here comes the sun?

The carnage going on in the solar industry is impressive. Take a look at this chart. This is First Solar. The biggest, most profitable solar company out there.

Total devastation. The CEO left not long ago. Some of this has been portrayed as Chinese companies dumping product onto the market but they aren't fairing much better. Here's Trina Solar.

These are impressive declines. What is going on? Classic cyclical market in a downturn. Everyone expanded when the market was strong and now finally it isn't strong. Governments have no money and the solar market needs subsidies to exist at the size it does today. Increasing supply and falling demand for what is basically a commodity product (no differentiation). Brutal.

And what's worse is that everyone keeps expecting things to bottom out but it just isn't happening. Just today Trina announced their shipping and pricing data and it's worse than expected. And they guided numbers for the third quarter HALF WAY THROUGH THE QUARTER. In other words things have become dramatically worse in the last month and a half since they gave that guidance. I'm not sure when it bottoms out.  It will at some point.

In some sense this is good because prices have dropped dramatically making solar that much more economical. But at the same time new innovative companies are having a hard time raising money to expand because there is no need for new supply. And the name of the game in solar is you need to be big to distribute your fixed costs over a large volume. So all of us in the industry just sit and wait for the bottom to finally show itself.

and.... cut!

The NY Times reviews the new Final Cut Pro X: Apple’s Final Cut Is Dead. Long Live Final Cut.

I've been waiting for this with baited breath for this video editing software to come out. I'm a certified movie editing junkie and I have tapped out iMovie's capabilities long ago. But I never made the jump to Final Cut Pro (or the Express version) because it hadn't been updated in years and it is needlessly complicated. No. Horrifically complicated. Jargonized, cumbersome, and poorly constructed. But that has all changed now.

This update will be interesting to watch. I'd love to have heard the strategic discussions at Apple about this release. Why? Because the program is a massive departure from the old version. This is a bottom up rewrite. It reminds me of when Apple rewrote their OS to version X. The dropped every piece of legacy code.

The professionals are not happy. Their laundry list of complaints is both real and substantial. Most of them revolve around basic workflow problems. An inability to translate partially completed movies to a transportable format that can be sent to other professionals (like color graders) in the workflow process.  Also some professionals have large "add-ins" they've purchased. They don't work on FCPX. It is in effect useless for these people. I can understand their angst. This is a barebones product and Apple knows it. That's why the pricing is so low. And the belief is that over time they will add to it but that doesn't help editors right now. This is really iMovie Pro.

On the other hand this product really is iMovie Pro. It's a souped up version and so for me to make the transition now is quite easy. And that's good because iMovie for all its simplicity is incredible powerful and efficient. I've made over 256 home movies as of today. In fact I rarely take photos now because the "capture of memories" pails in comparison to well edited home movies. I whip one out about once per week. That would be impossible if it wasn't an efficient program. And so I think Apple made the right move here. A ballsy one. One that will lose them tons of professional clients. But 2 years from now I expect them to come back. Much in the way that OS X was a long term investment. Once the program is built out it will leave other programs in the dust. Because I can't imagine anyone thinking the way the old FCP work as being efficient. It merely had all the tools that professionals used.

The bigger problem is the problem that Apple has always had. They don't operate the way commercial businesses want them to. In other words businesses want a roadmap of the products they use. When are they being updated, what is the support, when does the support end, etc. One poor guy just last week completed the hardware installation for the Final Cut Pro Server system that was to house terabytes of their film clips. They spent over $200,000. Well Final Cut Pro Server no longer exists. The investment will need to be repurposed somehow. Incredibly frustrating for an IT group working on a budget. And that's why things like the iPhone and Macs will never really take hold inside large corporations. There is no insight into the future with Apple. It goes against their marketing philosophy. But corporate IT doesn't like surprises the way consumer gadget geeks do.

