Dooba.net

When Apple first announced the iPas I was solidly in the “meh, this isn’t great” camp. Lets be honest, the launch show with Steve-O wasn’t *that* great, and there were too many uses of “magical” for my taste. Plus, at that time it seemed like an iPod Touch they put on a taffy puller. Why do I need that?

However, the last few weeks I have been trying to solve a technology problem and an coming to realize the iPad just might fit the bill. I switched companies a couple weeks ago and the IT setup is very different. My old company had an external WiFi network that was outside the corporate LAN, and streaming, video watching, etc, was fine. So, I took my laptop to my office and had access to Pandora, Rhapsody, Hulu, etc. My new company’s IT policy is much more strict and prohibits streaming via the company network and there is no public WiFi.

Like most people I need to be entertained while I write code, so I have been trying to come up with a better solution. Aside from streaming music, I listen to podcasts. So I have been using Pandora/Rhapsody on my Android and then have my iPod for podcasts and other media that I own. But this isn’t all that great… I dont like running music on my phone all day as it seriously hurts the battery, and I’m still using 2 devices.

Side note on why 2 devices – lets face it, iTunes is still king of media programs. The podcasting setup is great… and movie purchase/rental is nice as well. The Zune desktop app comes close, but Zune isn’t an option for my current situation as there is no 3G (yet). And Android podcasting is pretty basic.. with no good desktop app for syncing.

So, I went the netbook route and looked at 3G cards. ATT and VZ offer a 5GB/mo plan for $60, with hefty fees if you go over. Cricket offers a no contract “unlimited” plan for $40 a month. Unlimited in that you can go over 5GB, but they will throttle your bandwidth.

With a 2 year contract I can get a netbook from either ATT or VZ for $50-$200 depending on specs. This works out to be (60*24)+200 = $1640 for the two years. Cricket would be less per month, but you have to buy a netbook at full price, so its about a wash.

The problem is, 5GB wont last long spread over a month with lots of music and some vid use. Plus, the majority of netbooks I tried were just blah. Screens weren’t that nice, etc. There is a Sony with a high res screen that is very nice, but it is about $550 and isn’t carried by ATT or VZ. So that puts you at close to $2000 for a two year contract. Thats a lot just to play pandora…

Enter the iPad. I have all my music and podcasts on one device. I can rent movies, I can play silly games.. and use not so silly apps. The battery should be pretty good… and the web surfing experience will be way better than any phone… and I would bet better than the netbooks (except for the lack of Flash). Add to this the $30 a month true unlimited ATT data plan with *NO* contract! You literally can sign up and cancel service at any time from the iPad itself. No need to go to an ATT store even. This is really.

So, the base 3G model with two years of data comes to (30*24) + 630 = 1350. So not only are we cheaper than a normal netbook (and much cheaper than a good netbook) setup, we aren’t limited to 5GB. Plus, I can turn off the data any month that I dont need it, or want to save some cash.

The bottom line is, while I still think some things about iPad are stupid (no flash, no multitasking), it really does solve my current problem quite well and for less money.

Anyone out there heard about the new Zune HD? You might hear about it a lot more soon. I wrote about this a while back when there was less info, just an announcement really. But now we have videos and reviews. I have to say it looks impressive so far. And finally something that LOOKS just as good as an Apple product too.

The screen looks great, and this has the new nvidia tegra chipset, so the graphics should be excellent.

Sure it plays music, has an HD radio tuner, video, and all that… but I secretly hope this is just the beginning of the Zune take over of the world. I’m serious. What if they added a UMTS modem? Instant cell phone…. And the Zune OS looks a whole heck of a lot better than the upcoming release of WinMobile…

Ok, and here is the other killer things for Zune (phone or otherwise). Apps. Lets look at programming on Apple vs Microsoft platforms. (For the sake of this exercise, I’m ignoring shell scripts or C++ command line app, etc). For GUI programming and GUI apps you have XCode vs .NET.. and then you have Java on both sides. But Java GUIs are worse than other of the other options, so we can ignore that too. I’ve coded on both sides and I have to say .NET is the easiest development system I’ve ever used, by far. VisualStudio is epic for debugging and development.

So.. Zune goes all app store on us… and you get to use .NET mobile to develop the apps. This would explode overnight. EVERYONE knows C# or VB… but to break into the Apple app store you have to figure out XCode’s development methodology and Obj-C. That sucks. No one uses Obj-C except Apple and I really just don’t like it.

This would be better than Android as well. I’m a big fan of Google and what they are doing with Android, but the SDK is still a bit rough, and the GUI design is no were near as good as what a Microsoft tool would bring.

And the HD has an nvidia chip set. What if we got some mobile version of DirectX? Think about the gaming potential of that too?

So that is my wild dream.. a Zune Phone with a .NET dev tool and an app store… Do it MS… DO IT.

