Click to play

This week's show is only 30 minutes long and weighs about 28MB (it’s a 128kbps MP3). You can download the file directly, listen using the streaming player above, or (BEST OPTION!!1!) subscribe to the Bit Stories podcast feed in your favorite podcast aggregator (like iTunes). If you subscribe to the feed, you’ll get each show delivered automatically as it becomes available - probably once a week or so, with the occasional bonus video or audio segment thrown in for fun. Plus, we’ll love you forever if you subscribe! :-)

Here are some free form notes from today's show:

• Yet Another Audio Setup

• Embarrassing Confession: We recorded the last two shows using the built-in mic on my MacBook Pro, instead of the elaborate mixer/condenser mic that we have set up. Because I'm an idiot. The saving grace? It sounded pretty darn good! :-)
• Have developers let the Tablet PC community down?
• Brian paved and reinstalled Windows XP on his Samsung Q1 UMPC
• Why XP instead of Vista? Not quite enough horsepower.
• Josh has done the same thing (gone back and forth between XP and Vista) on his Asus R2H UMPC
• Speaking of mobile device operating systems... Moblin.org
• What the heck IS Moblin? Is it an OS?
• Moblin is a stack of tools to help create OSes and applications for Mobile Internet Devices. It's sponsored by Intel, and hosted by Intel Software Network
• Ubuntu Mobile Edition (UME) sneak peak is out there, if you have a Samsung Q1 Ultra
• Brian feels that he won't be able to use a Linux-based MID because of the lack of mature ink/handwriting input support
• It's really hard to do an ink interface well
• Will Atom-based devices ever have the horsepower to do handwriting well? Is this a hardware or a software problem?
• Do open source projects do better when there's a common, widespread demand and need for the result (like a web browser)? Do enough people in the open source community need and/or want good ink and handwriting support to motivate them to write it? Would enough people use it and care about it to make it worth their time?
• Since Mobile Internet Devices are all about the Internet, having a good browser is going to be essential.
• Windows versus Linux on these small, pocketable internet devices.
• In general, lack of UI "polish" in Linux applications is a deterrent for non-geeks to adopt it.
• Brian's "essential" applications on his Samsung Q1: Microsoft Office, Firefox, and Microsoft Money
• Is Firefox the exception to the "Linux applications don't have a good interface/user experience" stereotype?
• How easy is it going to be to "install any app you want" on the upcoming Linux MIDs?
• The challenges of adapting applications to devices on smaller screen.
• UMPCScrollBar - a great little app that lets you scroll windows around the smaller UMPC screen, so you can get to the "Install" and "OK" buttons that get pushed off the bottom of the screen.
• Intel Software Network's mobility community makes tons of resources, tools, and smart people available for people writing applications for these devices. Take advantage of us!
• Without great software, Intel products are just a bunch of really tiny hot plates. :-)
• Have we discovered the REAL reason Intel has chosen not to deploy Windows Vista? Is it because NetMeeting is no longer there? Microsoft stopped distributing NetMeeting in 1998 - TEN YEARS AGO. But Intel lives and breathes NetMeeting - old habits die hard. (Update after the show: according to Wikipedia, Microsoft released a hotfix that allows you to download and install NetMeeting on Vista. Guess we were wrong! ;-) )
• Macs do Screen Sharing, based on VNC, but there's NO way on a Mac to participate in a NetMeeting call, because it's a closed, proprietary Microsoft protocol.
• Google Docs is GREAT for live collaboration.
• PowerPoint is a great presentation tool, but it is NOT a collaboration tool! It gets abused WAY too often. PowerPoint abuse starts early - Brian's 7th grade son is already doing it!
• New recording time - Wednesday morning instead of Friday afternoon. Hope this gets the show out faster, and Josh and Brian perkier.
• Josh's morning voice - he's not a morning person. Brian gets up at 5:30 AM.
• Stuff we didn't get to this week: Brian dips his toes into the world of Twitter and FriendFeed, and next week is iPhone 3G day! Come stand in line with us!