Anyway I'll grab my popcorn and lawn chair and see how this plays out.

the flip is dead

A remarkable testament to the accelerating rate of technological change. Cisco has killed the Flip video camera. It was only two years ago the nascent company was bought by Cisco for $590m. Then smart phones got video taking capabilities.

scancafe

Like most people I have a box full of photo stuff that sits quietly in a box wondering about its purpose in life. Various photo negatives taken by my parents that came into my possession and have done nothing since. I recently opened up this box. They look like antiques. Memories from a bygone era. I wondered what the photos were of. Most of all I was upset at the amount of space they took up.

So I decided to haul the box up to the nearest photo developing store (yes they do in fact still exist) and get a quote. I then left and put the box back in its final resting spot. It is incredibly expensive to get physical format negatives scanned let alone printed. Wow!

Fortunately I came across Scancafe. They scan your negatives for a fraction of the price. Price list is here. In some cases it was 5 to 10 times cheaper. And if you don't like a photo you don't pay for it (up to a certain limit). How are they so much cheaper?

Turns out your media is sent to India to be scanned. I believe they repackage individual packages into one mega-package in order to save on costs.

So the obvious downside is that it takes a while to get your negatives scanned. And I mean a while! I placed my order January 14 and they were finally scanned for review on March 22. I knew this beforehand and my feelings are who cares how long it takes. These negatives have been sitting in a box doing nothing for years.

It's a nice process.

• Bundle everything up into a box.
• Estimate how many you have and what type
• Get your price, pay, and print out shipping materials
• Take it to UPS and watch online where you are in the process.
• Once they are scanned you review which ones you want and you can order additional services like photo retouching or additional DVDs.
• Then you checkout, pay the difference, and your media and DVDs with digitized photos is sent to you.

I'm not sure what the quality is like. You can see an example of the online low-res scan on my previous post. Even that is fine enough for me. The online scans were low res but to be honest I'm not much of a "-phile" about most things. I have over 1500 albums and CDs and I still have never owned a real stereo system. As far as photos go as long as I can see the picture without horrible distortion or resolution I'm fine. When they sit in a box the resolution is zero so any thing is better than that.

bugs

Probably not worth a full entry but I had a hard time finding a solution to this bug.

Problem: While using PowerPoint, text entry into a text box crashed the program. And crashed it every time and as soon as a single letter is typed. Very problematic.

Turns out it's a Bootcamp 3.1 issue so if you're not dual-booting on Apple hardware, probably not an issue.

Solution:

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Select "Change keyboards or other input methods" under "Clock, Language, & Region" heading
3. Select "Change keyboards..."
4. Select "Add" button
5. Scroll to "English (United States)" then "Keyboard", then "US"
6. Select "US"
7. "Okay" your way back.

you suck

Our nanny brought in a friend's Blackberry today saying that the thing was locked and could I figure out how to unlock it? She knows I'm reasonably adept with techy things. So I take the phone and figure it will take me all of 2 minutes to figure it out at the worst.

10 minutes later I was beginning to think I had lost my mind.

All the Google searches showed up information that I should simply click the unlock button. Okay. Looked all around the phone and no unlock button.

Reading a little more I realize it's on the top left. Okay. Looked at the top left and no unlock button. Must be another model. Here take a look for yourself.

So I go online and look for a Blackberry user manual. I find it. I download all 325!!!! pages of it. I'm usually upset when companies short change their manuals but over 200 and you know you are doing something wrong.

Well I'll find the answer in here I thought.

No. No diagram or any real information about unlocking other than sentences saying to unlock it before performing this task. Gee thanks.

At this point with all the fumbling around with the phone I suddenly realize it is unlocked. I really am going crazy.

Realizing I had unlocked it accidentally I started pushing buttons haphazardly. All the while noting to myself how poorly it is made because the top part of it was loose.

At some point I accidentally figured it out. The unlock was the entire top of the phone which rocks to the left. In fact if you go back to the picture you can see an extremely faint icon on the top left of, wait for it, an unlocked padlock. So faint I had to get under direct light and squint. This is why the top part felt loose.

