liamcassidy.net

A Very Nice Message

Kids Naturals with VCRs and Now iPhone, Too

I just arrived home and my neighbour's kids were playing outside. They saw me using my phone last week and since then, every time they have seen me I have heard excited whispers about "the iPhone!"

True to form, as I reached my door and started searching through my bag for my door keys, I was the cause of much urgent whispering. This time - since I was just getting home and in no major hurry - I stopped and sat down with them on the low wall between their garden and mine, and hand them my phone.

Now, these kids range in age from about six to ten years of age. It was the youngest who eagerly grabbed the phone and almost instantly showed his friends how to use the camera, the photo gallery and the iPod functionality.

"It's the first time I've seen one for real" he commented five minutes later as I gently took back my (now slightly grubby) phone. First time, huh? But he took to it instantly.

How cool is that?!

Travesty!

When people complained about the new Indiana Jones movie, I dismissed them for being fools who were feeling far too connected and protective of a franchise they perceived as belonging, in some manner, to them, and not to the film-makers.

Now I’m doing the same thing, but with something far, far more important.

Have you seen what Apple iTunes have done to The A-Team? Take a look at the image they’re using to promote the Season 1 A-Team release on the European iTunes store;

All good, right? No it isn’t. It really isn’t. This is really fucking wrong.

WHERE IS HANNIBAL’S CIGAR?

Some politically-correct, paranoid executives, either at NBC Universal or at Apple have got their panties all-bunched-up about Hannibal’s cigar, probably scared out of their tiny minds that it will encourage kids to start smoking. (Or company-wide editorial standards forbid them to release any promotional material that endorses or glamourizes smoking. Whatever.)

 

This image is from the same photoshoot. See the big ol’ cigar in Peppard’s mouth? That’s history, right there. You don’t fuck with history.

OK, but seriously…

I’m taking the piss, of course. It’s an easy thing to joke about, and I won’t be losing any sleep over this.

Though it is worth taking a moment to think about the stupidity behind the decision to airbrush-out the iconic cigar.

Indiana Jones has the hat and whip. Kirk had his clamshell-communicator and the USS Enterprise. The Doctor has his TARDIS. Michael Knight had KITT. Hannibal has a cigar. Period.

Sure, it wouldn’t be a feature in a new TV series today, nor will it be in the upcoming A-Team movie. Studios don’t want to be seen to be endorsing something as controversial as smoking. Fine.

But c’mon – the people paying for and downloading The A-Team from iTunes are probably all in their thirties at the very least. They’re not going to light-up a cigar because George Peppard did in a camp old 80’s kids-show.

Technorati Tags: A-Team,Hannibal Smith,cigar,iTunes

You Need to Get an iPhone

You need to get an iPhone. Not my words. This is Paul Thurrott's advice in his review of the iPhone 3G. "Sooner, rather than later," he adds.

Good advice. And I'm not an Apple fanboy - you know, the foaming-at-the-mouth delusional fanatic who worships at the altar of The Lord God Jobs.

In fact, for over ten years I've been using all the various flavours of Windows Mobile (even all the way back to the Pegasus days!) and I was firmly dedicated to WM6.

My iPhone was a birthday present in April; in less than two full months I've come to regard WM as a primitive, lumbering beast. Everything I once lauded about it is still true - but in every single way that matters, the iPhone surpasses it.

"Every single way that matters" is a qualifier; there are clearly some important features common to WM that are missing on the iPhone. Mobile Office is something I miss. (But not as badly as I thought I might - plus the upcoming Apps will likely fill that gap) The lack of cut/copy/paste is a pain. I'm annoyed that hasn't been addressed in the 2.0 software revision.

There's no sense of a navigable, manageable file system on-board. And I miss that. Though I'm sure it will come.

Jailbreaking my iPhone was never an prion for me - I'm just not willing to take the risk. And the masochist in me is enjoying the drip-drip update path provided by Apple. I'm actually proud that my device is legitimate in every conceivable way. Nothing is hacked. It's as the Lord Jobs intended. (ew, I feel kinda dirty saying that!)

Since Windows Vista (actually, since Media Center) I've been focused on the overall user experience of software and, increasingly, hardware. The inescapable truth is that the experience of owning and using an iPhone day-to-day is without equal. I can never go back to hardware keyboards (the blackberry the BBC give me to use feels like a clunky abacus in comparison). Web surfing is better on the iPhone. So is music/video. The UX is everything as my good friend Dax would say, and on the iPhone the UX is exemplary.

