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This is my editing desk: a 2.4 Ghz Core2Duo DELL PC, 6 GB of RAM, an nVidia card, Vista 64 bit, with Sony Vegas Pro 9 32bit (for plugin/codec compatibility reasons), and two monitors. The 28″ one runs the main Vegas interface at 1920×1200, and the secondary 22″ one previews the actual video in 1:1 ratio size at 1920×1080 (so I can see all pixels as they truly are and edit/color-grade accordingly).

Click for a larger view

The video project loaded is a music video that I am working on for a Bay Area singer/songwriter. I used 18 tracks there. The look I chose for this video is a green-ish low-contrast look. I am hoping to have the video released by Sunday, after we re-shoot a few scenes on Saturday.

On the left side you can see my Canon HV20, 120 GB iPod, and my new smartphone, the HTC Hero. I still need to use better speakers with that PC system though. We have some very good high-quality Logitech speakers in storage, we just haven’t taken them out to connect them. So I am still editing with these $10 speakers (although most of the time I am using some very good headphones, so it doesn’t really matter much).

Here are some indie bands that I believe deserve more popularity. They make beautiful music, and at least 2-3 of them break new ground. Except for one of the following bands, I found out about them through their promotional free mp3s (Malbec, I found them through the Canon HV20 community). So I decided to return the favor and spread the love. If you like their music as I do, please buy their albums to support their work too.

Disclaimer: No songs are stored on this server, and no copyright infringement is intended. The sole purpose of this article is informational. I did my best possible to make sure that the songs linked are legal, stored on official artist/label/PR sites or on music/promotional sites that have the required distribution rights. If you represent one of the labels or artists found below and would like me to stop linking to your songs for some reason, please contact me.

* Cloud Cult
Description: One of the best bands of all time, in my opinion. On their latest record they play some very accessible… experimental music. It’s a fusion of classic, rock, folk, all in one. No one else makes music like this.
Mp3s:
- The Tornado Lessons
- Everybody here is a Cloud
- When Water Comes to Life
- Journey of the Featherless
- Lucky Today
- Take your medicine
- Chemicals Collide

* Longwave
Description: A great shoegazing band. They had a contract with a major, they lost it for not selling well, and then they release independently their best album ever. Each and every song on their latest album could be a huge hit if it had the right backing.
Mp3s:
- Secrets are Sinister
- No Direction
- Theres a Fire
- Everywhere You Turn

* Portugal. The Man
Description: An Alaskan band that moved to Portland to hunt their musical dreams. Through the years they went through various experimentation stages and they often introduced brand new takes on existing genres. This is a band that can hop between genres without effort. I highly recommend you buy “The Devil”, and “How the Leopard Got Its Spots” tracks btw.
Mp3s:
- Shade
- People Say
- AKA M80 the Wolf
- And I
- Out and In and In and Out
- The Sun
- The Woods
- Ruby Magic
- Sapphire Magic

* Living Things
Description: Now, this is real rock! Hard, provocative, entertaining. You will love all three of the tracks! Their singer is my kind of guy: he says it like it is.
Mp3s:
- Oxygen
- Mercedes Marxist
- Let It Rain

* Malbec
Description: An LA band with a beautiful and very accessible electro-pop/rock sound. Their music videos (that they shoot by themselves) are wicked too!
Mp3s: (16 songs)
- The Answering Machine, EP1
- The Answering Machine, EP2
- The Answering Machine, EP3
- The Answering Machine, EP4
- The Answering Machine, EP5

* Loquat
Description: Beautiful indie pop/rock from the Bay Area. “Swingset chain” is one of my all-time favorite songs. The version linked below is not the one that ended up on their album though (the album version is a bit nicer).
Mp3s:
- Swingset Chain
- Harder Hit

* The Rosebuds
Description: Another indie pop/rock band (a husband and wife). Very atmospheric, amazing melodies.
Mp3s:
- Leaves Do Fall
- Life Like
- Get Up Get Out
- Blue Bird
- Kicks In The Schoolyard

* Wiretree
Description: Indie pop/rock with a very distinctive guitar sound. Their “Big Coat” song linked below is one of my favorite songs ever.
Mp3s:
- Big Coat
- Back in Town
- Satellite Song

* Glint
Description: A relatively young NY band with easy-listening pop/rock. Good ratio of good songs on each of their albums/EPs.
Mp3s:
- Freak

* The Rural Alberta Advantage
Description: A very nice indie folk/rock Canadian band.
Mp3s:
- Frank Ab
- Don’t Haunt This Place

* Sin Fang Bous
Description: A very interesting experimental folk singer from Iceland. I suggest you buy the “Melt Down the Knives” track from his first album, excellent track.
Mp3s:
- Catch The Light

* Black Gold
Description: A new indie pop/rock band from Brooklyn. Their latest album, “Rush”, is well worth listening to.
Mp3s:
- Detroit

I?ve spent a week without Twitter. ?Big whoop? you may think; and I'm inclined to agree. I have not set out to prove anything to my readers, this was entirely a personal choice.

The thing is, I am concerned by how much it has affected me and I am equally concerned about me generating value for a company that gives me nothing worthwhile back in return. We crowd to these flavour-of-the-month websites, rag on about how awesome they are (belittling those who don?t understand the concept), generate a billion dollars (pinky to mouth) of value in the company, and then they sell to the suits and we all move on to the Next Big Thing?.

Where is my cut of the sale? Without our content, Twitter, Facebook &c. are empty and valueless. If I'm going to be contributing to someone?s value, I would rather that were a public benefit company such as Mozilla or the BBC.

But then, I'm not interested in making money out of Twitter either, I don?t link to my Twitter account from my website (think of all the ?SEO? I'm missing out on :P) and I mainly use Twitter as a dumping ground for thoughts that would not fill up a blog post. Mostly rants and annoyances. It was, when I started out, a one-way thing, where I would send short poems and inspirational statements. A sort of notepad to capture thoughts because of the ease of being able to text with a phone content in which I can?t do with my own site.

I think Twitter has given me the opportunity to become too bossy, too arrogant, unforgiving and generally thoughtless. Without the reflective period to ?think before I publish?, I have not found Twitter to be benefitting my personality.

But my main concern is really that the whole thing is beginning to turn sour already and I'm about ready to jump ship to the Next Big Thing?.

There was a time before ?RT?, a time when I saw maybe one or two, and wondered what on earth ?RT? stood for. I wasn?t part of the in-crowd, where such things are not explained to you, you just have to find them out. There was a time before ?Retweet this? buttons on websites. Before we counted how many tweets something had. Even before there were hashtags. Simply put, the crowd spam has become too much.

The addition of lists now adds one more number on my page that measures my worth as a person by how much of a whore I am. What on earth have those numbers got to do with anything about the quality of my tweets content or the quality of my personality?

I am not a number. I am a free man.

Twitter is good in the sense that we can talk to one another in a rapid and gratifying way, but since when did one company have the monopoly on conversation? It?s not that I don?t value the people I follow on Twitter, it?s just that I don?t value Twitter itself. As nice as Twitter is, I'm not Twitter and you?re not Twitter either. Twitter is a brand, where there shouldn?t be a brand. All these Twitter clients and Twitter widgets and uses of the Twitter API just perpetuate a brand rather than a means of conversation.

There is no monopoly on e-mail. No one company holds the keys to the API, e-mail is not centralised. E-mail is a standard, e-mail is not a fucking brand.

Speaking of e-mail, I've had an e-mail address since 1996. My e-mail address is displayed on my website, on every page, unobfuscated. Contacting me has always been easy. Twitter, of course, gives us the benefit of having a conversation in public, but I liken it more to shouting across the street at each other. You can?t really hold a lengthy conversation, just shout short sound bites. I have an idea for an elegant on top (but ugly under the hood) comment system for websites but I would need some help creating it. If you?re into the open web, love PHP and optionally know about accessing and processing e-mails from within PHP, please contact me and we can start a conversation.