This is cool/funny/interesting.. Microsoft is coming out with retail stores apparently. This makes sense ont he level of Xbox and whatnot.. but there are no Microsoft branded laptops or desktops, and there are no Microsoft cell phones… in short MS doens’t do a lot of the HW like Apple does. So I’m curious to see how this will actually work out.

Plus, they have the Guru Bar (shameless knockoff of Apple’s Genius Bar). But what will happen here? If you have a Dell laptop with Windows Vista will they help you? That would be something pretty cool..

Oh and lets not forget the Zune HD.. I suppose those will be out in force. Maybe it is a precursor to a Zune Phone…. hmm.

Looks like YouTube is asking IE6 users to upgrade.  http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/youtube-will-be-next-to-kiss-ie6-support-goodbye/

And according to Stat Counter, it looks like IE6 is still a significant amount of web traffic.  http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-daily-20080701-20090715-bar

So upgrade already, it’s almost 8 years old now.

So I have a application in C# that is communicating to something else via UDP messages. The messages are byte packed arrays of data. There are several bytes of header and then N bytes of data whos format is described in the header. I might send several Ints, or a string, or whatever.

This is pretty easy to handle in C/C++ as you can get raw pointers to everything. So if each message type is a struct, I can get a char* to the address of the struct and just read N bytes and send that out.

The problem on the C# end is this isnt so easy. If I want to pull messages apart and put them back into structs I have to do this manually each multi byte field at a time. So I was left with a function call for each message type to serialize it, and then another to deserialize it, each one having to know exactly what was in each message, so if I changed a message I’d have to edit all the handling functions. What I needed was a way to jsut get the raw bytes the in the received array into a struct of the right type, and vice versa. Fortunately there are some tricky ways to make this super easy.

First, we have to make sure the structs we declare in C# and packed. Here is an example:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack=1)]
struct msg1{
     int a;
     int b
     short c;
}

This will ensure there are no gaps between elements in the struct.

Next, we need a way to take an array of Bytes and copy it directly into the struct:

public static T DeserializeMsg< T >(Byte[] data) where T : struct
        {
            int objsize = Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(T));
            IntPtr buff = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(objsize);

            Marshal.Copy(data, 0, buff, objsize);

            T retStruct = (T)Marshal.PtrToStructure(buff, typeof(T));

            Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buff);

            return retStruct;
        }

Lets say we have a msg1 struct populated and we want to send that out over UDP. We need to serialize it back to raw bytes. This function will do just that:

public static Byte[] SerializeMessage< T >(T msg) where T : struct
        {
            int objsize = Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(T));
            Byte[] ret = new Byte[objsize];

            IntPtr buff = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(objsize);

            Marshal.StructureToPtr(msg, buff, true);

            Marshal.Copy(buff, ret, 0, objsize);

            Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buff);

            return ret;
        }

Thats it!

Are you ready for BingTones?  This just seems silly, but oh well!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=043C49DB-E33B-4603-A699-9F1FBA8E9245&displaylang=en

So the Zune HD specs are out and all the rumors can be laid to rest. I have not owned any type of Zune before, but I’ve played around with them. The interface is nice for an MP3 player, and it is better than the standard iPod, but obvious no where near the iPod Touch. But the Zune HD might change that.

First, the specs lifted from zune.net:

• Zune HD comes with a built-in HD Radio receiver so users can listen to higher-quality sound than traditional radio on the go. Users also will have access to the additional song and artist data broadcast by HD Radio stations as well as additional channels from their favorite stations multicasting in HD. If you don’t like the song playing on your station’s HD channel, switch to its HD2 or HD3 channels for additional programming.
• The bright OLED touch screen interface allows users to flip through music, movies and other content with ease, and the 16:9 widescreen format display (480×272 resolution) offers a premium viewing experience on the go.
• The HD-compatible output lets Zune HD customers playback supported HD video files from the device through a premium high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) audiovisual docking station (sold separately) direct to an HD TV in 720p.*
• Zune HD will include a full-screen Internet browser optimized for multitouch functionality.
• Zune HD is Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for instant streaming to the device from the more than 5 million-track Zune music store.

First, the screen resolution is slightly less than the Touch. How much that matters, not sure. We’ll have to see. But it is OLED, so that should be very nice.

A built-in HD radio is pure awesome. This is something I wish my Touch had – a radio of any kind. Granted with I Heart Radio I can listen to any of the stations here in Denver that I care about, but its not HD and I have to have WiFi for it to work. Score 1 for Zune.

HDMI hi def output! This is killer as well. I download a video from somehwere… I take my Zune to my friends house… hook it up to the flat panel and bam, movie night. Or maybe a slide show of my favorite vacation pics. Score 2 for Zune.

Full screen internet browsing and WiFi. Nice. And then they say “multitouch”… and all the Apple lawyers start salivating. First Palm and now Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how the Apple patents hold up. This is a good feature, but nothing new over the Touch.

Streaming of music from the Zune store is cool too. But since you can get a SUBSCRIPTION to the Zune store, this is even cooler. I could listen and refill my Zune as much as I want, over WiFi.. or stream anything. This model is very much needed with iTunes.