The show is picking up steam - we're hitting our stride, and cranking them out. Many, many thanks to our listeners - we love you guys! We love connecting with people through the show, and getting to know who's listening. But the only way we can do that is if you talk to us, so leave a comment, email us, or find some other way to say "hi", and let us know what you think of the show! :-)

Click to play

This week's show is about 47 minutes long and weighs about 42MB (it’s a 128kbps MP3). You can download the file directly, listen using the streaming player above, or (BEST OPTION!!1!) subscribe to the Bit Stories podcast feed in your favorite podcast aggregator (like iTunes). If you subscribe to the feed, you’ll get each show delivered automatically as it becomes available - probably once a week or so, with the occasional bonus video or audio segment thrown in for fun. Plus, we’ll love you forever if you subscribe! :-)

Here are some free-form notes and links for the stuff we talked about this week:

• Intel's JF1 Workplace of the future. It isn't soundproof.
  Josh is not leaving Yahoo.

• Intel's Not Deploying Vista (NYTimes).
• It's more complex and subtle than "Vista Sucks". Really.
• Vista's not really that bad - we've both used it. Stability, tablet features, etc. are much better than XP.
• Why is Josh not using Vista today? Because he switched to Mac. It's not that he doesn't like Vista, it's that he doesn't like Windows. :-)
• Conspiracy Theory #1: Intel is creating a Linux distro for employees. All the big companies are doing it!
• Conspiracy Theory #2: Does Intel's processor technology come from aliens? Did they tell us NOT to use Vista?
• Firefox 3 was released! It set the Guinness record for software downloads in a day - 8+ million. Their servers were smoking craters for a while. Speed, stability, new UI, and memory footprint are much improved?
• Is Firefox 3 threaded for multicore processors? We don't know. Tell us!
• The use of the term "you can't swing a dead cat without hitting..." Swinging a dead cat is not endorsed by Bit Stories. Besdies, Josh is allergic to cats, except Serious Cat.
• Snow Leopard news - GrandCentral, OpenCL, LLVM, and smaller app footprints.
• Is Snow Leopard still going to have Rosetta emulation for PowerPC binaries?
• Hard drives are only getting bigger and cheaper (can you even BUY a Mac with a drive smaller than 250GB?). So why reduce footprint? SSD (solid state disks).
• Pay more for Windows on a netbook, or keep the price the same and make the SSD bigger?
• SSDs are The Future, but they're still WAY expensive (it's a $999 option on the MacBook Air).
• How few moving parts there really are in a laptop (HD and fan)
• Where do you draw the line for legacy hardware support? Apple pushes the envelope because they control the whole stack. Microsoft has it a LOT harder, because they have to support such a wide variety of hardware.
• Are Mac users more forgiving when Apple drops legacy support (smacks us around) than when Microsoft does it?
• Josh cops to being an Apple fanboy
• It's a miracle that Windows even works at all, given how many different hardware drivers (of varying quality) that it needs to support.
• Intel motherboards have finally dropped support for PS/2 ports. Josh is surprised in two directions - that they finally dropped them, and that they're still around.
• Incompatibility doesn't happen as much on Apple, because they control the whole stack. But control comes at the expense of competition.
• It's amazing that Apple has let Psystar live for so long.
• Twitter and Friendfeed
• Twitter has problems.
• The term "Plurk-up" is just GROSS.
• Josh explains how FriendFeed sucks up and aggregates what your friends share, and let you have conversations around any of those things.
• Josh had been resisting FriendFeed, but two things pulled him in - the conversations that were happening, that he was missing out on, and social gravity. Josh goes where his friends, his network, are. Enough of them are on FriendFeed now to make it worth it.
• The joy you feel when you discover a new, efficient way to connect with people and read (RSS, Twitter, now FriendFeed)
• FFToGo.com - nice mobile version
  FriendFeed is the source of all joy in the universe?