What kind of crazy design is this for an unlock button? It's indistinguishable from the phone chassis. It's poorly labeled. And worst of all doesn't this seem like an easy-to-bump spot for a keyboard unlock button?

I'll leave it to the reader to decide who sucks here. There may be more than one answer.

netflix & lost discs

Yet another reason to love Netflix.  I lost a disc.  Or rather I'm sure my kids have strategically placed it in very hard to find spot.  Now what?  I was a little worried because Netflix could really extort you at this point.

When you report the lost disc to Netflix you have the option to 'buy' it.  Turns out it was $14.  Sure you could find it for less but that's not too bad of a price.  Also, if you find it within 1 year you can get a refund on that purchase.  Very cool and reasonable procedure.

that f*$^#ing line

Those of you who use Microsoft Word must have run into this.  If you ever type a few dashes in a row, Word will change it to a line across the entire document.  Not a bad thing in and of itself.  I usually let it do just that.  The problem is if you need to remove it.  Basically impossible.  Well I had to get rid of one tonight. and lo and behold tons of Google responses.

Check it.

Here's why it's so annoying.  It's not a line.  It's a border.  As if you were dealing with a 1 column, 0 row table that has a black border.  Deleting it directly is impossible because there is nothing to delete.

To get rid of it?  Select the area it is around and then use the table border tool (the one you use to prettify tables) and choose none.

See below.  Click on the picture for a bigger one.

forgiving

Fascinating, and to me, original insight into our new digital age.

In a recent book, “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age,” the cyberscholar Viktor Mayer-Schönberger cites Stacy Snyder’s case as a reminder of the importance of “societal forgetting.” By “erasing external memories,” he says in the book, “our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from past experiences and adjust our behavior.” In traditional societies, where missteps are observed but not necessarily recorded, the limits of human memory ensure that people’s sins are eventually forgotten. By contrast, Mayer-Schönberger notes, a society in which everything is recorded “will forever tether us to all our past actions, making it impossible, in practice, to escape them.” He concludes that “without some form of forgetting, forgiving becomes a difficult undertaking.”

bars and reception

A massively interesting read over at Anandtech. In my mind its the tech/geek site that has transplanted arstechnica as the real champion of full on tech geekiness as the latter has become a gadget site.  Anand Shimpi has posted his review of the iPhone 4. The entire article is worth a read.  But I want to point out one interesting section (in the beginning) where he basically reveals why some people have reception issues and some don't (I personally didn't) and that in fact both types of people may be seeing signal attenuation.

It all has to do with how the phone bars are defined.  What does 1 bar mean on an iPhone or any phone?  The best signal a phone could ever receive is -51 dB.  The worst signal before you lose all reception is -113 dB.  The iPhone defines it's bars as such

0 bar <=-113 dB
1 bar -107 to -113 dB
2 bar -103 to -107 dB
3 bar -101 to -103 dB
4 bar -91 to -101 dB
5 bar -51 to -91 dB

Note the large band for 5 bars.  You can probably see where I'm going with this.  Shimpi found the worst case drop in touching the phone in a particular way was 24 dB.  Look at the chart below.  It's a schematic of the actual size of the bars in the -113 to -51 dB spectrum (the white boxes). Below that are 4 examples of a 24 dB signal drop (yellow boxes).  You start at the right of the yellow boxes, touch the iPhone inappropriately, and end up at the left side of the yellow boxes .  A 24 dB drop can translate into all manner of bar drops depending on what kind of signal you are initially receiving.  Are you very close to a cell tower?  Then you'll probably see no drop in bars.  Have a weak signal?  Then you'll see multiple bar drops.  Great stuff.