I can't say enough good things about this device, and Thurrott is absolutely right; if you own a mobile phone you should get an iPhone. It doesn't matter how much you use it - what matters is that you will have the best tool for the job.

The price is right now, and the software is mature enough to trust. Go. Buy the iPhone. I promise you won't be disappointed.

MobileMe – The Cloud from Cupertino

So how is this gonna work? Apple have announced their upcoming push into Cloud computing with MobileMe, an OTA sync-service for email, calendaring, photos and documents. They describe it as “Exchange for the rest of us”. Considering the fact that I seriously researched the costs and challenges of maintaining my own private Exchange server earlier this year, this sounds interesting to me…

It’s also not free, which is pretty bloody stupid considering absolutely ALL the other major cloud computing competitors provide free alternatives (Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, anyone?) but the key here is that it’s a cohesive single home for a wide range of essential services that covers pretty much everything across platforms and devices. And if you’re an iPhone owner, this is a no-brainer.

There is a lot of crossover with Windows Live services, and I’ll run through them here for the sake of a high-level overview. Of course, Yahoo! and Google offer similar services, but I’m not nearly as intimate with those as I am Windows Live. This is only a quick run-through, so I’ll stick with what I know.

 

Email*

Like the email functionality of MobileMe, Windows Live Mail (WLM) is available via the web (with rich AJAX functionality) and can be accessed in popular email clients such as Outlook. WLM can also be configured to “push” email to mobile devices running Windows Mobile 6 (and later), and, via third party services such as IzyMail, WLM push can also be leveraged on the iPhone. (This is how I access my live.com email account on my iPhone via IMAP, but this is definitely not for the average user – it takes a lot of time to configure and isn’t exactly what you’d call “user friendly”.) 

MobileMe brings zero-setup simplicity to IMAP-based, OTA email synchronisation (the “Exchange for the rest of us” part of the deal) but it doesn’t bring anything new to the table here in terms of email functionality. Though to be fair, how could it? Email is email. There are only so many ways to do it, and there’s really no need to reinvent the wheel here. (Interestingly, a “Quick Reply” function exists in MobileMe’s web-based email management tool which might be the most revolutionary, or completely under-used, little gem in the entire package.)

Sadly, MobileMe actually inconveniences users by requiring them to create a new email account. (There’s no mention of being able to bring an existing mailbox, such as a live.com account, into MobileMe). I’m not inventing reasons to be negative; this is actually a big deal. Fanboys aside, iPhone users are generally early adopters, and many of them are geeks. They already have multiple email accounts and probably don’t need yet another. I know I don’t.

Contacts*

The Windows Live Contacts service is a pain in the arse. It’s got all the potential to be awesome, but it has a cumbersome interface and – let’s be honest – no one uses the thing in any serious or meaningful way. I’ve got over a hundred people in my contact list who use Hotmail – and none of them bother to keep their contact details up to date. They never take advantage of Contact’s auto-update features (keeping their friends updated with changes to their contact information) and if they use Contacts at all, they rarely – if ever – bother to complete more than the standard “Name” and “Email address” fields. In short, those who use Windows Live Contacts (at least those people I know who use that service) under use it.

Outside of an office environment, I don’t know too many people who use Outlook. But I find that any Outlook users tend to make much better use of the contact functionality it provides (as opposed to WL Contacts). This is probably just because it’s far quicker and easier to use, and isn’t quite the unwieldy elephant in the room that is WL Contacts.

MobileMe synchronises with my Contacts in Outlook 2007 and over-the-air to my Contacts on my iPhone. No pissing-around. Sweet.

Calendar*

Where Windows Live falls down is the ham-fisted manner in which Microsoft offers synchronisation of Windows Live Calendar (WLC). In short, it doesn’t. Well, not in any particularly useful way to millions of people who otherwise would use WLC if it wasn’t such a train-wreck of a service. For instance, WLC will only synchronise with your Outlook Calendar if you have paid for the appropriate subscription. Well, I pay for Windows Live Mail Plus (or whatever the hell it’s called these days) but I’m told that doesn’t include the damned Calendar. I did try to fix this and spent a LOT of time on the phone to Microsoft (first in Ireland, then somewhere in the Netherlands) and the end-result was a new live.com account that also didn’t have the correct subscription – not only was I confused, so too were the Microsoft support staff.