I cannot possibly advocate the open web and Doing Things Right whilst I use a system intent on furthering a brand, inhibiting diversity and inhibiting the choice of which company you use on the Internet in order to have a conversation with somebody else. If Twitter truly cared one iota about the public benefit, then they would be seeking ways to increase interoperability, to increase participation from all parties, to present standards by which we can all communicate without Twitter too.

Now, apparently people enjoy following me on Twitter and what I say, and would be a bit bummed by my leaving, so I will deal you a compromise. I agree with Twitter?s principle, its concept?just not its particular implementation. I will continue to use Twitter, but it will return to a one-way thing as I started out. I will post to it, and I will read your replies, and I will reply to you; but I will no longer follow anybody. If you wish to engage me, simply mention me and I?m happy to talk. If you think something should be brought to my attention, then again, mention me in your tweet and I will pick it up.
For everything else, there?s e-mail.

It’s impossible to sum up all of my thoughts and feelings about Festival 8 in a way that would do any justice to my memory of it. I know that to be true, but I’m going to try anyway, because it seems foolish to let this high fade over time, and I want to remember how I feel so next time a festival comes around, I’ll know why I want to go.

I was a little nervous about this one for a number of reasons, because I didn’t want to go on an adventure like this without my wife; I didn’t want to miss my two year old’s first trick-or-treating adventure; I didn’t want to go cross country alone. But a big one was that I didn’t want to go and be alone the whole time. Sure, there were JAM listers who were going to be there, but sometimes you meet people in real life and it’s awkward, and you realize it was more natural when you were just talking to a screen.

I was lucky enough to have found a hotel where two of my new friends were staying, Scott and Elayne. Elayne and I had arranged to carpool to the event. I had softly pre-planned to meet a few people, so I figured I’d bum a ride the first day and then go my own way so as not to be a leech.

I got to the hotel around 5:30 or so, completely mentally drained and exhausted, and Elayne texted me that they were about to go on “an adventure” and “did I want to come?” I knew blowing off the excursion was exactly the opposite of what I wanted the trip to be, so I threw my stuff in my room and headed out with Elayne, George, and their friend Jess. Jess was working on site, so we stopped by to drop her off. While waiting for her pass, I turned to George and whispered, “Hey, isn’t that Brad Sands?” “I don’t think Brad Sands works for them anymore,” he answered, at full volume. Elayne shot him a dirty look and loudly whispered – “That IS Brad Sands!” He was about 5 feet from us. I imagine it was more awkward for him than us, since we were just excited to be there.

We lightly scoped the festival grounds and inadvertantly learned our way around Indio. I was starting to fade from lack of food, so we found an authentic Mexican restaurant. It’s hard to sum up how grea the meal was largely because I don’t know how good it actually was: at the time, it was incredible. The best guacamole I’ve ever had combined with an array of homemade goods: crunky taco shells that were imperfectly crafted from freshly-fried hand-made corn tortillas, strechy and rich queso, thick and hearty chips… it was all perfect. We followed the meal with a stop off at some of E & G’s friends’, where I finally got to meet ZZYZX. Afew hours later, day one was done and all that remained was the festival itself.

DAY ONE

An easy morning of lounging around laid the base. We stopped at Wal-Mart for some essentials. We tried to go to a burger joint called “Burgers and Beer” for lunch, but both of the locations on Google Maps were out of business, so we settled on Cactus Jack’s. It was the perfect lunch, the “California Chicken” sandwich: a grilled chicken breast with swiss, bacon, and avacado on a bun. Not too heavy, not too light, just right for a pre-concert meal. No one wants to be carrying a lump of food in their stomach during a Phish show.

We got to the site around 1 anticipating traffic, but, much to our surprise, they waved us right in. There was absolutely no back up due to, I’m sure, a combination of excellent planning and a venue that had so many ins-and-outs that there was nary a bottleneck. On the way in, the promise of chocolate chip pancakes, corn dogs, veggie burritos, and much more suggested that there would be an array of foods and goods to make the event sustainable over several hours.

Security was relatively easy: no explanation necessary for my bag full of clothes that also had phone batteries, sealed water, Tylenol, and a pharmacy full of just-in-case stomach medications. Entering the venue from the grounds was almost overwhelming. There was a giant ferris wheel, a pizza stand, a small general store and a water stand. For $10, you could buy a Nalgene bottle that would be freely refillable for the duration of the festival. I bought one right as I entered. It was hard to take it all in – there was so much to do and so much to see. They were serving Sierra Nevada’s custom “Foam” beer. There were bloody marys. There was food – tons of it. I mean tons. Pizza, cheesesteak, chicken fingers, lemonade, ice cream, turkey wraps, burritos, nachos, hamburgers, garlic fries, coffee, gyros, hot waffles and ice cream, chocolate dipped cheesecake on a stick, fire-roasted artichokes… there was enough that you never needed more than 5 minutes in any line for anything you could envision.

It was hot – really hot. But we shuffled through and made our way through the campground. We found Scott, then Herschel. We wandered through the field until we found Jack and Kat.  Then Phillip.  Then Charlie.   Slowly, the people with whom I’ve been working so closely for the last several months started to become real. Before the event began, the first buzzkill of the weekend emerged: a guy dropped like a rock about 5 feet from us and had a wild and violent seizure. It was so crowded that everyone had a “what should we do?” look. Perplexed, we wondered: do we go for help and miss the set after everything? I wish I could even tell you what happened to the guy, because the band took the stage and I tuned out. It got cold fast, set 1 began with jackets on. A fun set from Party Time through Time Turns Elastic, even though the latter was pretty sloppy. Clearly a “warm up” set, we all agreed, but there were some highlights – I specifically remember liking the Page song “Beauty of a Broken Heart”. After some shirtless, drunk d-bag trampled Elayne and landed on ZZYZX’s feet (how fun to watch him man-up and scream at the guy “Get the fuck out of here… you fucking asshole!”), we used to setbreak to relocate to right behind the delay speaker stacks, which afforded us both more space and, frankly, better crisper sound. The screens were such crispy HD signal that it was like watching a DVD, so much so that I probably spent only a small fraction of time scruntinizing the boys on stage. Most of the time, it was either Kuroda’s majesty or the side screens pulling my eyes, so the location was great. So great that we made it our home for the next 6 sets and much of the time in between.

Set 2 was more of the same: standard setlist, “clearly out the back catalog,” many said, but there were some clear highlights for sure. Piper, Wolfman’s, Down With Disease, and Joy – which means so much mor to me now that I know it’s at least partly about daughters – were highlights. It was pretty cold out at that point, but the music was keeping us warm. Post-set, George and Elayne and I got in line for a post-show slice of pizza, and it was the perfect cap to the night. Traffic out was drop-dead easy: we got in the car and waited a grand total of 45 seconds before exiting onto the main road. We stopped at Wal-Mart for the second time that day on the way home to pick up water and some basic breakfast foods. Got home about 1:30 and to sleep around 2. Great day.

DAY TWO

Day two was Halloween, and the most anticipated of the three days for most. We stopped at Wal-Mart yet again for sunscreen and Tylenol for our aching foot muscles. We left around 11 for the grounds because George and Elayne wanted to participate in the horsehoe contest. We got to the grounds and were immediately presented a “Phishbill” revealing the musical costume of 2009: the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. I had combed over many of the remaining albums and was really hoping for Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, but once eliminated, I was pulling for Thriller or the elusive “100th album.” So Exile was a disappointment for me, at first. I was, however, happy to see Halloween in Miami announced.

Knowing that there were 100 options for food at the event, I split off for my own adventure. I went to a “tweet up” to meet several folks I know from Twitter. It was really cool to meet some of the people I’d spoken with so many times, a theme for the weekend, it seemed. After the tweet-up, I met up with Herschel and Scott and we got some lunch. It was ridiculously hot outside. Despite the heat, there was much to do. But it seemed that one of the most fun things to do was to meet at our central location – a large blanket that G&E had decorated like basketball court for part of their group Halloween costume – and just hang out with the many cool people around. It was a blast to spend some time with new and exciting people like Erik Janus and David & Mel Steinberg, some of whom I knew before via email, some of whom I only met at the event.