• The addiction factor - isn't FriendFeed just one more time sink?
• It's a balancing act - you have to be judicious on what you follow - feeds, Twitter, or FriendFeed. But the social aspect (things bubble up) of FriendFeed make it more efficient/potent, so you don't have to search and dig for the interesting/important stuff.
• The other obstacle - the "real time factor". Interruptions - tweets pop up, distract.
• Josh and Brian both have major FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out.
• You have to train yourself to ignore, and to be compelled to read every. single. thing.
• Use tools like Summize to track your name, topics, so you don't miss the REALLY important stuff, and then be OK with the fact that most of the rest of it is a river. Stand in the middle, let it flow by, grab what's interesting when you have time/attention.
• FriendFeed helps with FOMO, because the interesting stuff bubbles up
• Brian and Josh argue about which of us is more ADD.
• Unread Item Syndrome - all these made up dysfunctions that we have...
• Use a client like Twhirl or Twitterrific.
• Be the boss of the tools, not the other way around
• Training for "social media tools for software engineers" that Josh is working on, Brian to be a Guinea Pig
• We can geek out over anything - never had a problem filling time. :-)

Are you thrilled that the show is back? Mad that we changed something? Think we suck for being gone so long? Just want to say hi? Post a comment, and let us know! Seriously. We crave the validation that your feedback brings. You have no idea how fragile our self esteem really is… :-)

Well, we're back! And we're under the Bit Stories banner now. I work for Intel Software Network, and I've had the idea and intention for a while now of doing a show there like Brian and I used to do. Now we're actually doing it.

If you haven't listened before, this isn't some professionally produced, slick, marketing message controlled by our corporate overlords. We're just a couple of geeks who love gadgets, phones, computers, the web, and software, talking about whatever's new and cool. We try to make the audio sound good, but it's always going to be a little rough around the edges, and we're OK with that. Sound like something you'd be interested in? Come have a listen.

Click to play

In this show, we talk about the following, in no particular order:

• The iPhone 3G announcement - its features, whether Brian is finally going to cave in and get one, how AT&T is raising prices on the plans just because they can, how we can't wait to see what comes out of the App Store, and everything else we can think of. We're a little obsessed. :-)
• Netbooks vs. regular laptops vs. Tablet PCs (with the tangent typing vs handwriting discussion).
• Where we want to take the show - we don't have grand plans - we pretty much have always played this by ear, but we'd love to hear any ideas or suggestions (or complaints!) you have, so we can keep it interesting.
• And a whole lot more I can't remember right now!

The show is about 38 minutes long (we try to stick to the magic 40 minute length), and weighs about 35MB (it's a 128kbps MP3). You can download the file directly, listen using the streaming player in this post, or (BEST OPTION!!1!) subscribe to the Bit Stories podcast feed in your favorite podcast aggregator (like iTunes). If you subscribe to the feed, you'll get each show delivered automatically as it becomes available - probably once a week or so, with the occasional bonus video or audio segment thrown in for fun. Plus, we'll love you forever if you subscribe.

Are you thrilled that the show is back? Mad that we changed something? Think we suck for being gone so long? Just want to say hi? Post a comment, and let us know! Seriously. We crave the validation that your feedback brings. You have no idea how fragile our self esteem really is... ;-)

http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/

Much has been written about the more controversial questions - are they really not adding any new features? Are they going to drop PPC support? Is it going to be 64-bit only (and if so, what about early Intel Core Duo chips that aren't fully 64-bit capable?). I'll leave all that to the people who know what they're talking about. But what strikes me as interesting is that the few fundamental technologies they HAVE discussed looks like a mirror image of the technologies Intel, and specifically, our group Intel Software Network, Intel's developer community, have been promoting and evangelizing to software developers for quite a while now.

First, I have to cling to my hope and dream that one day, Apple will release something along the lines of a "netbook", like the Asus Eee PC or the MSI Wind. Something like the MacBook Air, but much smaller. Apple's throwing fuel on that particular speculative fire with statements like this:

Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.

Having recently paved and done a clean install of Mac OS X Leopard on my MacBook Pro, I can tell you that the operating system itself only takes up about 5.5 GB of hard drive space. Hard drives are growing in capacity and dropping in price at an astounding rate (did you ever dream you'd be able to pick up a terabyte of disk space for a couple hundred bucks?). So why would Apple care about reducing that 5-6 GB footprint, when drives are huge and cheap? Think SSD. Solid State Disks. Like the ones in the netbook devices. The Asus Eee PC I got to play with a while ago had a 4 GB SSD. Current models have 12 or 20GB. Fast, efficient, and no moving parts. Perfect for mobile devices. But still really expensive - you can get a 64GB SSD in a MacBook Air instead of the much slower 80GB hard drive, but it will cost you a cool $999 for the upgrade. SSDs are coming down in price, but they're still going to be expensive in any really large sizes for a while. So, if Apple was thinking of doing a Mobile Internet Device or netbook, it makes sense to squeeze OS X down as much as they can, to make, say, an affordable 16GB SSD a viable option that won't get hogged by just the OS.