So my Outlook Connector happily stays in-step with (both) my WLM accounts. But I can’t use WLC because keeping it in sync is impossible. (And – just as an aside – how long, exactly, will WLC stay in beta? This is getting embarrassing, Microsoft…)

In case you’re wondering, I keep my calendar in-sync across my machines and my iPhone with Google Calendar Sync. But this means I have to wait for my iPhone to dock with my main desktop – there’s no OTA syncing between Google Calendar and iPhone…

* I know that Microsoft Exchange solves many of these issues, and has done so for many, many years – but most iPhone users don’t have free-use of an Exchange server. So please, no one email me and bleat-on about how MS Exchange renders all this mute – I’ll just hate you forever.

Photos

Windows Live offers photo management and sharing via the Photo Gallery functionality found in Windows Live Spaces. It’s a bit old-fashioned, somewhat slow and cumbersome and – really, does anyone other than teenagers use it? I’m not giving teenagers enough credit – they clearly abandoned WLS long ago in favour of Facebook… In any case, MobileMe offers a far more contemporary and enjoyable photo management & sharing service.

Documents

MobileMe introduces iDisk, and, crappy names aside, it looks like a good solution for cloud-based storage. I’m still unclear on how (or even IF)  the iPhone could hook-in to this. I suspect it won’t. iDisk appears to be nothing more than Apple’s take on Windows Live SkyDrive. And that’s fine – I’m not complaining. It’s a foundation, and there’s plenty of scope for introducing new services (such as the ability for a user to access their documents, download, edit/update and re-save back to the cloud… all from the iPhone… now that would be nice… and, no, I don’t want to have to do that shit via Google Docs. Which, btw, is easy to access and read on an iPhone… but impossible to edit? I thought Safari on the iPhone was a full-featured browser? What’s taking Google so long?)

To Summarise…

So here’s my current, complicated setup; my primary email account is provided by WLM, connected to my home-office desktop PC and my notebook via Outlook Connector and a paid-for WLM Plus subscription (that doesn’t include WLC). In addition, I pay an annual service fee to IzyMail to get my mail “pushed” to my iPhone. I have a separate Google account so I can keep a calendar in-sync on my iPhone and across my PC and notebook via Google’s Calendar Sync. I use Windows Live SkyDrive and Live Mesh to provide cloud-based file sharing and storage across my machines, but there is currently no really viable way to access these services (and therefore my data) via my iPhone. (And don’t anybody even dare suggest using iPhone’s Safari browser to access SkyDrive or Mesh. Go try it yourself, and feel the pain…)

Quite simply, MobileMe is the most elegant, useful – and simple – solution I’ve seen to-date for iPhone owners who use multiple desktop/notebook machines and want their email, calendars and contacts to synchronise with as little fuss as possible. It’s all very exciting.

If Apple has any sense at all, they will extend this service to work with other mobile devices – and they’ll drop the (frankly ridiculous) price tag. The basic service (including the 20gb) should be free. Only the extra-storage should carry any sort of charge. Why? Windows Live doesn’t provide as seamless a set of synchronised services – yet. Google doesn’t – yet. Yahoo…. etc. Some do it better than others, but it’s still a bit of a mish-mash of services right now. But at least that mish-mash is free, or, where there are charges, they are cheap.

Apple have really surprised me with this move – I never expected such beautiful, functional Cloud Computing from Cupertino – at least, not right now. They have the potential to really steal this market out from under Microsoft and Yahoo, but the very silly $99 entry-price will cut-out a huge number of otherwise potential customers.

In any case, there’s no question I will be joining MobileMe – this is cloud computing, and I made a promise years ago to embrace it every way possible. This stuff is just deeply exciting. As a life-long Windows user and Microsoft admirer, I never would have thought I’d be using Apple to get me to this point. I’m enjoying it, too. I’ll let you know how I get on…

Technorati Tags: apple,cloud,mobileme,iphone

A Subtle Message to a Friend

Plenty of people have already had their fingers burned professionally and personally as a result of their blogging activities. I’m not one of them, thankfully, but I’m currently seeing a different side of the danger of blogging; the emotional impact it can have on friends.

A very good, very close friend of mine is subscribed to my personal blog and follows me on Twitter – and, it seems, on Plurk. I will go on-record now and say that everyone everywhere is welcome to read my blog and follow my microblogging – indeed, I’ve often listed links to my various online profiles specifically for that very reason.

I have no issue at all with that pal of mine reading my updates. But where I do have a problem is that he never joins-in. He doesn’t leave comments on the blog, nor does he ever tweet/plurk. He seems to only ever visit these services to see what I am saying; never to join the conversation, only to listen-in. I never really know what to make of this; on one hand, it’s perfectly fine, since not everyone wants to roll their sleeves up and get involved, and I can respect that. On the other hand, it’s almost creepy; like I have my very own stalker. How I interpret this “lurker” behaviour depends on my mood; either it pleases me that I seem to generate such intense curiosity – or it angers the hell outta me that I’m being monitored and scrutinised - silently.