AT&T coverage seemed to stretch everywhere except the concert field, where even Edge coverage was spotty. While in GPRS territory, from time to time, my phone would catch a signal and deliver a chunk of pending email. It was a very odd experience to receive a message from people tagging my Facebook photos telling me to have a good time, only to find out that they were the friends of the very people I was sitting with. Watching the “phamily” unfold was really something that can’t be explained to non-Phishheads. George and Elayne rejoined us having secured a spot in the semi-finals.

Set 1 began not much later than expected, and it was a lot of fun. Looking back at the setlist, I have to say that nothing really stands out as truly memorable. Divided was great as always. Kill Devil Falls, my absolute least favorite song off of Joy, was actually really well done and I appreciated it at the time. I remember liking Gin and Coil, and Antelope was as rockin’ as it usually is. But nothing from Set 1 ranks among the top of the weekend. Either way, the atmosphere made it taste like an appetizer.

It got dark and cold, but not nearly as cold as the night before. The band took the stage after a 5 minute tribute video to their costume also-rans. Busting in to Rocks Off was so much fun. It’s one of my favorites off the album, so it was very welcome. The band was joined by Sharon Jones and Shaundra Williams on vocals and The Dap Kings on horns. And then Phish did what they normally do to me: they changed my mind. They made me enjoy Exile. A few days out, I say what I didn’t then: after hearing Phish perform Exile, I’m learning to love it. Is it just wacky psychology? Maybe. But either way, you must hear their take. Torn and Frayed is genius. Shake Your Hips, Let It Loose, Casino Boogie, all great. Loving Cup? Probably the best ever. The entire adventure was fun.

We did nothing between sets except hang out. There was one dude, Z-Dogg – 16 years old and stoned out of his skull – who was just crashing all over everything and everyone’s stuff. It was funny to watch this numbskull mope around looking for weed he could bum off of anyone. And, strangely, I think his mother and father were with him constantly smoking him up. Very weird.

Set 3 may have been the musical highlight of the weekend. It started with an unexpected but triumphant Backwards Down the Number Line, a song that really captures some of Trey’s demons, but in a happy way, if that’s possible. It was well executed and dropped into a well performed and powerful, if relatively standard Fluffhead. Fluffhead morphed into one of the best Ghosts in recent memory. I normally find When the Circus Comes to be a little too slow for most sets. In short, it’s hard to recover the energy after such a slow song. Fear not, after some deliberation, You Enjoy Myself came along and set things right.

For an encore the band re-emerged with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and tore through what most people are calling the best Suzy Greenbery ever. It’s hard to argue it, the horns and the backup vox made this a really special and screaming Suzy, and it’s unlikely to be matched without a similiar lineup – ever.

In post show bliss, we got our post-show pizza and took a trafficless post-show drive to our post-show ritual Wal-Mart stop. An all around great day.

DAY THREE

Woke up early Sunday to make it to the acoustic set. G & E and Jess dropped their stuff in my room, they were checking out that day, abnd we were off. We did NOT stop at Wal-Mart that day.

I was thinking that morning about how lucky I was to have met Elayne and George.  It could easily have been weird to be carpooling with people I didn’t know: I had figured, before getting there, that I would bum a ride the first day and then “do my thing” the remaining days.  But they were very cool and it was very chill with them, so I stuck around.  That morning, very casually, George said to me, “One of the coolest things about this festival was meeting you, you’re good people.”  I totally felt the same way, and it was true, for me,  that having a home base with cool people was elemental in the trip being successful.  It was a huge compliment to know that people I was enjoying hanging out with were enjoying hanging out with me too.  Especially those two.

We arrived to the only traffic of the weekend, I’m sure everyone was getting there at the same time for once, so we (ab)used Jess’ artist pass to park in a special lot. We trekked in to the first security backup of the weekend, but it wasn’t too bad, they let us in without much fuss. We made it in time for the set, and it was a great set. It was unlike any other Phish set… well, ever. And when they switched from slow and mellow to upbeat via McGrupp and The Curtain, it made my day. Talk was one of the bigger “bust outs” of the weekend, if you can call it that, and though the sun was killer, the experience was unforgettable. When they played an acoustic encore, we spent the following hour debating how to represent the encore to a set in the setlist. I got a chance to meet Ellis and his family, only missing a few Mockingbirders for the weekend.

Hopes were high for sets two and three, and they didn’t disappoint. Set two began with a short and powerful AC/DC Bag dropping right into a clean and energeic Rift. Then came Gotta Jibboo, one of my favorites of the weekend just because it was really well played. Reba was nice, The Wedge and Guelah, two tunes that have been much rarer in recent years, followed. Undermind is, perhaps, going to go down as my favorite song of the festival. The reworked version is the same they played at the soundcheck, but it’s so funky and fun. A standard Sparkle preceded a very welcome Split Open and Melt. All in all, good set. In between, we got to meet Julia, who, believe it or not, actually exists, and is not, as is often claimed, Mike Gordon.  [If, however, anyone would go to the trouble of hiring a temporary stand-in just to fool with us.. oh, and also create a Facebook and Twitter page for her, well, that'd be Mike.]  Either way, we met a person claiming to be her, unfortunately, she arrived just as the set started, leaving us no time to actually talk to her.

It didn’t get cold for set 3, which was welcome. By this point, everyone was realizing that the weekend was winding down. So we settled in, knowing, as well as one can, that we were in for a Tweezer. And we were, Set 3 opened with Tweezer -> Maze. Then came some very good songs: Free, my first Sugar Shack, a high-energy Limb By Limb, and a heavy Theme From the Bottom. The closing series was Mike’s Song > 2001 > Light > Slave to the Traffic Light, which is very hard to beat. I love Light, this one is being debated on many discussion groups as great vs standard, but I love Light, and given the atmosphere, I call it great. And, as you may know, I’ve already made the case for Slave.

The encore was a slightly different Grind, followed by an unexpected and oddly placed Esther. And then, with the hard-hitting mini-jam of Tweezer Reprise, the weekend was over.

I passed on the pizza on Sunday. Instead, I sat back and took it all in. Festival 8 was over. And it was awesome.

I fell asleep on the drive home (I was Z-dogg’in it, you could say), I said goodbye to G&E and went to sleep.

GOING HOME

The next day, I was set to travel home. When I got to the Ontario airport after my maiden voyage to Avocado Burger. In a welcome coincidence, I was on the same flight as Jack and Kat. I got a chance to spend a few minutes chatting up Mockingbird business with him. Good times. The flight from Vegas to Orlando wasn’t bad at all – smooth and generally uneventful, the way I like my flights.
It’s hard to communicate to those who missed it what 8 was like. They can listen to the MP3s, they can look at pictures, they can hear the stories, but they probably can’t appreciate just how amazing the whole vibe was, how free the whole atmosphere was, they way we were welcomed by the city and the venue, how the weather, and the organization, and the hotels, and the restaurants, and the friends blended together into such an event. I suppose all that can be said is “I hope this happens once again!”

See you at 9?

Red Giant Software released yesterday a Vegas version of their brand new product, Magic Bullet Mojo. Mojo is a simpler version of Magic Bullet that only has one goal: to make your footage look like the Hollywood movies of the last few years: teal-looking, but by preserving the skin color (which can be a tricky thing to achieve without this plugin). I tried the demo, and it indeed does what it promises. The algorithm they use to auto-figure-out where the human face is in the frame, and preserve that color, works great. You can use the plugin’s UI to bleach or warm your video, punch it, change the color tint from green to teal to blue, select the way the algorithm finds the face in the frame, and finally, how much you want these settings blended with the original, ungraded look.