Next, there's the new "Grand Central" technology, that focuses on taking full advantage of multicore processors:

“Grand Central,” a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard, brings unrivaled support for multicore systems to Mac OS X. More cores, not faster clock speeds, drive performance increases in today’s processors. Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems.

Emphasis mine. Intel Software Network has been banging on the multicore drum for quite a while now, ever since it became clear that the future of processor performance was more and more cores working in parallel, rather than ever-increasing clock speeds. In fact, we have a whole multicore developer community (hosted by my awesome colleague, Aaron Tersteeg) dedicated to multicore programming resources, tools, learning, and access to the Intel experts who literally wrote the book on this stuff. I'm sure as Snow Leopard gets closer, you Mac developers will (hopefully) be seeing a lot more details from both Apple and Intel on how to make your apps sing on many-core processors. It's the biggest fundamental shift in computing since, say, the x86 architecture became the standard. I can't wait to see this gain broader acceptance and implementation.

Finally, Apple teases us with this little tidbit on the vaguely-named Open CL (Open Computing Language), apparently aimed at taking advantage of upcoming super-powerful GPUs for other computing tasks:

Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL (Open Computing Language), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing.

They don't name any one company's products or technologies, but it's well known that Nvidia and Intel are both working on many-core GPUs that support "GPGPU" - General Purpose (Computing) on the GPU. And again, my group, Intel Software Network, has a whole community (this one just freshly minted!) dedicated to what we call Visual Computing. Steve Pitzel hosts this community (Steve has more interesting stories than ANYONE I know - ask him some time!), and the super swanky page design came from our resident web development wizard, Kevin Pirkl. Intel has a little upcoming product called Larrabee that we think is going to really turn the notion of what a GPU is for on its head. Have you noticed how Nvidia has been getting very aggressive towards Intel, some might say even attacking? Yeah, it's because of Larrabee. And knowing Apple, they'll be right there, ready to take advantage of all of the advances in the visual computing world. Competition is a good thing.

Anyway, that's it for today's dose of idle speculation, and listening to me play armchair industry analyst. I have to say it feels pretty cool to work for a company (Intel) that has such influence over the world of technology. I get to see SO MANY COOL THINGS in the course of my job, I feel spoiled. And I try to share as much with you as I can - like tomorrow, I'll be filming demos at the Research@Intel event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. From the previews I've seen, some of this stuff is just freaky sci-fi cool. I can't wait to see it, shoot it, and get it out to you. As usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts, even if all you have to say is how wrong you think I am. Leave it in a comment! :-)

(Crossposted from my blog, TinyScreenfuls.com.)

There are only about 20 MIDs in the world today, all prototypes, and they were pretty much all at IDF. As you can imagine, access to them is jealously guarded, and they were pretty busy being shown off, participating in photo shoots, etc. My access to them got postponed, rescheduled, and moved around a lot, until one afternoon, we got the call. "You can come play with the MIDs if you can be here by 5:30pm." It was 5:00pm, and Welles and I jumped in a taxi right away, headed for the Intel Software group's Mobility Enabling Lab. I didn't have time to go back and get my "big boy" professional video gear, so these videos were shot on my pocket Aiptek Go-HD camera, secured by a GorillaPod. I think they turned out pretty well.

