Month: January 2010

 
Via The Daily What via Fark of course

On the keyboard

It’s the first thing I thought about: the angle for your wrist reading your iPad on your thighs is the worst ever to type something. The only way to type easily on a flat surface is to have it laying.. Flat on a desk. In this situation, having the screen on a flat position is awful for reading. I don’t see a lot of that comment on the web (actually beside Lâm I didn’t see this comment often).

On the multitasking, relation with the processor

Yeah I don’t think it’s a big deal either. I prefer being able to multitask for sure but in a casual setting, when I’m not working I don’t use three or four applications, I usually use only one: media player, game, etc. I don’t close everything because I can on a laptop but in all fairness, I’m monotasking in these cases.

What I find crazy is reading an article on Engadget saying

“There’s no multitasking at all. It’s a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once.”

If it’s blazing fast with just one application, be sure that it’s not the same experience on multitask. It’s linked that it’s fast and not flexible. Android does more vs the iphone therefore is not providing the exact same seemingless UI flowing because with widgets and 7 screens refreshing together while downloading an app and tweeting yeah, it’s not perfect on the old smartphones based on it (though the 2.1 update makes it much better).

I mean a tech blog this size not understanding how Apple thinks, how they always put the user experience joy bells and whistles first, doing the teenager geek who wants everything is not what I expect from a professional article on a new device hands-on.

If you want to multitask, buy another tablet computer. It exists since 2001.

Same

On the noiseless experience

People focus on the mobility of this “new” device but I like to point out that it’s also about the noise: smartphones, tablets are totally noiseless computer. If they were doing a little spinning annoying noise while on use, I’m pretty sure everybody would rather be on a desk with a big screen to read emails. With noise too but at least your sight thanks you.

It’s awesome to be in the silence of a bedroom and reading without being disturbed by the “computer noise”. It’s not just about the portability (because of course, you lose a lot going from 24/17/15” to 4,5 or 9,7” for reading). It’s also about ears freedom.

On games

The iPad seems to be a perfect game machine we were I think, a lot dreaming about. And yet Apple doesn’t care more than just bringing a fucking car race and a fps on stage. They have the same pattern all the time: do a device focused on experience delivery, contact publishers. Of course they go for EA and Gameloft, making so much money on iPhone.

But the iPhone is pretty popular in the game industry and in the geek/tech culture not because it’s cool to develop for (it’s not), but because the device is awesome and made super weird and unique games some major hits. The day these indie devs quit for another platform providing more support and more openness, the Apple touch device serie is going to be much less trendy.

I still can’t believe how Apple reacts about games. Steve must have a problem with them. Computer games made Microsoft in the 90s (DirectX). Computer games made Apple since 2007 (iPhone). Computer games made Commodore in the 80s (Amiga). Computers get popular in the mass market with games since always. They don’t with iWorks or Excel.

Pushing about how it’s cool to read books on a multitouch device in 2010 is more than meh. It’s kind of dumb.

On Apple politics

No camera, closed system.. I have no problem with people getting crazy and wanting to buy it like they want to pee so bad even if they know the 2G is going to have a camera. It’s business. But I’d rather have Apple be sure that I would not buy a 1G without camera because I know that every fucking netbook has one since day one. I’d rather have Apple be sure that I have some brain you know. The same with accessories sold at insane prices.

For Flash, I don’t care as a user. I hate Flash as a user. On the other as a developer I know how Adobe’s product is pretty neat, allowing fast prototyping and stuff like that. And I know that HTML5 is totally not ready yet, so the web without proprietary plug-ins is still a dream.

Some people think that it’s sad that the iPad is a closed platform (I guess they beefed up the protection against jailbreaking?) and that if they were starting their career today, they may not because they could not code and hack their computer like they want.

Well, I guess a teenager today who wants to code would buy two netbooks for the price of the iPad, install Linux/7/OS X and would play with them and learn to code. I’m not worried about how future generations are going to produce software because the world is full of computers.

