Out Of Touch With Actual People

I often will see technology-based publications make statements that defy even the most common sense. As a bit of a technologist myself I try to guard against the very myopic view that causes these sort of errors in judgement.

The Huffington Post is running a story called "12 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade".

As an example of what I'm talking about let's take a look at each of the 12. Also remember that obsolete means "no longer in use". So here we go:

1. Calling - The tech folks at HP think no one calls anymore. It's been taken over by text messaging, instant messaging, tweeting, etc. Uh huh.... I agree that calling is on the decline but obsolete this decade? I don't think so. I don't think it'll be obsolete in the next decade either.

2. Classified ads in newspapers - Again, I agree that these are very much on their way out but they didn't vanish during this decade. Many people are still posting ads and obits in the local paper. How do I know this? Unlike the tech people at HP I actually looked at a paper.

3. Dial-up Internet - Again, another item well on its way out but not obsolete during this decade. So far this is as close to accurate as the list has gotten while still not getting any of them right.

4. Encyclopedias - Hurray! I finally see one I agree with that has become obsolete this decade. In fact, they may have become obsolete last decade. I still remember clearly the battle over this when Compton's and other publishers put out CD's that cost as much as their books arguing that they had to or else they'd kill their business. Little did they realize their business was already terminal.

5. CD's - Speaking of CD's these guys think they died this decade. Uh, no. Not even close. They're in decline but not everyone gets their music digitally online. In fact many of us still despise the draconian limits of digital music. Thanks but no thanks.

6. Landline phones - Really? No one knows anyone with a landline phone any longer? I have two landline numbers (granted they're now VoIP but still landlines and my SMALL provider has several hundred thousand customers). Virtually everyone I know over the age of 25 has a landline phone and still uses it. Hardly obsolete.

7. Film and film cameras - Hmm..... Okay, this one I want to believe. I'm willing to concede that this one, for all standard use, went out this decade.

8. Yellow Pages and address books - Almost. Everyone is still getting a copy of the Yellow Pages delivered to them and they're filled with ads so apparently they're not quite dead yet but there's still a few days left in the decade.

9. Catalogs - Has no one in this department opened their mailbox? Catalogs are still coming to us in droves. I wish they didn't but they still do.

10. Fax machines - Again, almost. This is a technology I never embraced. I never owned an actual fax machine and never wanted one. However, there are still a huge number of them being sold and being used daily by various businesses and older business people.

11. Wires - I guess they ran out of things to talk about. Wires? I 'm looking around JUST my desk and I see no less than 8 wires and that's without looking UNDER the desk where I'd find far more. Come on. They say right in the piece that wires are still around but on their way out. When you right a piece about things that are obsolete you can't then just ignore the entire point of it all.

12. Hand-written letters - I'm not sure about this entirely but it seems likely in major industrial countries. I suspect quite a huge number are still being written outside the US however.

The Day The Flyers Died

The Philadelphia Flyers have been having a tough time so far this season. They started out great and were picked by several key sources to win the Stanley Cup. Then a losing streak started... and continued.... and then the coach was fired. Now they've got a new coach and the losing is still continuing.

For me the moment the Flyers "jumped the shark" is simple to identify. It was at the trade deadline last year when Flyers GM Paul Holmgren traded Scotty Upshall to the Phoenix Coyotes, plus a draft pick, for Dan Carcillo. We were all told Carcillo would be a fan favorite and would make us soon forget fan favorite Upshall.

Wrong and wrong again.

Upshall wasn't just a fan favorite. He was part of the chemistry that made this team work. The moment he left the life went out of the team and they never recovered. They just weren't the same team after that. They'd have their flashes but that's all they were.

Dan Carcillo's a decent enough player but he's no Upshall. In fact, what we've seen is Carcillo take one stupid penalty after another due to his inability to keep his emotions in check. That's the last thing a team like this--rife with players who take stupid penalties--needs. It culminated earlier this season when Carcillo got involve in an altercation that put the Flyers short-handed for 9 straight minutes. In all my life I've never seen a single infraction totaling 9 minutes of power play time.

Meanwhile Upshall is thriving in Phoenix. He's played in 36 games, has 13 goals and 8 assists for 21 points and just 36 penalty minutes. Carcillo, on the other hand, has 3 goals and 5 assists for 8 points and a total of 100 penalty minutes. Upshall's numbers would put him second on the Flyers in goals and third in points on a team desperate for offense.