Effect on phone 'Bars" due to a 24 dB drop in signal

video and imovie on the iphone 4

I personally take many more videos than pictures with all my photographic equipment.  So I was particularly interested in the movie capture and movie editing features on the new iPhone 4.  As a test I shot some footage recently and edited it on the iPhone.  I took video under a number of conditions; areas where it was well lit, areas where it was dark, and areas where there were well lit spots and poorly lit spots.  I also used the upload feature to get the video onto YouTube which causes the file to be compressed.  At some point I'll add the uncompressed file for comparison.  It does seem noticeable on first blush.  The result is below.

This was uploaded from the iPhone (i.e., it was compressed)


This was uploaded from a computer (uncompressed)


In general it is a fairly weak substitute for even a point and shoot.  The colors are washed out as has been shown in other examples.  Depending on where you focus your shot it doesn't handle shots with a wide range of contrasts, and worst of all the camera has zero stabilization.  The video is very shaky considering most of these shots were taken under optimal conditions; namely I had something to rest the iphone on and I had enough time to take long shots to make sure I was steady.  It's pretty unacceptable compared to my Lumix ZS3 which has smoking stabilization plus I can feed it into iMovie on the Mac to further stabilize the shot.  I probably won't use it for anything important but I'll use it in a pinch.

for the parents out there (especially the ones with boys)

FindER.  Awesome "why didn't I think of that" iPhone app to quickly find an emergency room near your current location.

can you hear me now

Like I said in the previous post I'm having zero reception issues on my iPhone 4.  But I thought this article in the NY Times was funny.  Towards the end they quote Brian Lam saying that "he had not been able to use older iPhones to make calls from his home.  That changed on Thursday after he bought an iPhone 4.  'I have made three hours of calls today."

Now why is that funny?  Because yesterday Brian Lam made a video using iMovie on the iPhone 4.  I presume (but do not have any hard data) it was taken in his apartment.  And at 0:21 into the video you see this white contraption on a desk.

What is it? The guy is sporting an AT&T 3G Microcell mini celluar tower in his home. That'd be why he's getting great phone reception.  Lulz.

Video:

iphone 4

I was one of the iLucky ones and was able to get an iPhone 4 order in before AT&T's/Apple's systems crumbled under the epic iDemand.  It arrived today all shiny and new.  I haven't played with it too much but some initial thoughts on it and the new iOS.

• Folders.  The new system is both a blessing and a curse.  Some kind of app management system was needed but it's tough to keep track of what is in each folder. It's a tad clunky in reality though and just barely saves you time over the multiple app screens.  I'm not sure if this is the most elegant solution.
• Multi-tasking.  For some reason this doesn't seem right.  It works in its limited fashion but it seems slightly confusing and forced.  I never wanted multi-tasking on the phone.  The use cases are limited for me and it introduces a whole level of complexity to the device that I'm sure will go over most people's heads.  This is a classic case of where Jobs should have called a tyrannical overlord option and said, "you really don't want multi-tasking.  You think you do but you don't."  Why do things like Phone, Settings, Contacts, Clock getting multi-tasked?  Why are these things running in the background?  What I want is some type of task manager.  In the morning I go through the same old routine; loading all my news apps so I have something to read on the subway.  Clearly this is something that should be automated.
• Camera.  The camera is amazingly fast and responsive compared to the previous versions.  Just blazing.  Photos are taken as quickly as you can push the camera button.  Launch time however is still pretty slow and takes a few seconds.  Focus and exposure can be enabled by tapping.  Digital zoom (tap near the bottom of the screen) is largely useless.
• Video.  New to me at least; the video capabilities are a nice addition.  I plan on getting the iMovie app as well.  It is a video camera without stabilization however.  And that makes for tiresome viewing.  I imagine I'll be trying to prop the phone on some kind of stabilizing structure if I really want a usable shot.
• Photo Viewing.  The photo app now includes a "Places" tab that drops pins on a Google map in locations where photos were taken.  It's a pretty cool way to find photos from a particular location.
• Safari.  Search now autocompletes with suggestions.  Awesome.
• Speed.  Holy cow is this thing fast compared to my 3G.  My 3G bogs badly under the new iOS.  So much so that I'm considering downgrading the OS to the previous version.  Take a gander at the load times on Plants vs. Zombies (great game) on the two phones below.  Insane!
• Screen.  Much has been made of the quality of the screen but honestly I don't see that much difference.  In fact the old 3G screen is somewhat nicer.  More bluish whereas the iPhone is more yellowish.  Although I don't seem to have any of the yellow spot problems some have.  Keep in mind that this is coming from someone whose near sightedness is starting to flag in old age.
• Reception.  Thankfully I don't seem to suffer from the odd reception issues when holding the phone in a particular way.  I haven't tested it that much but I couldn't find any way to lose 5 bars.