It’s amazing how in a week like this you almost end up thinking that no, there’s only one computer company in the world.

And they are launching a product with which “you can browse the web with it”.

Saying that without laughing out loud in 2010, only Steve Jobs can.

I was wondering why there’s not a lot of people living in-between countries but now I have my painful answer.

It freezes your brain like a cold axe slaughtering your head.

It fucks my mind so hard. It was the worst week of the year they said. Well I concur.

It’s not really about the shitty weather or Christmas aftershock or more importantly because I miss her so hard. It’s about being stuck between two cultures that are really close and yet fundamentally different.

This in-between is the weirdest psychological thing I have ever experienced. It’s like living in two separate timeline where I have this one where I’m living in the US and this one I live for now here in France. This one I know so bad. This one that makes me think about last year when I started my company and really felt at war and hitting a dead end with France in general.

I was already moving away since a while. 7 years without TV, so less and less french discussion about what’s happening here. Ten years I’m reading most of the time in english, watching shows in english and now it’s been a year I’m writing in english. All my computers, OSes, apps are all in the language of Shakespeare.

So it’s really, really awkward to live in France interacting with my inside world –social medias, music, movies- all in english  and communicate with the outside world in french. Now that I lived in the US it’s even worse. I feel like totally spaced out, stranger in both countries.

And because I’m connected with my Verdell everyday with a 8 hours delay, having a clock widget set on Pacific Time to look at, I’m totally out of time too. In the evening I always have a rush of energy knowing that LA is waking up and getting ready. It makes me want to do things when it’s dinner time and that well, Paris is getting sleepy. And then I feel it too.

Depression. I call that a rollercoaster-you-can’t-get-out-from. It’s funnier this way.

I can’t wait for it to stop though.

Hee

Because it actually started on Twitter, for real. I remember, it was one of those Browse Evening, the kind I have everyday. I clicked on her picture. I guess the green attracted me. I like the green.

It could have not happen. Hell I could have not been tweeting (0,98% of  Twitter users are french in 2010, I started at SXSW 2007) at all and miss that!

And Better Off Dead. C’mon!!! That is crazy.

So if you want the rest which is pretty awesome, stay tuned on har0ld and missRFTC. Or follow the hastag #itstartedontwitter.

You heard about it here first. Or on Twitter.

This CES 2010 was very interesting. There’s something slowing down in the hardware world and that’s a big benefit for us as consumers and content makers.

The content (the oldest one, text is coming back hard) and user experience (free-dom) are driving the trend and that’s good news. HD wagon and 3D are trying to sell themselves like crazy but let’s face it: it doesn’t change things that much (you need a crazy large screen to see the difference, a lot of people don’t see the difference at all and more, 99% of the entire world cinematographic production is not in that format anyway). In that aspect that is no surprise if the SD-Wii launched three years ago is outselling by more than one million units its HD-competitors sales combined in the biggest month of the year in the game industry, last month. Seriously, it does say something.

It’s cool that 3D is coming out but let’s see when we’ll not need glasses which is a couple of years away, maybe much more before it’s affordable. HD’s still not.

HTC slate tablet prototype with Chrome OS

Instead the big trend appears to be about people connecting them, making their lives easier: TV integrating social services, devices streaming everything you want to every devices you want, e-readers allowing you to read stuff without killing your sight on a phone screen or making your knees hurt because of the heat of your laptop.

Instead of using technology to simply beef up the visual in-your-face experience, the trend is to do more overall and use the technology to make life better, more pleasant simply by being smarter on technology use, by being affordable.

Like the DVD upscaling technology. Like reaching your content from anywhere with Boxee Box or any computer set as a streaming machine. Like having a tablet on your couch, browsing the web and commenting your friends activity. Like the GPS and sync options of our smartphones. Like netbooks. Like charging your things wirelessly.

Like the SSD rejuvenating old PCs. Like Linux/Android getting huge because they make all these not-that-last-piece-of-tech you have work better, faster. Freely. For your own pleasure. That’s why Windows7 is good too: they didn’t rely on future technology like they did for Vista or older OS, they just heavily optimized what they had.

