for another day.

My New Social Network!

Today I’m launching a new social network, Tomorrow’s Tech, specifically for everyone who loves technology and wants to discuss its future, whether it be one, two, ten, twenty, or even a hundred years into the future! I think it’s gonna be awesome and I hope that everyone else will agree. Over the course of the next few months I will be adding more features, content, discussions, events, and, hopefully, new members too! So come on over, join, and invite all of your technology loving friends to join as well.