Talent is Dave Tsui, from the Bay Area band HIJK

The only problem I encountered is that the “mojo” slider punches up contrast and/or gamma (even with “bleach”/”punch” all the way down). I would prefer to contrast/gamma my video separately if required, with the use of another plugin, and only use Mojo for its teal/skin abilities. Finally, on Vegas, we are used to double-click the UI’s slider buttons to get them to jump back to their default values, but this doesn’t happen with the Mojo UI.

Update: One more example. Except the unwanted dark gamma change that I can’t get rid of with Mojo, the rest of the tint is as it’s supposed to be. I know that to some of you it looks weird and that the original picture looks more natural, but the point of Hollywood movies — that Mojo emulates — is to not be natural.

Litl’s super-secret product, the Webbook, that the company was working for 2 years now, was announced yesterday. It’s a netbook-style laptop, with a TV-like presentation mode when in “easel mode”, HDMI TV-out, and custom user interface — where the web browser is the interface. A lot of the information is stored in the cloud, and the laptop auto-maintains itself at night when not in use. It’s using Linux underneath, with some highly-modified Gnome technologies on top. More info and videos from here.

The reason I originally got interested about it last night was because it kind of reminded me Be’s “internet appliance” touch tablets back in 2001 which were running the BeIA operating system (based on the BeOS). Kind of reminded me that romantic era in terms of operating systems and new emerging technologies and whatnot.

Then, after the 2 minutes of day dreaming, I flash-forwarded myself back to 2009. And I realized what a stupid idea this is.

From the get go, the Webbook is simply over-priced at $699. It has no additional hardware that a $300 netbook doesn’t already have, and I am willing to pay an extra $100 for the special software that did cost money to develop. But 700 bucks? No freaking way. Especially for a non-touchscreen device like this (touchscreen that you would expect in this day and age), this is an overpriced item. Given the kind of homes shown in the marketing pictures on their web site, this feels like it’s geared towards the kids and grandmas of filthy rich people who try novelties like this for the fun of it (”oh honey, daddy can’t be in your birthday party tomorrow, he’s got work to do [see: whoring in Vegas]. But I bought for you a lovely present, your friends will be so jealous of your new toy computer!“).

Then, you will have to think about how *useful* this computer is. Interestingly, not much. It does WAY LESS than what an iPhone can do for once (both in terms of third party apps and basic functionality). And at least in the Bay Area (which is where most of the potential rich suckers for the Webbook live), everyone and their dog has a freaking iPhone (in fact, yesterday at Google’s headquarters I saw a lot of people using an iPhone, even if Google gave a free Android phone to all of its employees last year). And then there’s the AppleTV for the HD TV-out abilities, and even the PS3 and XBoX360 can show movies and pictures. Not good enough? Think that a REGULAR netbook, one that costs $300, can do everything that the Webbook can, and then some! In other words, the functionality offered by the Webbook is commoditized today, and easy to come by with cheap — or better understood — alternatives.

The only thing that the Webbook has for it, is its “easy to use” custom interface, but I think that custom interfaces that don’t offer a real (non-HTML) platform underneath for developers to really tap in, can simply not sustain themselves in the big picture. And heck, what is wrong with LiTL not offering a 3G connection? I mean, these devices are home-bound without a 3G connection, and given that they use the cloud so much (much more so than normal computers), it makes them utterly useless when wanting to take them with you. Or are we to believe that this webbook is supposed to be home-bound, and act as a middle ground between your stationary normal PC and your mobile cellphone? Because honestly, I don’t think there’s a market for that since a regular laptop can do most of that. And if not, Apple’s upcoming tablet will, in 3 months time.

So basically, my opinion is that LiTL has spent money on a product that simply can’t sustain itself. It couldn’t in 2001, and it can’t in 2009. Maybe if the netbook explosion hadn’t had happen 1.5 years ago, maybe — just maybe — there was some glimpse of hope for the Webbook. But the way things are now, it’s a lost endeavor. And it’s sad really. Especially for the engineers who worked on the software of this device.

And don’t get me started about that remote control (optional addon). Instead of really breaking new technological ground and creating a system like Natal (or at least a Bluetooth-based battery-powered touchpad device), users have to use that butt-ugly right-out-of-the-’60s remote control with its cumbersome “I am feeling blue” wheel-button. I honestly don’t know what the hell these people were thinking.

I attended DjangoCon this year for the first time, and found it very informative and enjoyable. I hoped to round out my knowledge of the state of the Django art, and the conference atmosphere made that easy to do.

Presentations

Avi Bryant's opening keynote was on the state of web application development, and what Django must do to remain relevant. In the past, web application frameworks did things in certain ways due to the constraints of CGI. Now they're structured around relational databases. In the future, they'll be arranged around Ajax and other asynchronous patterns to deliver just content to browsers, not presentation. To wit, "HTML templates should die", meaning we'll see more Gmail-style browser applications where the HTML and CSS is the same for each user, and JavaScript fetches all content and provides all functionality. During Q&A, he clarified that most of what he said applies to web applications, not content-driven sites which must be SEO friendly and so arranged much differently. Many of these themes were serendipitously also in Jacob Kaplan-Moss' "Snakes on the Web" talk, which he gave at PyCon Argentina the same week as DjangoCon.

Ian Bicking's keynote was on open-source as a philosophy; very abstract and philosophical but also interesting. It has been described as ?a free software programmer?s midlife crisis?. Frank Wiles of Revolution Systems gave a barn-burner talk on how Django converted him from Perl to Python, followed by another on Postgres optimization. The latter reflected a theme that all web developers are now expected to do Operations as well, with several talks devoted to simple systems administration concepts.

Deployment

While working on Django projects we've been doing this year, I've been watching developments around deployment of Python web applications, particularly with Apache. The overwhelming consensus: Without active development, mod_python is going the way of the dodo. Although WSGI is architecturally similar to CGI, the performance difference can be striking. mod_wsgi's daemon mode running as a separate user is more secure and flexible than mod_python processes running as the Apache user. Given mod_wsgi's momentum, it makes sense to use it and avoid mod_python for new projects.

Several other tools kept re-appearing in presenters' demonstrations. Fabric is a remote webapp deployment tool similar to Ruby's Capistrano. Python's package index, formerly named "The Cheeseshop", has been renamed PyPI, the Python Package Index. Though easy_install is the standard tool to install PyPI packages, pip is gaining momentum as its successor. VirtualEnv is a tool to create isolated Python environments, discrete from the system environment. Since the conference I've been exploring how these tools may be leveraged for our own development, and may be integrated into our DevCamps multiple-environments system.

Pinax

The Eldarion folks gave three talks on Pinax, and the project came up a lot in conversations. If anything could be said to have "buzz" at the conference, this is it. Pinax is a suite of re-usable Django applications, encompassing functionality often-desired, but not common enough to be included in django.contrib. It may be compared to Drupal and Plone. Its popularity also spurred discussions on what should or should not be included in the Django core, and how all Django developers should make their apps re-usable (some of James Bennett's favorite topics).

Community

Among others, I was fortunate to spend time with Kevin Fricovsky and the others who launched the new community site DjangoDose during the conference. DjangoDose is a spiritual successor to the now-defunct This Week in Django podcast, and was visible on many laptops in the conference room, aggregating #djangocon tweets.

That's all I have time to relate now. There was plenty more there and I look forward to following up with people & projects.

Every so often I'll hear of someone asking for a way to allow their users to write queries against their database without having to teach everyone SQL. There are various applications to do this: BusinessObjects and Cognos, are two common commercial examples, among many others. Pentaho and JasperReports provide similar capabilities in the open-source world. These tools allow users to write reports by selecting fields from a user-friendly list, adding suitable constraints, and making other formatting and filtering choices, all without needing to understand SQL.

Those familiar with these packages know that in order to provide those nice, readable field names and simple, meaningful field groupings, the software generally needs some sort of metadata file. This file maps actual database fields to readable descriptions, specifies relationships between tables, and translates database field types to data types the reporting software understands. Typically to create such a file, an administrator spends a few hours in front of a vendor-supplied GUI application dragging graphical representations of their tables and columns around, defining joins and entering friendly descriptions.