Dear slate tablets. Please hurry the fuck up. Game developers need you. 

I mean it’s a huge difference that we don’t go into the “MOAR” but into the “let’s be more efficient”. I know it’s not just to make people happy. Moore’s law is not as fast as in the 00s or 90s and now manufacturers can’t rely on that to scale investment and make a profit. They have to wait and expand their product life cycles.

Efficiency. It’s the first time in my mind that it’s the trend to rule them all, thanks to the mobile phones market driving the tech world today. Because we know it’s ridiculous to buy an entire new tv and entertainment set just to see 200 more lines in movies that don’t require that to be totally, absolutely enjoyable. It’s ridiculous to throw entire dvd collection to buy again some optical slow discs. It’s ridiculous to buy new expensive computers and graphic cards when we spend 90% of our time on the web and do so much on it. Hell my audio PC is just a bi-cpu and I can run more tracks than I can possibly handle. For life.

Despite everything manufacturers say people still have some brain or an empty wallet these days. Sometimes both, which make them search for efficiency even more.

The global economy is going toward better ressource management because we’re going to be short very soon. So does the entertainment and personal home digital business and we still have a lot to do (think about all this electronic trash we’re adding each day). 

Spending more, throwing things that work for a subjective gain is certainly not a good step into the future. Optimizing and saving ressources is a much better bet.

So it seems that the g-spot doesn’t appear to exist after all. I mean, scientifically it does not but subjectively, it does.

So good

Who cares. The important thing is pleasure and the most accurate view of it seems to be that the clitoris is a big organ which can be stimulate on its outside tip or from an inside point.

I find interesting that researchers are still discovering and being not sure about sexual organs functions, exactly like people don’t really know how their bodies work. Women as men, we’re pretty equal on that ignorance.

A lot of women still don’t know how to orgasm, because a lot of them don’t practice masturbation, still. It’s a real issue.

In a 2007 british survey It was found that, between individuals aged 16 to 44, 95% of men and 71% of women masturbated at some point in their lives. 73% of men and 37% of women reported masturbating in the four weeks before their interview, while 53% of men and 18% of women reported masturbating in the previous seven days.

The difference is huge and easily explained by how women can’t reach the status of being normal loving to give themselves pleasure without some severe social backlash if they claim it.

Man’s World.

But men can’t laugh or point that out because we are in the same situation regarding the prostate. When I was a child, my grandfather would say that this is a useless male organ that makes you pee when you’re old so that you’d rather have it removed. I don’t know where I read that but some men are complaining that sex is boring. Sure, if all you do is preventing your cock to ejaculate, staying in this position until you can’t possibly control it exploding in quick fading bursts, you’re in a sad position.

Enter the p-spot, coming with the same backlash as woman masturbation: you can’t really talk about it or even practice it.

We know how it works, it’s common knowledge that it’s giving more pleasure but we refuse to see the prostate massage as nothing more than something pretty fucking gay, especially in Old Europe. In the US, I saw a SNL skit focused on that. Prime time p-spot guys.

Like I said in a long auto-ITW (french), I totally love it. Now that I have a girlfriend it’s no different. It just enlarges sex games scope. Zomg it’s just the beginning baby :)

Anyway when I reach for my p-spot I always feel like I’m touching my cock from the other side. Tip or inside. Hey, it looks like the female stimulation too: tip (clitoris) or inside (g-spot, might be renamed c-spot but who cares). Knowing that male/female orgasm contractions share the same periodicity (0.8 sec rate), knowing that we are only different on ONE gene..

Well everything makes sense. No magic or hidden part here. We share almost the same organs and we have pleasure with these in pretty much the same way. This is some crazy shit man. *sigh*

Instead of playing to be retarded asking ourselves “could it be The Answer to the Mystical Mystery of my Sexual Life?” by reading researchers work, we should encourage ourselves to have fun with our bodies, knowing it much better. Nothing can replace the experience to learn something.