Overall the speed and the video are the things that drove me to upgrade.  The rest of the features are ho-hum in my mind.  Especially the much anticipated OS level features.  In many ways it seems like Apple is trying to implement desktop OS features in a mobile formfactor. I understand the struggle they are dealing with as the OS gets built out.  But I'm a little worried we'll end up with something overly complicated.  My complaints around computers have always focused on the fact that they operate stupidly; making you do repetitive tasks and taking care of things that you don't want to do.  I would rather them focus on fixing things like Safari remembering passwords and things that improve my efficiency.

you're doing it wrong

Am I missing something?  Twitter search results return relatively stale results.  Check out the search below for "Isner" that I was using to find out who finally won that epic Wimbledon match.

Two problems here.  First the top 3 results are results with significant retweets but are hours old.  Second the remaining results are 14 minutes old.  Hardly real-time.  By the time actual tweets showing Isner had won came in, I had already read the results on the NY Times.  I search Twitter for "real time" foremost and relevance second.  I swear Twitter is run by incompetents.

wtf

Today's WTF comes directly from Twitter and their new Blackbird Pie product.  Seriously are these guys on drugs.  I've outlined why I like Twitter a few times but I swear it is run by incompetent product managers.  They haven't really come out with a new feature in ages and now we get Blackbird Pie.

How clumsy and poorly thought out is this thing?  In order to embed tweets into a website or blog I have to copy the URL of a tweet, post it into Blackbird, generate some HTML code, and then post it into my website.  Are we back in the dark ages?  Why not have me code this in hexadecimal with notepad for crying out loud.  How is this easier than simply copying the text from a tweet and posting it into a website?  Seriously this is like amateur hour.

geeks

Technology Review. I just stumbled onto this magazine/online magazine. I'm not sure how I missed it.  It's published by MIT. And it is really good. Good enough that I might even subscribe to the paper edition. It's a real geek magazine.

[digression]
I've had this problem over the last few years with the bastardization of this term geek. Wiktionary describes it as an expert in a technical field (usually computers). Wikipedia describes it as one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things including those of intellectuality, electronics, etc. I think these are okay definitions. Back in the 80s, geeks were people who were into science, math, electronics, computers, and understanding how they worked. They wanted to program and build things and take things apart. In general though the common usage of this term is one that is used to describe someone who is obsessed with gadgets. The difference in my mind is one who is interested in how things work (the former definition) and one who is interested in buying electronic gadgets (the more popular usage). You see people say, "I'm a geek. I just have to have the new [insert gadget]." As a geek of the former definition, I HATE HATE HATE the secondary usage. Especially since many gadgets now are more fashion accessory than interesting technology.  And many great geek sites have veered towards the focus on gadgets like arstechnica.com and gizmodo/engadget.  It's depressing.
[/digression]

Anyway. Here's a sample of their stories right now.