For the TriSano? project's data warehouse, we needed a way to make regular modifications to the metadata file we gave to our Pentaho instance, in order to allow users to write reports that included data from the custom-built forms TriSano allowed them to create. To this end, we dove into the Pentaho APIs and developed a system to modify the metadata file automatically, adding tables and relationships whenever users create a new custom form.

TriSano is a Ruby-on-Rails application, running on JRuby, and the ability to use Java objects natively within JRuby was critical to interfacing correctly with Pentaho, a Java application. Within JRuby, our script can create Pentaho objects at will. Interested parties are encouraged to browse the source code of the TriSano script for the many details required to make this work.

In short, the script makes a new Pentaho metadata file entirely from scratch, using only information from a small number of purpose-built database tables, and database structure information taken directly from the PostgreSQL catalogs. It creates a schema file, populates it with descriptions of each of the actual database tables our users are interested in, assigns friendly names to each of the database objects with which users will interact, and divides up the results into user-defined groupings meaningful to their business.

I'm not familiar with a commercial reporting package that allows for modification of the underlying metadata without user intervention; doing something like this without the benefit of open-source software would have been daunting indeed.

We watched the remake of “V” tonight on ABC. I’ve only watched bits and pieces from the original TV series, but this is besides the point, since this is supposed to be a full reboot of the show.

So basically, “V” is mediocre at best.

The problem is that the episode felt rushed and disconnected. It felt like a 2 hour pilot, cut into 1 hour. Things just go too fast and we don’t have the time to really see the reactions of the world on this new major situation.

Adding to that is the unbelievable behavior of people towards the aliens. When the original message off of the spaceship is done, everyone claps their hands and welcomes the new world order. If that was a real life scenario, people would just panic and loot everything in front of them. No one in their right mind would believe that message of peace. Or when that anti-V terrorist finds out that his old friend is actually alien he seems to accept it and go on by his business instead of showing even a small shred of disapproval.

And, oh, did I say “aliens”? Sorry about that. It’s “Vs” (pronounced vees), or “Visitors”. No one is calling them what they really are, aliens that is. Apparently ABC had a problem making it an alien show, of fear of alienating housewives (get it?).

Finally, there was very little mystery left in the series after the first 45 minutes. Two guys already getting revealed as aliens instead of one of them, or none. The show feels like it’s a cold-told tale of things happening to a few people we care nothing about rather than adding mystery, and making it a high-impact plot to the whole of the planet (we need to SEE it rather than just brush it off like nothing happened and accept the new world order out of thin air). Where is the UN and US government and military of the world in all this? UN got referenced but we see nothing that went on in that building.

Overall, just like “Flash Forward”, and “Heroes” before that, “V” is a good idea with a bad implementation. I don’t understand how some people can screw up a production so much. I wonder if the only talented TV writers left in the world are Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. At least these two guys can only screw up romantic plots, but when it comes to action/mystery/thrill, they know their shit.

Update: New York Times’ review got it right too.

I had one of these good and sucky all in one days.

Good: Going to Google’s headquarters to shoot a video for a company. Then, I had a nice lunch with JBQ there. I spent most of my day editing that video today, since I need to have it ready ASAP for a presentation.

Bad: Cage the Elephant’s marketing staff got me a press pass for the band’s concert in SF after TWO weeks of having me “on the wait”, in order to review the performance for a music magazine that I very occasionally write for. But by some sort of miss-communication in the morning, they removed my photo/video pass request. I emailed them at 1 PM with the exact requirements, but they didn’t reply to that email. I emailed again, and by 4 PM they told me it’s too late to get authorization for photo/video (I requested a pass for a 1-minute video, nothing more than that). So I got pissed off, and I didn’t go to the concert. I mean, I wanted to go there to visually also show to readers how it feels to be there, it wasn’t for that 16 bucks the ticket costs. Thank God, I can afford these 16 bucks. I must say that in the 10 years that I am dealing with PR/marketing people of various software/hardware companies, I never had major problems with them. As much as engineers like to poke fun at their marketing people, the technology marketing people rule compared to the entertainment ones.

Good: While still thinking that I have a photo pass, and while at Google, I stumbled at Romain Guy, a software engineer (and serious photographer) who works along my husband on Android (read at the end of this article about the funny way I got to know Romain). He was trying to sell his (second) Canon 5D Mark-II, and I was in need for a good low-light camera for the concert tonight. So I bought it. It looks good so far, although its ergonomics are a bit schizophrenic.

Bad: I can’t put off that laundry anymore. I hate laundry.

Of course, the 7D is a better deal in terms of video, and I still suggest to all of you to go for the 7D instead of the 5D. I went with the 5D because the price was right (as a second hand unit), we have lenses that better suit the 5D, and because I needed the camera tonight for the concert (that I eventually didn’t go).

Ok, off to go watch “V” now. After I start off that stupid laundry…

PostgreSQL 8.5 recently learned how to handle "inline functions" through the DO statement. Further discussion is here, but the basic idea is that within certain limitations, you can write ad hoc code in any language that supports it, without having to create a full-fledged function. One of those limitations is that you can't actually return anything from your function. Another is that the language has to support an "inline handler".

PostgreSQL procedural languages all have a language handler function, which gets called whenever you execute a stored procedure in that language. An inline handler is a separate function, somewhat slimmed down from the standard language handler. PostgreSQL gives the inline handler an argument containing, among other things, the source text passed in the DO block, which the inline handler simply has to parse and execute.

As of when the change was committed in PostgreSQL, only PL/pgSQL supported inline functions. Other languages may now support them; today I spent the surprisingly short time needed to add the capability to PL/LOLCODE. Here's a particularly useless example:

DO $$
HAI
 VISIBLE "This is a test of INLINE stuff"
KTHXBYE
$$ language pllolcode;

1. Brands Are Banned
2. Applications Are Contextual
   1. Managing ?Applications?
   2. App Folders
3. A Better File System Hierarchy
4. A Better File System and File Types
5. RISC OS? Menus
6. Viewing / Editing Files
7. Window Management
8. Application Examples

I?ve always thought about what I would do if I were able to somehow design / build ?my perfect O.S.? but it has always seemed rather pointless to publish my ideas since such an O.S. would never ever come to light. However, every time I think of a new idea or get into a heated discussion about some OS-related quirk at osnews.com I feel like I need to get these ideas off of my chest, regardless of how practical that is.

Therefore, here is?in no order?a collection of ideas of how I would go about designing my own perfect general-purpose operating system. I will add to this list as and when I think of new ideas, so it will be rather short to begin with?I just need a dumping ground for these ideas to start with.

Brands Are Banned

Brands are a barrier to transparency. Brands are forced on us beyond what is necessary, and force applications to become monolithic and bloated as they keep ahold of their brand rather than knowing when it?s wise to split the functionality out. For example, iTunes is no longer just a music player and conflicts with the other media capabilities of the O.S., forcing us to do things in one single application, and at odds with competitors? products. Why does the Zune come with its own media player, rather than just using Windows Media Player?

In my O.S. there would be no brands at all, they would not be allowed. The browser would be called ?web browser?, instead of iPhoto there would be ?photos?, iTunes would be ?music?, ?videos? &c. There are a number of benefits to having brand-less applications:

• It encourages people to work on improving the built-in functionality, rather than implement something new for the sake of branding

• It stops outright abuse of end-users by brands; for example, Java installing a tray icon, popping up and annoying the user, trying to install the Yahoo toolbar. It?s a freakin? programming language! I don?t expect the pipes in my plumbing to gurgle adverts when I run the bath, I expect my pipes to be dumb and the same should be of operating system components

• It allows for new ideas to be put in the right place, instead of a single application bloating beyond what is necessary

• It lessens end-user confusion due to marketing terms and brands being used rather than what something actually is. I don?t know a single regular end-user who could tell me what Java actually is

Because the application functionality of the O.S. would be dumb pipes that don?t try sing to you, it wouldn?t be obvious where the separation between O.S. and application lies. As such there would be no ?applications? to even speak of, this is expanded upon in the next point.