Since the p revelation I feel I totally changed:

• Masturbation lasts way longer and is more enjoyable by not only shacking my sausage but by touching myself around it. A lot. So many nerves around, inside my thighs, under my balls, around my ass.. You’re a fool not playing with it. Let me rephrase that: you are batshit crazy not playing with it. Because you own it you know.
• I have hard-ons I’ve never had before even if I’ve never had any problems on that part.
• Orgasms are just amazing and stronger. Much more than classic intercourses. Just yesterday after feeling that I wanted to stop and then wanting more and then wanting to stop, I had one that made me moaning and hyperventilating for 15 minutes, still feeling the pleasure down there, pumping in my boner. Oh yeah I sleep well after that. Body feels relaxed like you just took a full Lexomil/Xanax tablet.
• I discovered my nipples were giving me pleasure too. I hated it 10 years ago, licking them was a good way to turn me off. I wasn’t receptive. I just thought that sex is all about my penis (not really but you get my point).

I find it unfair that the public opinion is always harassing women on their sexual life while men are giggling in the dark because we believe that we know it all: shake, ejaculate, period.

If you are a man and want to believe that BS, don’t make excuse that you want/need to fuck a lot of pussies, it’s just that you are bored with your narrow view of sex intercourses. You can do better. And it’s free!

So dude if you want to unlock some big rewards, fat ass orgasms, explore your own body first. At your pace. You don’t have to tell anybody. Forget about this g-spot, be selfish. Get rid of that body hair that makes no sense, take care and respect your body. And reach for higher pleasure.
 

Fuck I talk like a 70s pothead hippy sex guru. It’s your fault.

I’m looking at technology trends and all I can see is that users get away from ads and commercials as much as they can while businesses rely more and more on this revenue.

How the hell is this going to end?

Some observations:

• Google Chrome browser just got its own addon system. Most rated and downloaded addons? AdSweep and AdBlock.
• Firefox has gained its huge traction with AdBlock Plus, which is the most popular addon with 695,623 downloads to date.
• Facebook won against MySpace not only on features, but because and foremost IMO for this nice and almost ad-free UI.
• Same for Twitter, ad-free for now.
• Same for Google Search and its clean UI.
• YouTube ads: Google is trying hard but people don’t click a lot. I stream less videos since I have to click a fucking cross button everytime.
• RSS: It’s MEANT to be only the content and the content only. Embedded rss ads are useless, less efficient that web ones which are already not that effective, except for a few giants or as an additional income.
• Main attract of downloading shows on P2P is that there’s no commercials. No 30-40 mn show cut with three commercial breaks.
• Tivo/DirectTV recording so you can skip them.
• etc

Why do we still push advertising so much? Yeah, it was working this way with papers and TV, now the technology is 100% customer-side. If the future is based on niche markets and specific audiences with no brand loyalty reached by word of mouth propagation only, I don’t see the advertising as a solution. Maybe a dying-almost dead one at best. So focusing on it like a lot of tech businesses do seems really silly. 

We finished The Fake Decade, and it’s not that it’s new but these past 10 years have been pretty full of faux everything from Reality TV to Weapons of Mass Destruction. It’s going to be a challenge to do something lamer than that. Please don’t encourage.

It would be good to slow down on the BS or maybe even stop it whenever you see it.

Time goes by so fast when you’re happy. Ten days Christmas and New Year’s Eve with her. If I would have been told that at 30 years old I would be with my California Love in Paris and around France visiting families, I would have been pretty excited I guess. That was fun.

It’s a trap!

Fun, this word I try to replicate, workship, live.

Now it’s not really fun though. I don’t know when team HarVerd will be unified again.

In Vincennes. What’s the name of this town? V-C! V-C! And who’s gonna get on down?

Also I finished a track:

Unicorn by Harold

I’m so late on news and everything, I promess it’s going to be more stable in the future now.

Holy shit, 2010.