I also think it's time we started to think about life after Paul Holmgren. I've never been sold on him as a top-shelf General Manager but he started to change my thinking last season until the very move above. Since that point things are all going down hill. The team ran up against the salary cap last season causing them to have to make bad personnel moves and now this year they've taken chances they shouldn't have to take. They've rolled the dice on a very high-risk goalie in Ray Emery and Ray hasn't provided the goods.

Then there's the almost hard to comprehend bad play of all-star defenseman Kimmo Timonen. Timonen's been on my radar from the very first game of the season. When he touches the puck bad things happen. He flubs passes, can't hit the net on shots, turns the puck over at will, is constantly caught on the wrong foot as opposing players fly by him. It's been tough to watch quite frankly.

The reality is that the current Flyers just don't have the right chemistry to gel properly and make a real go of it. Maybe the new coach will get through to them but I have my doubts. The good news is it can't get any worse.

Always A Bridesmaid. Never A Bride.

Mozilla has been a clear force in the digital communications realm. Their ancestry goes back to the very earliest days of the Internet when most of us connected to it via dedicated phone lines and slow modems. Back then we all wanted Netscape Navigator instead of proprietary solutions provided by so many other sources.

Frankly, that was about the pinnacle of Mozilla. Since then they've been locked in a battle, much like Apple, to gain double-digit market share aware from Microsoft in anything it is they do. I've been a supporter for a long time. I purchased Navigator way back and have been happily using Firefox for many years now.

On the e-mail front I've never been a fan our Microsoft's Outlook or Outlook Express. They're solid enough but just not fluid enough for my tastes. That also means they tend to get entirely ignored for years at a time with regard to new features and the like. For well over a decade I used a program some of you may be familiar with called Agent from a company called Forte. Their most popular product is known as Free Agent. The Agent series is easily the most powerful Usenet newsgroup client out there. It also worked well as an e-mail client and included comprehensive filtering options. I was so happy with the product at one point that I got involved heavily with their beta team in an effort to keep them aware of the world outside Usenet. Unfortunately my efforts essentially fell on deaf ears as Forte decided they had no future competing with everyone else and took the buggy whip approach. They're going to have the last best Usenet client out there long after anyone cares.

Once I decided I had to make a switch that switch wasn't easy. What Agent does well it does very well. It's what it doesn't do that drove me to change. I finally installed Mozilla's e-mail client, Thunderbird, and adopted a "for better or worse" approach with it. The initial adjustment to it was difficult but over time it continued to evolve why Agent remained mainly in stasis. I grew with it and ended up with years of saved history in it.

The biggest issue I've had with Thunderbird over the last few years is that it offers no option for working with mail while on the road. I often travel a lot for work and when that happens I find I end up having to use extremely basic webmail apps from my providers of choice. Their mobile versions are even more limited. Once I bought my Motorola Droid it all came to a head.

I finally had a phone where I wanted interactive access to my e-mail and no lousy mobile web client was going to cut it. My only choice seemed to be to switch over to Google's Gmail. Understand I've had a Gmail account like countless others for years now. I've just never really used it. I also came to realize that Gmail's interface could handle my personal dedicated e-mail by just setting it up. That was a nice help. However, I have to say that when it comes to e-mail Google seems to be stuck in another paradigm that I'm just not that clear about. They refuse to support things like folders that virtually everyone else has adopted. They force you instead to use "labels" and contrary to what any Gmail fan will try to tell you they are not the same thing. Gmail also lacks comprehensive filtering options, doesn't offer RSS support built-in, has a decent but limited mobile app and flat out does some thing that drive a lot of us crazy.

For all of these reasons I thought about going back to Thunderbird but I just couldn't do it. It meant once again having to deal with one solution on my desktop and another entirely unrelated solution on my phone. What I really wanted to see was Mozilla catch onto the whole "cloud" concept that's seriously going to change everything and provide a web-based Thunderbird. Even if I had to host it myself I'd jump all over such a solution.