Big disclaimer: the Linux-based software for both the Lenovo and Aigo devices I used is NOT final - there are some features that aren't implemented, and performance optimizations that haven't occurred. This is NOT how they're going to be when they're released commercially. There are crashes, slowness, and missing features in these videos. Think of this as a preview of the foundations of the software - what it's capable of in general. Then squint your eyes a little and imagine the final version, a little more polished, sitting happily in your pocket. :-)

First up, here's a 13 minute video of the Lenovo Ideapad U8 Mobile Internet Device (MID). It's one of the more unique hardware designs, with it's flared end, special limited edition Beijing 2008 Olympic color scheme, and hardware number pad, for T9 text entry. In the video, I take a detailed look at the hardware (Intel Atom processor, two cameras - the rear one is 2.0 megapixels, SD slot, GPS, USB ports, etc.), and spend some time poking around with the software/user interface:

You can download the high quality (640x360) MP4 version here - the file is about 153 MB. You can also embed/share the video on your own blog or site by grabbing the Show Player code from the video's page on blip.tv or by clicking "Embed" in the show player above.Next up is 10 minutes of video with the MID from Aigo. I cover pretty much the same aspects of this device in the video as I did with the Lenovo Ideapad - hardware (sliding QWERTY keyboard, two cameras - the rear one is 3.0 megapixels, MicroSD slot, USB ports, "Smart Key", etc.) and software and user interface. The Aigo device looks very similar to the Gigabyte MID, which has been floating around, making appearances. So much so that I suspect they're manufactured by the same OEM, but I didn't get any concrete information on this, so I'm just speculating. Here's the video:

You can download the high quality (640x360) MP4 version of this video (117 MB) here, and get the embed code to share the video on your own site/blog on the video's page on blip.tv, or by clicking "Embed" in the show player above.Now that you've seen the videos, I hope some of your questions have been answered. And, no doubt, you have new questions. I'll do my very best to get answers for you, so post your thoughts and questions in the comments below. Thanks for being patient while I got these videos ready. I have a TON more video content that I shot at IDF, and that will be coming out as it gets processed/edited. But this is the juicy stuff, so enjoy! :-)

The good news is, I just posted an "appetizer" video, with a quick look at the MID hardware, comparisons to the Fujitsu and Samsung UMPCs (and my iPhone), and a glimpse of the lab. It's about 2.5 minutes long, and you can watch it right here:

I'll post a more detailed writeup of my impressions of the devices soon, as well as the video of the time I had with them (summary: the Lenovo Ideapad U8 looks and feels wonderful in my hands - I WANT one!). I spent several minutes on video with each device, examining the hardware and UI/software features. Right now, thought, it's almost 1 AM, and I need to get up early to do a blogging training with the Intel Shanghai software guys. But I wanted to get these photos up and available as soon as possible.

Please post any comments or questions you have either in this post, or on the photo's page on Flickr. I want to answer all of your questions, but I'm going to sleep for a few hours, and don't want to miss any of them. Please be patient, and I promise I'll answer all questions. :-)

The entire set of 33 photos is available in this photoset on Flickr. Feel free to browse through all of the photos (bonus photos: some shots of the Intel Shanghai sales offices, which occupy floors 22-24 of the ShanghaiMart tower). Click here to view as a slideshow, and you can see full size/resolution versions of every photo on Flickr by clicking "All Sizes" on the photo's page.

And now, the photos! Here are some that I think turned out best - be sure to check out all 33 photos in the Flickr set!

But! On Day 2 of IDF, Holly came by the Upload Lounge with one of the MIDs - a unit from Gigabyte. She was supposed to do some "man on the street" video, showing people in Shanghai the MID, and asking them to show what they had in their pockets. But her video crew wasn't available for some reason. SInce I was there with all my gear, and had time before the next session, I happily accompanied her out onto the streets of Shanghai (with Helen, our translator) to do the man on the street video.

But before we hit the streets, I shot this short clip with my Apitek Go-HD, to commemorate my first ever hands-on experience with a real, live MID. Here's the video - about a minute and a half, not long enough to go into any depth. But it should be enough to give you a glimpse of what they're like to actually use.

I'll probably keep shooting and posting these while I'm in Shanghai. I'm here until next week - going to spend a few days working with some of the Intel Software Network team here at Intel Shanghai. And I kind of like the style/technique of these videos. I've had lots of people ask me how I'm doing this. It's very simple: I turn the screen on the camera so I can see myself, then hold it out at arm's length, pointed at me, and pivot around in place to show what's around me, while keeping myself on screen. Kind of fun to shoot, and I like the results.

You know the drill - leave me a comment and tell me what you think. Want to see more like this? Hate it? Have something about Shanghai that you want me to shoot? Drop me a line, and let me know. And thanks for watching! :-)