Applications Are Contextual

Again, this focus on ?applications? in current operating systems feels a lot like the plumbing is always on show (like something out of Brazil). In my O.S. applications would actually just be custom shell spaces; i.e. a more complicated version of the various custom explorer folder views in Windows (particularly Vista, 7) like the Fonts folder (which has special view options and menu items), the Control Panel and other areas that are essentially still folders on the computer, but viewed with a contextual viewer.

In my O.S., when you open your ?music? folder, the folder window would basically become something like iTunes. It would still be a folder to the hard disk, but the window would adapt to the content in that folder, taking the folder contents and displaying it in an appropriate, contextual way.

Likewise, opening the ?pictures? (or ?photos?) folder on the computer would show that folder as iPhoto. This would be instant, there would be no application icon launching, no task-bar button, no dock icon, no indication that this is an application?just viewing a folder, which is what you?re doing anyway.

BeOS kind of already does this (though I would like to see it taken much, much further). In BeOS, the mail application wasn?t really an app, so to speak, it was just a dialogue to write a new e-mail. You managed your e-mail (inbox / drafts &c.) using the normal, regular, file manager.

In my O.S. any folder you create could then be assigned a media-type that would describe which ?application? you would get when viewing that folder?s contents?music, videos, e-mail and so-on. The focus would be on the user?s contents, and not on individual applications.

There would of course be a generic folder type that would work just as we have folders now in other OSes that allow you to hold files of different types; the customised folders would only really apply where you know you would have a folder of all the same type (like for your e-mail, photos and music).

A hybrid QuickLook / dialogue-box U.I. would allow you to view any file. Custom dialogues would allow the editing of files, so for example, opening an e-mail would open that e-mail in an e-mail-looking application window, but there wouldn?t be any ?application? to speak of?just a window with a textbox with the text and a toolbar to reply, forward and so on?very spatial, like BeOS / Mac OS 9

Managing ?Applications?

Because there would be no brands and no application names (just nouns or verbs) nor icons?just folders for this and that?application management would take a very different approach. Applications themselves, physically, would be hidden away in the system folder and the user?s personal folders would just hook into each relevant application based on chosen media-type. The user would never actually see any application icons, or a list of applications like Mac OS X has.

The ?folder types? could be customised in the O.S. preferences, allowing a user to remove a folder type and thus effectively remove an ?application?.

Third party ?applications? would be downloaded and installed and then would just appear as a folder named after whatever content the application handled. For example, if someone made an e-book reading application, it would create an ?e-books? folder in the user?s home, and that folder would have the new customised shell, as well as the user being able to create a new folder anywhere that could also use this new ?folder type?.

Again, it?s important to stress that at no point an application would have a name, or brand. It is merely a folder to hold files using a customised view particular to that content?it?s the type of content that matters really.

App Folders

Okay, so I lied that there would be no applications?there would be applications, but only for tasks that do not internally store user-editable, user data and are generally not multi-instance. You can have any number of folders that use the photo application view &c. for your own data, but system preferences would be single instance (think Control Panel Applets in Windows).

This breed of application would handle the various utility tasks of the O.S. like changing configuration preferences and performing single-instance tasks. In BeOS fashion, these would be no more complicated than a dialogue window.

These would function like RISC OS and Mac OS X where a folder becomes an application (RISC OS prefixed the name with ?!? and Mac OS X suffixes with ?.app?). The application and it?s configuration data (a bit like a ?.ini? file) lie in the folder and the O.S. then displays that folder as a dialogue window however the app needs. Thus, these non user-data apps would be self contained and easy to move around and manage, much like Mac OS X. It?s important to stress that unlike Mac OS X, these kinds of apps would only be used in the case where there would be no user-generated, user-editable data (like photos, e-mail and so on) that the app would have to display.

Games would be distributed like this, so that the game and the user?s save files are completely self-contained (because the user would not be expected to edit the save-file by hand). But, for games where a lot of user managed files would be used, a folder-view would be appropriate?imagine an emulator folder-view that was effectively ?iTunes for ROMs?.

A Better File System Hierarchy

Frankly, it?s all still too hardware-centric. Why?in 2009?do we still put large icons of actual physical hard drives in operating systems? (You can even read the label on Apple?s) No end-user knows what that is, and usually has never seen the inside of their computer?not least that things like RAID, virtualisation, partitioning and storage pools muddying the very idea of ?drives?. The hardware is irrelevant to the end-user, we shouldn?t be exposing it to them.

Windows? ?My Computer? display is too hardware centric, focusing on physical devices, rather than the user?s personal data. In my O.S. none of this would be exposed to the user. The only file system exposed to the user would be their data, and that?s it.

Windows is particularly bad, but this even plagues Mac OS X which generally has a sensible file system layout.

Why would a regular, Joe-public user ever need to go into these folders?why are they even there!? Why are they visible to the user? Sure, advanced users may want to enter these folders, but at the end of the day they are a minority and they are expected to find out what option they need to change to make such folders visible if they were hidden.

The worst offender is the user?s ?Library? folder?

The Library folder has nothing to do with books, like an unsuspecting user would expect. Why is this exposed to them? It contains nothing they can decipher or modify themselves in any way without a lot of specific knowledge that would warrant them enough skill to unhide such a folder anyway.

In my O.S. absolutely nothing that isn?t the user?s own personal data would be on display, and their hard drives would not be displayed as hard drives at all, but rather as ?home? folders to browse. No allusion to the hardware would be made (for internal hardware).

For externally added hardware, like USB drives and CDs, these would appear on the desktop much like Mac OS X or Amiga OS but the desktop would expand upon this notion and be used for all externally plugged in hardware. It?s about time we went back to printers being on the desktop (so we can use drag-and-drop printing like we had in the ?80s). The ?printer? would just be a print-queue custom folder view of the print-job files.

Remember?throughout this article, my O.S. uses a spatial file manager, not a navigational file manager. Double clicking on a file or folder will open a new window, like Mac OS 9, BeOS and Amiga OS.

A Better File System and File Types

A lot of the time, I end up copying BeOS, because it mostly had things right, especially for the time. The file system should be metadata-centric. Application specific databases are bad, bad things, and would be banned. The file system is the database, and a fast query-based file system engine would power the custom folder views, letting you search as easily as you can in iTunes, but doing so using the file metadata already on the files.

With my O.S. this would be taken one step further, by introducing new generic file types. File extensions are a bad way of determining type, but let?s imagine?for the sake of making it easy for you to imagine?that my O.S. had ?.image?, ?.audio?, ?.video? and ?.email? file types.

Whenever a file entered the computer from an external file system (such as FAT, NTFS and from web pages), it would be converted copied to an appropriate generic media file type and all the meta data that could be ascertained would be extrapolated from the file into the extended attributes of the file system.

For example, if you downloaded an MP3 file, that MP3 file would immediately have its ID3 tags and other attributes moved into the extended attributes of the file system so that the file could be searched based on artist, album, bit rate, BPM and anything else the importer could determine about the file. The audio data would then be saved as a ?.audio? file, though there would be no need to actually convert / transcode the sound from MP3, it would still be MP3 data (think of ?.audio? as a generic container that can hold any codec).

E-mails for example would be ?.email? files that would contain the text of the e-mail, but all the e-mail headers would be moved into the extended attributes so that you could search, filter and create smart-search-folders of them &c. (remember that the e-mail app is nothing but a folder containing e-mail files and any other folders you want).

These generic file types would then allow us to maximise integration with the system and use the power of the query based search to manage files in innovate ways.

Ah, but what about when you need to transfer a file to another computer, which wouldn?t support ?.audio?? Whenever a file is being moved to an alien file-system, the O.S. automatically reconstructs that file back into a compatible file format. If you were to copy that ?.audio? file onto a FAT-formatted USB stick, then the O.S. would transparently reconstruct an MP3 file, taking the sound data and adding the extended attributes as tags (since you may have edited the extended attribute information since).