But the biggest question… will there be any sort of “apps” at all. I mean music and such is nice… but if I can’t play Oregon Trail like you can on the Touch, then whats the point?

So we got a demo Toshiba G01 at work. Or should I say a friend did, they are looking at graphics drivers and such. The G01 is the first phone to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor. This is basically netbook level power (think Intel Atom) in your phone. Crazy.

The first thing you notice when picking up the phone is the unique size. Its very thin (thinner feeling than an iPhone), but the other 2 dimensions are bigger than any other phone I’ve seen. Its almost like someone took an iPhone and used a rolling pin on it. This might be a problem for people with smaller hands, and I’m not so sure its great for the pocket of your jeans. The other thing is the phone is very light. The body seems solid, and feels nice.

The huge standout here is the screen. Its big. 4.1 inches of goodness. And at 800×480, it looks great. The media player supports DivX and other popular formats, so you will put that screen to good use. Also, supposedly the browser will support Flash. But we’ve heard this before about phones, so that remains to be seen.

The demo unit had WinMo 6.1 along with Toshiba’s custom UI layer. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of WinMo, it just looks old compared to the competition. But no big deal. The thing I didn’t like at all was the Toshiba UI. It was just odd and not intuitive. Like most other smart phones, there are icons in a grid, but then there are 3 colored stripes in the background that divide the screen equally. Swiping left to right (or R to L) makes these three stripes spin, and you realize they are supposed to be three “3D” columns that rotate. Each time you swipe across you spin to a new side of the columns and see new icons. This is kind of weird.

I didn’t see much in the way of other widgets to UI improvements, so hopefully something is going to change before launch.

The real win with this phone is the insane processing power and good battery, but if the UI is lame its not going to matter all that much.

The Samsung Omnia gets very little press.  I have had one for about 6 months now, and I am still pleased with it.  Feature for feature it seems to leave other phones in the dust.  I know most people dislike the windows mobile UI.  But with features like the following I think I can overlook the few times where I actually have to look at the Windows Mobile UI:

5 Megapixel Camera
With a 5 MP camera on your phone it basically replaces your camera.  I know it’s not going to replace your DSLR, but it definitely replaces your simple point and shoot cameras.  The other feature about the camera that you really don’t see very many other places is the smile detection; the phone can be set to take a picture when all the faces in the picture are smiling.  I was skeptical at first of this, I thought there was no way this was going to work.  Surprisingly, it works really well.  I have used it for some of those awkward occasions where you would have normally used a timer to automatically take a picture.  Also, if you have an Omnia from any other carrier than Verizon you have geo-tagging.  That is where the camera uses the phone’s GPS and records the longitude and latitude of where the picture was taken into the picture’s properties.  Another crazy cool feature of the phone is it’s business card recognition.  Open up the business card app and take a picture of a business card and it automatically parses out the person’s info directly from the photo and puts it into your contacts.  This has worked really well for me.

GPS
Again, thanks Verizon for turning off the GPS, I am still waiting for that patch to turn the GPS back on.  Seriously, you can’t do things like this in the age of location-aware apps.  Live Search with the Gas Prices feature would be so much better if I didn’t have to type in the address.

Video/Audio
This is one of the few phones I have ever seen that support Divx and Xvid movies; and of course it supports the staple, MP4, WMV, H.263 and H.264.  It also supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, OGG, AMR and the DRM protected music.  It also has a built-in FM radio with RDS (not too many phones that can boast that).  One last thing it supports A2DP and AVRCP.  (I love that iPhone finally is adding this with a patch, therefore the technology was built into the phones all this time, it was just turned off.)  It also supports DLNA, which is quickly becoming widely accepted.  Crazy that my phone can push media directly to my TV.

Lifehacker had an article regarding Windows 7 versus Mac OS X Leopard:
http://lifehacker.com/5277207/windows-7-versus-mac-os-x-leopard-the-feature+by+feature-showdown

Personally I think this article was a little gutsy when the WWDC was going to be the very next week and it was guaranteed that it was going to announce the successor to Leopard: Snow Leopard.  To summarize the competition was close but Snow Leopard was decided as the favored operating system.  The author’s comparison points were interesting and I think it was a fair assessment of the two operating systems. 

However, I thought it was bizarre that they would compare Time Machine to Windows backup.  My first thought was about how I never use windows backup.  I just make a habit to store my important files on a secondary drive and keep the operating system on it’s own drive.  The real backup system is Windows Home Server.  And then a colleague of mine at work pointed out their poll at the bottom of article asks for people to rate the favorite feature about each operating system, and with 10% of the votes Time Machine was the readers favorite feature of Leopard.  Wait, I thought Mac’s were secure and didn’t crash, then why is the backup/rollback system the favored feature? I think I deal more with the taskbar, themes, aero and the file explorer way more than I ever think about my backup.  I am happy it’s there but I tend to go more with the set and forget it method.  But, I guess that is just me.  That’s just my two cents.