And there’s another problem, too.

For many people, blogging is the most honest and open we ever get; personally, it’s a channel I use to broadcast precisely what I’m thinking and feeling at any given time. This personal blog is often usually something that takes time to write, effort to think-through, and, therefore, is less likely to contain raw, unchecked emotion. Twitter and Plurk are quite the opposite; they take next to no time to update, and over there, I often tweet how I feel as I feel it.

I’ve never named names on Twitter/Plurk, but those who know me well will most likely understand who/what I’m banging-on about if I complain generally and unspecifically about people “in the office” or “that lot in the corner of the pub”.

So imagine this scenario – the same good friend gets upset/offended when he reads a Plurk or Tweet in which I’m sounding-off.

I maintain that following someone’s tweets/plurks is rather like watching a TV show. If you like the content, you’ll watch it regularly; in fact, it will likely form part of your daily/weekly routine. It might not always entertain or please you, but if it’s usually good fun, you’ll be prepared to suffer-through the occasional blip. (I feel this way about Leo Laporte’s TWIT and Windows Weekly podcasts; they’re generally great listening, and the painfully blatant and ever-increasing-in-duration in-show commercials are something I’m willing to suffer… for now…)

But if the content upsets or offends us, the most appropriate thing to do – in my humble opinion – is to stop watching. Switch channels. Turn off, even.

Blogging is about transparency and the willingness to open ourselves up to the world. It’s about glaring, brutal honesty. It won’t always please everyone. The truth rarely does.

My message to friends/family that read my blog or follow me on Twitter/Plurk (etc) is this; I am not about to start censoring myself in order to anticipate & avoid upsetting your sensitivities. If I did that, my blogging would be more about you than about me!

I am not going to spend any more time (beyond this post) drawing attention to the matter. You represent less than .01% of my readers, subscribers and followers. By all means, read what I publish, but don’t think for one moment it is appropriate, in the office, the pub or the world away from the ‘net, to flag for my attention your unhappiness with what I write. If you do have something to say, have the decency and courage to say it in the right forum – here in the comments of this entry or in tweets/plurks. I don’t bring my micro/blogging into my “real” world interactions and relationship with you; I expect you to show me the same respect.

If you cannot observe this simple rule – I can recommend a simple solution. Unsubscribe from this blog. Stop reading my Tweets. Stop watching me on Plurk. I won’t be disappointed, angry or upset. I’ll still totally love you. And maybe you won’t get quite so upset over any future non-issues.

Technorati Tags: blogging,tweets,plurks

The Longest Short Week... ever!

It really has been one of *those* weeks. You know, when everything just drags on laboriously. And that's funny, cos this was a short week (due to Monday being a bank holiday).

It wasn't all bad, though: BrightKite got a lovely new iPhone makeover that we've been looking forward to for a long time (well, for some weeks, at any rate!)

If you're using Twitter/Pownce/Jaiku and tying-in Twitxr/TwitPic and all the while thinking "This is lovely, but I'd really like some location-awareness built-in" then BrightKite has you covered.

It's in private beta. I have some invites left - leave me a comment below or drop me an email and I'll send one your way.

Happy Birthday, Grandad

This is Norman Lee – he was my grandfather, and today would have been his 80^th birthday. He died a little over twenty years ago, when I was still very young (only eight years old) but it’s amazing how clearly he stands-out in my memory.

When I think about it, it’s hardly surprising. Grandad was a fascinating man who encouraged me to learn and think and explore all the time I was fortunate to spend with him.

I was very young, but Grandad obviously didn’t consider my age a barrier to learning. In a sense, he was something of a polymath; there was almost nothing he didn’t have some understanding of – or, at the very least, a desire to learn-about.

He was a keen artist, he had paintings, etchings and sketches all around his house. Once, when I was about six and I had just learned how to make different colours by mixing paint, I tried to show him how smart I was. He waited patiently while I demonstrated the magical art of “making green” and then he asked me, quietly, “Can you make light green?” Long story short; that morning, Grandad taught me how to make every shade of every colour a six year-old might ever want.

But that wasn't the end of it. We quickly moved-on to pencil-shading. There's a lot to learn about pencil-shading. How to hold the pencils, how to use differently-shaped tips, understanding the use of pressure and moisture to get different effects. And then there's just as much to learn about chalk. And charcoal. And water-colours. We talked colour and shade and hue. I was six. And he made sure it was fun and fascinating. And I understood - and loved - all of it.