But that same file, copied to a more advanced file system that does already support metadata, would have the extended attributes preserved! That way we wouldn?t be needlessly crippling files just for the sake of FAT. Security permissions could even be transparently mapped to NTFS or Unix according to file system you?re copying to!

This would also allow advanced users to selectively customise how a generic file type like ?.image? would be converted into a more common file type on an alien file system. You could choose to output a PNG, or a JPEG from your ?.image? file according to your tastes.

Because all this conversion would be done transparently by the O.S., it would also mean that users accessing the machine from an SMB network connection would just see JPEGs instead of ?.image? files, but the owner of the computer could just as easily change a setting so that images were always provided as PNGs to outsiders instead. Due to the idea of applications being folder views, this could even be on a per-folder basis.

RISC OS? Menus

There?s no other way to say this really, RISC OS had the best menu system in any O.S., ever. The functionality has never been matched. You should read this web page to get a proper understanding. There were a number of flaws in the implementation (it was the early ?90s, mind), but I think all of those could be smoothed out in my O.S., the core ideas are sound.

All menus were context-menus in RISC OS. Whilst I wouldn?t use the quirky three-button mouse system from RISC OS, I like the idea that a huge amount of the U.I. needed for any situation, including entire print dialogues, could be hidden away behind one convenient mouse button would be grand.

This would allow the folder views to keep a focus on user data, and display things with a Mac OS 9 / BeOS level of simplicity and spatiality.

Where did all the bloat go!? I love the utter simplicity. I would aim for something not too dissimilar to this, with a lot of polish. That way, when you go from a generic folder, into an app-view folder you would not be going from one complex U.I. to an entirely different complex U.I.

Whenever you context-clicked on an object, that object would be tinted (as most OSes do) so that you know what the context-menu is for, except that this would happen everywhere in the O.S. and for everything?context-click on the desktop and the whole desktop image will tint but not the foreground windows &c. so that it?s clear that the context menu is specifically for the desktop. Context-clicking on a window will tint the whole window, but doing the same on an icon will tint just the icon, and so on. I?ve always seen regular users struggle with context menus, the whole ?context? bit just isn?t clear enough.

Viewing / Editing Files

So far I?ve described how files would be managed, but not how something as simple as an image would be actually viewed or edited. An O.S. is no good if it could be very simple to use, but never be capable of anything as complex Photoshop at the end of the day.

Files are viewed / edited by one or more file-handlers. These display the file in its own window with whatever U.I. is both relevant to that file type, and which specific file-handler is in use.

For example, double clicking on an image file?be that in a generic folder view, or in the custom photo-app view?would bring the image up on screen in a way similar to quick look. This would be a simple file-handler to appropriate that file, but other file-handlers could be used, from something as simple as something like MS Paint up to something as complicated as Photoshop. Using the context menu for a file object would let you choose an alternative file-handler, just as you can with the ?open with? functionality in many OSes.

There is only one important thing to note though: as you understand there are no application names or brands, so ergo, there is no concept of an encompassing application that stays open even after you?ve closed all the documents. That?s a no-no in this O.S. When you open / view / edit a file, a single window wrapped around that file appears with the necessary toolbar and widgets and the file?s name occupies the window?s title.

What file-handler you get (and how you recognise one from another) is down to the verb used to launch that file-handler. Each file-handler can register a verb for the file-types it understands, so that when you open the context-menu for, say an audio file, you would get menu items for ?Play? (e.g. play in a standalone player), ?Edit? (e.g. bring up an audio editor like Audacity) or ?Burn? (e.g. the CD-burning interface) and so on.

Window Management

The problem with spatial file managers?at least how I see it, is that window management quickly becomes a chore. I don?t know how I lived before Exposé, even now, when using a Windows computer, I keep accidentally jamming my mouse in the corner of the screen and getting annoyed at why it isn?t working :P

I don?t have answers to all the problems yet, but here are a few ideas I?m throwing up:

Essentially, in my O.S., there are only three types of windows on show?1. a folder (be that generic, or an app-view), 2. a file being viewed / edited and 3. a dialogue coming from an app (such as write-new-mail, or an ?Okay / Cancel? message box). Additionally, being a spatial window manager, windows are a parent and / or a child of some other window. This means we have a number of types and relationships by which we can group windows.

Exposé can show all windows, the windows of a particular app, or the desktop. Exposé in Snow Leopard adds to this letting us order windows alphabetically or by type.

With a spatial file manager, as you drill into folders you are left with a chain of windows for each folder on the way. We could map this chain, like so: (Please excuse just how rough this is, I was most surprised to discover that Pages / Keynote have no auto-diagramming function!)

With my Exposé, invoking the command to view the child windows of an ?app? (F10 in OS X), would show the ?app? in the centre, and then radiating outward, the files you have open that come from that folder.

Imagine in this instance that you opened your ?pictures? folder, which brings up the iPhoto-like app view and you have chosen to view / edit four different photos here. The ?pictures? folder appears in the middle, and the child windows surround it.

These sorts of ideas really need exploring though. However, I know for sure that I want to avoid any need for minimise and maximise. These are U.I. relics as old as menus and need obsoleting. Being a spatial window manager, when you resize and position a window, it will save its size and position when you close it (unless you hold down a modifier key when click the close button). The folder app-views can choose default, sensible sizes and positions for themselves. I would set a web browser window to 1024x768 pixels by default, for example.

I don?t know about having tabs in a browser, if the window management were good enough, it might not need them (or just go hybrid). For example, if we spawned a new window, instead of tab, then particular websites could have their own remembered window size and location?quite handy; and the Exposé function would chain the windows together so it would be like some kind of cross between browser history and Exposé. Who knows.

Application Examples

Here are some brief examples of how I would go about implementing some typical applications in this O.S..

Calendar

The calendar would be, on disk, just a folder with a bunch of files in it for the events, a bit like: Mac OS X:

However, the ?calendar? folder in your home, would use a custom app-view so that that folder would appear, when you opened it, basically like iCal. Adding / editing events would modify the files in the folder, but you would be viewing that folder as a calendar application. Because the O.S. allows you to have as many folders as you want, anywhere, appear as calendars as you so choose, then additional calendars (like you have in iCal), would just be (on disk) a subfolder! The calendar app-view would present you that folder and its subfolders as iCal does though. The colour for that calendar?s events would be chosen by the label colour of the subfolder, just as you can set label colours of files & folders in generic folder views. Elegant above and below the hood!

Instant Messenger / VOIP

Well there?s no reason an IM app couldn?t look and function just like a perfectly normal IM app, despite being a folder under the hood. Each contact would be a file on disk, the metadata would contain their account names, avatar and any other details, and the file itself would be the chat log for that person. The IM folder app-view would just display this folder of files like a traditional IM app, hiding people offline and so forth. The person?s online status would be an extended attribute on their file, and a live search query would simply find ?people who are online??using the file system itself to display the user list. BeOS already did this with IMKit :)

Talking to someone would be?to the O.S.??editing? that user file (you double-clicked on a file, after all). It would open the IM chat window (same as any other decent messenger), but you are effectively viewing / ?editing? the chat log via a special U.I. (that same chat log could be opened in a text editor instead, for example).

This would likely somehow be centralised through the address book (described below) though, I would have to think the details through more, but you get the gist.

Address Book

A folder of VCard files, shown in the U.I. of Address Book on Mac OS X. Simple, really. Just like the address book on Mac OS X allows you to do smart-folders, this would be implemented with equally simple saved-search sub-folders in the address book folder (?show me all the people whose birthday is in 6 days time? &c.)

RSS Aggregator

A folder with an ?.OPML? file, and the RSS files downloaded?displayed as an RSS reader U.I.
(See how easy this is when you think of apps as nothing but viewing files in a folder in a custom way?)