• TR10: Cloud Programming - A new language will improve online apps
• Build Your Own Cellular Network
• Green Concrete - Storing carbon dioxide in cement
• Big Energy Storage in Thin Films - Ultracapacitor material fabricated on chips
• Facebook's Open Graph - A clever advertising move

They do succumb to the weaksauce "10 Emerging Technologies" ruse that is always hopelessly wrong.  But there's enough their to keep a geek going on a long plane ride.

iPad

My wife, enamored with the iPad, had reserved one at the Apple store this week.  Conveniently being out of town, she made me pick it up.  Thankfully the lines weren't too bad.  I got to poke around with it a bit and I have a few thoughts if you are thinking of buying one.

1. It's a lot heavier than I expected.  Maybe my expectations were warped by the Kindle.  But it doesn't seem as cozy a gadget to read in bed with.
2. The build quality and screen is nice.  Really nice.  As you'd expect.
3. Apple's choice to use the same app screen approach as the iPhone (an array of icons from which to launch the applications) seems not quite right.  The screen is so big and the icons are so small.  It's wasted real estate.
4. iPhone apps in 2X iPad mode look pretty bad but are usable.  The tremendously large font makes it feel you are using a toy.
5. Apps are more expensive.  Maybe these prices will come down over time but for now the $1-2 app price for the iPhone (which enabled impulse purchases) is about $4-5 for the iPad.  It's a bit of a buzz kill.
6. The Netflix app and streaming rocks.
7. The Kindle app is awesome too.
8. Movies look great.
9. Games that are a little bit fiddly on the iPhone's small screen are easy to use on the iPad.

My biggest comment is one echoed by others 'the day after'.  This is a media consumption device.  I didn't internalize that thought until I started using the iPad.  My use case scenarios for the iPad are to stop the kids fighting over what movie to watch on TV and for me to read and watch stuff.  It is not to create anything. 

And to me that's what makes a computer magical.  You can edit movies and pictures, you can write blogs and papers, you can create spreadsheets to figure stuff out, you can interact with people. It's an "i/o" device.  You get information coming in, you process it, and then create and push something out. 

With the iPad you are only going to be consuming stuff.  It's an "o" device.  The iPhone is too but that product is amazing because we can now consume stuff anywhere as opposed to sitting at our desks.  The iPad doesn't add much.  Perhaps the app store will remedy this at some point.  But it leaves you with a bit of a hollow feeling.  I kind of gave up using it after about an hour.  And I found myself in bed last night doing stuff on my iPhone even though the iPad was sitting unused on my wife's desk.

It's a nice addition.  But it's not worth the price and it's not going to get used that much by me.

what's for lunch

I saw a useful way to use photos on a phone's messaging service today.  A friend wanted to meet for lunch and and took a screenshot of the entry for the lunch place he wanted to go to.  He then sent this via text (photo) message.  It was an easy way to communicate a lot of information (picture worth a 1000 words).

It begs the question why more apps aren't designed like this. I've run into this a lot. Why can't I load screens from phone apps or web pages into SMS/MMS more easily and ubiquitously. Saving the screen shot is useful but not elegant.

video

Oddly, after getting my latest point & shoot camera, I'm taking less picture than ever before. By an order of magnitude. Subconciously I'm not even interested in taking photographs anymore. I have to remind myself to do it. The reason for that is the quality of the video on the camera is so good (Lumix ZS3) that videos represent a better way to capture moments.

My particular use-case is geared toward moment capturing. I suspect most camera owners fall into two buckets: capture moments and artistic. I'm sure those who are interested in photography as a creative outlet won't change their behavior. But the 'moment capturers' I think will slowly move over to video over time. In my case the moment capturing is all about my kids. And video is just so much more satisfying than photographs at taking me back to particular moments.

The ordeal to get the video into a final form and to get it on a distribution medium is less than ideal. iMovie 9 is fairly slick and easy to use to package the raw video. It still takes a while but it is fun to use. Online video sites and converting into a format that can be used by a few of my hardware devices is good but also a little time consuming. But I see both these activities being more and more automated over time. There are even some online video sites that can take movies and pictures and automagically create fairly slick packaged video and host the results.