Understand that not that long ago Mozilla spun off the mail group into their own entity and that entity has been hard at work re-envisioning messaging. However, they also took an inordinate amount of time to come up with the 3.0 version of Thunderbird which, to the masses, looks almost identical to the 2.x version. I then noticed a reference on one of their blogs mentioning a new project called Raindrop. My hopes grew when I noticed it was web-based and represented a culmination of their idea of what messaging in the cloud should be. And then I watched their first video introduction on it and that ended my enthusiasm.

Raindrop looks like a total mess. First, David Ascher (the new head of the messaging unit) made it clear that Thunderbird is a desktop client and would remain separate from Raindrop. Second, the video explains Raindrop in terms that defy any logic. It proposes answers to problems no one should be having. The big pain it sees is that solutions today will take a message from your mother and lose it in the noise of everything else. What?! This is from a group that excels at folders and filtering. I long ago created a solutions to highlight and segment out any priority or personal messages that come my way. Any e-mail product worth anything can do that much.

So, instead of providing the world with a new evolutionary step with a tool that has a solid foundation Mozilla's messaging group is going to take a trek out into the deep forest with a project that seems to solve no problems and does so with a dizzying interface that makes no sense to anyone that sees it. This isn't any path that will grow their market share.

It'll be funny to look back at this time period before everyone "got it". It'll look every bit as archaic as connecting to the Internet with a 2400 baud modem through a third-party provider using a tool that could barely display images.

Entertaining Fantastic Mr. Fox

Finally got around to seeing Fantastic Mr. Fox. This is a stop-action movie adaptation of the popular book by Roald Dahl.

It's impossible to see the movie and not compare it with the more famous Wallace and Gromit as it shares the same style, look and feel. I should also mention that, try as I have, I'm just not a fan of the latter. The humor just mainly falls flat with me. Add to this that I'd never heard of Mr. Dahl (much to my younger friends surprise) and I've had wildly mixed results with Wes Anderson who directs.

The story focuses on Mr. Fox and his evolution from daring, risk-taking fox to responsible but endlessly bored family man. The longer it goes on the more his wild instincts call out to him to break free and sate the desires of youth and freedom--even if it means risking every relationship he has.

Like most Anderson movies this one is presented with dark overtones and subdued, intellectual humor delivered with almost dead-pan, matter-of-fact delivery. If dark comedies aren't your thing then avoid this at all costs.

The voices are provided by top talent including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and more. Of course they do a great job and you forget all about who's voicing who pretty quickly.

Children and adults alike will find this engrossing and yet for entirely different reasons. Much of the overtones will be lost on the kids but none of that matters. The basic elements are here for them to enjoy while the adults will get a different, and yet equally entertaining, experience. It's in the bigger lessons that mutual understanding between the generations will shine. All will understand the values risked, earned and coveted.

The story itself is also pretty odd-ball and yet it all works. The charm of the film manages to work its magic sneaking stealthily into your realm of interest before you know it. It's one of those movies you really need to see to understand. There are good moments. There are less good moments. There are some slow moments but in the end you walk away entertained and glad you made the trek.

Interesting News Article On HD Vision

So I'm doing my normal tech reading and I come across an article about an artificial lens that gives the wearers "HD" vision.

I'm hoping this gets here somewhat soon actually. Why? For those who don't know it several years back I had Lasik surgery and I'm one of the cases where it went wrong. I don't have to wear glasses but my vision is anything but normal. I get ghosted images, see halos around bright objects, experience wide variations in my vision each day, etc.

I am, as you can guess, not a fan of Lasik. I got the procedure and paid extra for "lifetime" service that was supposed to assure that if anything wasn't quite right they'd "fix" it. Well, so much for that. After realizing they'd goofed (I was done in an assembly line fashion with little regard for taking time to do the job right and I have every confidence that the rushing is what caused my issues) they had me back a few times and finally told me that they no longer do so-called corrections because new data suggests that supplemental fixes only make things worse and significantly raise the risk of infection. Wonderful. Glad I paid extra for that service.

So my thinking is that maybe this new procedure could fix what's wrong and, frankly, I'd be willing to give it a shot. I'd even be willing to let Kremer (the guys who botched the first one) a chance to do it. I'd point out how things went wrong, insist on attentive service and hope for the best. I'd also push for them doing it (and here's the catch) for free given my "lifetime service" that was nothing more than paying them extra for nothing.

So here's hoping this option crosses the pond and evolves quickly.