Integrated Development Environment

Simpler than you would think. Just an app folder view for your project folder. You create a folder for your programming project that will hold your source files, then set the folder view to IDE and when you open the folder, it?s an IDE with the project tree on show. In other OSes, you open the IDE application, and then choose the project?on my O.S. you would just double click on the folder for your project and there?s your IDE.

Hopefully these examples will begin to demonstrate the concepts of this O.S., whereby everything is a folder, just viewed in a custom way, and everything else is a file, just viewed and edited with a particular U.I. that is abstract to the file at hand.

I?ll expand this list as I think of more concepts, if you want to suggest an application I should describe, or have questions as to how this or that would work, please contact me.

Back in April I wrote a blog post about what solution would be ideal to feed our 65 GB of music library to our main speaker-set and amplifier. There was nothing that was doing exactly what we needed to do, so we were thinking of buying a second 400 CD-changer appliance, to fill it with our existing CDs and burned iTunes purchases.

The Sonos system was also discussed as a possible solution, but we were not happy with the fact it could not hold our library in the device itself, and needed constant streaming. We were not looking for a streaming system, but on a device that could hold all of our music in its internal drive, and get easily updated when we need it to.

Eventually, we added an intermediate step. We held back from the 400 CD-changer purchase, and bought a 120 GB iPod Classic with an Apple dock that featured a line-out. The problem with that solution is that we could not see what the heck was playing in the iPod’s 2.5″ screen while we were sitting on the couch, 2.5 meters away. Not to mention that for some reason the “back” key on the remote for the dock did not work with the Classic. Add to that the fact that the iPod line-out audio quality was below par (low volume compared to other input sources in our amplifier), and so sooner than later we were again in the market for a solution. Our Zune 120 GB and its dock had the similar usability/volume problems btw.

What made us root for the AppleTV was its “Remote” application for the iPhone/iPodTouch. There we are now, sitting on our couch, using the exact same UI as in the iPod Touch’s amazing music UI to control our AppleTV. We don’t even have to turn ON the HDTV to control it, it’s headless (that was one of our requirements)! We simply turning it ON once using its remote, then the iPod Touch’s “Remote” application takes over for the music control, and when we need to turn it OFF we just use the AppleTV remote again (long press on the play button puts the AppleTV on standby). Audio quality is punchy, CD-quality, much better than the iPod/Zune dock’s line-outs.

So far, so good! Only thing missing from the “Remote” app is the ability to rate songs (the UI is there but the rating mechanism is not implemented — maybe it comes in a future version)!

I don’t use the AppleTV for video playback, since the Sony PS3 is a much better solution for that (better support for formats and 1080/30p). But it’s perfect for our music, and maybe even for some streaming internet radio (new feature in the AppleTV 3.0 firmware).

Some have suggested that we could use a small laptop/PC with MPD in it, but there is a certain installation/configuration/annoyance associated with that. Turning ON the laptop/PC from standby would require to physically go close to the device, and then we would have to use MPD remote applications that simply don’t have the elegance of an Apple-designed app. Instead, the AppleTV just works, and we are able to _easily_ sync it with our iTunes installation too. That’s a major bonus since we use iTunes. Even more interestingly, the AppleTV is *cheaper* than a dedicated small laptop/PC running MPD.

So basically, for us at least, the “Remote” application is what made the whole difference for us, not necessarily the AppleTV itself. It’s one of these times that a side-project like that app is, brings value to other products!

Disclaimer: The following is meant as an analysis of the situation based on my experience as a tech journalist for some 8 years, and on my own personal opinion. It’s not meant to disrespect RED, or its founders. In fact, as a true tech geek, I am a fan of the whole RED project!

UPDATE 2: And now I am BANNED from the REDUser forum, for discussing my points VERY CALMLY with others. I was name called, but I never name called back. I simply explained my points, civilized, as you can read there.

UPDATE 3: Re-instated at the forum. Thanks everyone who spoke up about it.

RED just published an update on their vaporware line. You can read about it here & here.

Basically, these are hyperbole vaporware products, made by hype machines rather than engineers. Oh, I don’t dispute the fact that maybe 1-2 of these products announced last year and today will see the market at some point, but I do dispute the fact that they will be able to create all that stuff they are promising, and at the prices that they are promising. Already, now it’s becoming obvious that getting a usable Scarlet model is a $10k affair, and not a $3.5k as they had you to believe last year.

All this made me remember of my mother who used to tell me about an old man in her mountain village (I believe he’s long dead now) who had this moto: “promising is gaining, giving is losing”.

Basically, RED is a dream. Not your dream. But Jim Jannard’s dream. The guy’s a billionaire, and so he put together the RED company on the side. It’s obviously his “hobby” (it certainly feels that way). If the company goes nowhere eventually, oh well, at least he had fun doing it. But I keep thinking that all the millions he had poured into this, he could have either:
1. Simply make small modifications on the original RED while continuing R&D on new technologies without promising the most crazy things to his customers. Instead, follow a more traditional path regarding R&D and production.
2. If he just wanted to pour money down a hole, he should have given the money to people who need it instead, e.g. via Unicef.

Not all is bad from the whole story though. RED *has* contributed in the move from film to digital in Hollywood. I give them credit for that, and I thank them for that. But unfortunately, 99% of the time, it’s never that “first” company with the vision that ends up taking over that market. Instead, it’s the second or the third company in that sector who will learn from RED’s mistakes and dominate.

What I am saying here is that RED is going to die. There’s no way Jannard and his zillions can sustain this crazy business model they have. Just like the Xerox Alto was the first graphical personal computer of its kind but never went anywhere, RED will be seen the same way in 10-20 years from now. We would see RED with this romantic eye, but there won’t be any RED left at that point.

Who’s going to steal their thunder? In my opinion, it’s Canon. To create such complex technology, and especially at competitive prices, it requires an already established company with vast experience of both the technology and the market. Canon has the ability to simply evolutionize (rather than revolutionize) their existing technologies and catch up with RED — and even become better than them. Evidently from their recent VdSRLs and the rumored large-sensor prosumer cameras coming next Spring, I personally see Canon taking over Hollywood with as of yet un-announced offerings sooner than later.

But RED? It is Jim’s dream, and we were all in it. But I just woke up. I just hope Jim does too. Jim, save your money. That’s all I can say to you. Because I am a fan!

Update 1: A lot of people have a problem with the word “hobby”. Let me be clear about this. I believe that Jim does have a genuine interest about what he’s doing! He’s not an amateur. When someone has a serious hobby doesn’t mean that it’s just something he/she does on weekends.

But what it also means, in my book, is that he/she could be starting the business based on the interest about the technology in itself, and from pure curiosity, and for the cool factor, and not to create an actual profitable business. To me, a lot of things RED feel like “if it becomes profitable, even better — if not, well, we had fun researching and playing engineers”. While this is all fine if you’re a billionaire, it doesn’t strike me very nice if I was to be a customer.

I simply — for the life of me — can not take seriously RED when they spread themselves too thin over so many products. I just don’t see these as actual final products, I see them as beta stuff that someone put together in an R&D lab. Proof that the RED One had so many firmware upgrades so far. A “product” with the traditional sense, in that price, should have been bullet proof from Day 1. And I just don’t see this happening with the new line of cameras — if they ever come out.

In other words: In my own opinion, RED doesn’t know how to release PRODUCTS. There’s a difference between breaking new technological ground, and actually putting that new technology in an actual product. A product that is meant to be a product, and not a lab unit.

Apple only sell one phone?the iPhone. There may be different models, but there is only one brand. Where is ?the Sony phone?? I literally could not count how many handsets are available out there, that they replace with a whole new set every six months. They are throwing what little brand strength they gain by trying to constantly entice the user with something new.

The phone shop looked like a team of under twenty years old designers had been let loose, all creating their idea of a good phone. There was zero cohesion, no single statement. Just blinding amounts of design ideas and no one guiding principle.

Unless Sony change to a single handset?they will positively be forced out of the market.