Calligraphy was next. Hours and hours of the study of the art of writing. The engineering of the pens and the size of their nibs. The types of inks we could use. The weight of the paper. Old books were produced that contained photographs of manuscripts written in the Middle Ages. And in a moment or two, Grandad could do the same thing. He was like a magician – my own personal Merlin. And what’s more – he showed me all the secrets of his magic.

Weekend visits to my grandparent’s house were like some sort of personal amazing adventure; if he ever grew tired of my relentless enthusiasm and energy, he never showed it.

Painting and calligraphy led to broader art; about a year later Grandad sat me down before the television as a movie was starting. It was black and white, it looked very old. A scratchy, old Saturday-afternoon B&W movie means the same thing to all small children everywhere; boredom.

“This is an impressive picture Liam, you should watch it,” he said. And you know, I believed him. I watched it. It was The Elephant Man. It was the first "old" movie I ever watched. We talked about it afterwards. Not just the subject matter, mind you, but even the production. I asked “Why did you call it a picture?” and right there and then, at the age of seven, I got my first introduction to the history and technology of cinema. (It was to become a passion that finally led to a degree in Film and a career in television.)

Grandad had effortlessly moved our lessons from Art to History, and now weekends were about Romans and Phoenicians, Persians and Ancient Egyptians. I learned about archaeology and anthropology. I learned a little of world theology and mythology – and had my first taste of skeptical analysis. One day Grandad produced an enormous bag of old coins sporting the faces and languages of dozens of different cultures – many of which were extinct.

Now I knew what "extinct" meant.

And I knew, suddenly and quite clearly, that the men and women he had taught me about, the people separated from me by history and geography – were exactly like everyone I knew. They were no different, really, than my friends and their parents. They were the same as my infant-school teachers. They were my neighbours and the shop-keepers my Mother seemed to have long, protracted conversations with every Saturday morning. I’ve had many history teachers since then – none have so successfully connected me with the lives of long-gone people the way my Grandad did.

I came to respect him enormously – and I knew how open, genuine and accessible he was because I so clearly remember the one time he was not.

My Grandad fought for his country. As a young man he saw friends killed. He never spoke of it beyond a quiet confirmation that, yes, it happened. Had he harboured any bitterness – any at all – for the enemy, he never showed it to me. He never taught me anything even approaching intolerance. In our weekly dialogues, every culture was interesting, valuable and worthy of our time.

Looking back, I realise what a significant affect his silence on the subject of war had on me; frankly, it terrified me. I knew no-one else who had travelled the world, who had such a broad and deep understanding of people and places and... just things. Art and history and music and film and geography and science and medicine and electronics and engineering and... war. It seemed out of place. It clearly hurt him. It was the one thing he didn't discuss. And it was not a matter I wanted to push him to explain. I think this was one of the first times in my early life I realised even grown-ups could be vulnerable. I chose to respect his privacy – a big decision for a little kid – and I felt all the more mature, and closer to him, for it.

I wish Grandad was still here; there is so much he would love about today’s world. I’d love to speak with him about my job, and show him the countries I have now visited in person, not just examined in reference books. I’d love to tell him how much more I’ve studied history, and teach him a thing or two! I want to talk to him about physics - it's a subject I just adore and I know he would have been fascinated, too.

I’d love to tell him what a profound effect he had on my early life and learning, and how the sense of excitement he encouraged in me every time one of lessons taught me something new has never gone away. I’d like to ask him if he’s proud of me – because I’ve never quite stopped wanting to show him just how smart I can be!

I miss you Grandad. Happy Birthday

this could be serious

I'm addicted to Twitter. I can't stop checking for updates. I need a constant stream of fresh content and conversation on there or I start getting anxious and fidgety.

So it doesn't help that for about twenty four hours twitter has been misbehaving.

But here I am: it's 4:30am and I only woke to pee. Then I reached for my iphone and checked a couple SMS messages I received while I was sleeping. That was an hour ago and the whole rest of the time was spent on twitter.

Seriously - isn't this an addiction?

you'd never have seen it coming...

I got an iPhone. Yes, yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy. I still feel naughty. I know I said some disparaging things.

A good friend called me and asked to speak to Liam Cassidy. He seemed confused. Asked if I was REALLY Liam Cassidy. Then he added "Are you SURE? Cos I just heard you got an iPhone..."

I'm gonna explain all, I promise. Not now. A little later. I need to collect my thoughts.

More to come...