But I am thankful that it’s done, that the release party has come and gone, and that I can refocus my energies on things that I’ve needed to work on more: my I.T. consulting company, my teenagers, and my messy house.  It is very easy to underestimate the time and commitment necessary for an artist to record, produce, promote, and perform an album.  Every minute spent tweaking a vocal track or tuning a session instrument is a minute spent not doing something else, after all.

Those interested in the recording can check it out at http://www.poutband.com.

Because for me, the debate begins and ends with three points:

- No fossil energy source appears to be in short supply.  According to reputed agricultural economists, the supply of crude in the U.S. is somewhere near 180 billion barrels, with more not discovered. At our present rate of consumption, that’s a sufficient supply for nearly 40 years, assuming no non-domestic sources were to be used during that time period.

- The ultimate decision point for energy production isn’t energy diversity, or even the environment (read the excellent current thinking on “carbon-in-carbon-out“), but the ability of energy to be harnessed at a low cost in human effort and a likewise low cost in human damage.  Diversity, on the other hand, is a false rationale for wind because it attempts to apply a social-science paradigm to a non-social process, while the environmental impact of fossil fuels is a false rationale because it isn’t fully understood, and environmental impact (large electromagnetic fields, noise, and visual impacts) of wind turbines and transmission systems is largely ignored and improperly dismissed as harmless.

- Fossil fuels, most notably natural methane and propane gasses, are institutionally mislabeled as nonrenewable, despite the natural occurrences of what many scientists agree are in fact, spontaneously-sustainable natural deposits and man-made sustainable gas tactics such as biogas. I would prefer the industry to begin referring to gas as semi-renewable until a better understanding of its supply system is developed.  The most notable example of propaganda covering potential gas renewability is the CNG (compressed natural gas) movement.  I have dealt personally with those invested heavily in this budding industry, and they agree that the estimates as to a tight natural gas supply (10 years or less) are blowhard figures motivated more by “science-for-political-gain” than by any form of truth.  These guys wouldn’t be investing so heavily in CNG if they thought they’d be out of business in 10 years.

2. My business took off. 6 employees now. Microsoft partner. Digium partner. The list goes on.  Time commitment issues again.

3. My tweeners became teenagers.  More driving around, more emotional guidance, more interaction with them daily.  They have become awesome musicians!

4. I started a band in Cleveland called pOUT (pronounced “pout”), which has, in the span of about one year, become one of the top 10 club bands in the rock capital.  Time commitment.

5. I realized that, despite my preoccupation with converged business communication, the bulk of my real earning potential was in general I.T. consulting and networking, because I live in Cleveland and not San Jose or Boston.

6. Still getting plenty of VoIP press despite having been relatively disengaged from the VoIP crowd for nearly two years now.  I was the coverboy for ChannelPro SMB last month for their VoIP feature.

7. My vocational obsessions only last a few years, it seems.

Poppycock.  Listen, the judge is wrong.  And even if 90% of the world agreed, what American official is going to get caught with blood on his hands for extradition?  Let’s stop worrying about how we’re all going to have to behave different in this Orwellian digital future and just suffice to say the guy’s an uninformed moron who made a mistake.

This is all much ado about nothing. Can somebody back me up?

This book is focused on the key elements of telephony and the migration to VOIP – primarily as a cost saving measure. The first 2/3 of the book deal with the VOIP technology – as an adjunct to and eventual replacement for traditional (legacy) telephony. By the 2/3 point, the author is talking about cost analysis, benefits and justification.

I would more likely title this book “VOIP for management”. This is not a put-down or insult, as the book’s primary objective is to educate the mostly non-technical person on what VOIP is, and how it might best fit into an existing picture, and one moving forward.

Being primarily technical myself, this book was good as a preliminary introduction to a subject that I wasn’t familiar with – but I immediately moved on to the O’Reilly books on the subject – “Switching to VOIP” by Ted Wallingford and “Asterisk” (Leif Madsen, et al). Someone who is responsible for managing such a transition would find it much more useful than I did.

Also, Tech PRose was kind enough to add Signal Noise as a favorite telecom blog.

As it is now, iPhone OS does a whole lot of things OS X does not–platform-wide UI support for multi-touch is just the beginning of the list. Still, it seems Apple has gone to great lengths not to cannibalize desktop PC sales, if not overtly saying so. No, iPad is not a desktop replacement, yet.  For starters, it synchronizes with iTunes, meaning that it doesn’t actually run iTunes, so its calendaring and music apps are still very mobile in nature. I also wonder if the lack of a user-facing camera was a design scheme to keep the iPad out of the desktop space, as opposed to a financial consideration to keep down manufacturing costs.

But the brushes app seems like an impressive utility with the potential to offset some productivity that’s normally reserved for the desktop.  And as I type this on a Macbook Pro, I realize that the iPad will never be suitable for video production, or for audio mixing. Even still, I can imagine great uses for multitouch in these kinds of apps.

Without the UI goodies, OS X shimmers less, and I believe it’s only a matter of time before touch-enabled desktop gear starts shipping from Cupertino.

All iPads are unlocked and use GSM micro SIMs, so you can use a carrier right away if you have data. No contract: you activate the service directly from the iPad and can cancel any time you want without an ETF. iPad has built-in 3G. Data plans normally cost $60 a month for a laptop. 250MB of data per month is $15 (less than the usual $35). $30 for unlimited — a much better deal. AT&T is providing the service.

Come on AT&T, I still can’t tether my iPhone according to your terms of service!  Brutal.

Among Blackberry, Microsoft, Google, and Apple, Microsoft was the earliest player in mobile computing and smart phones, so why have they failed in this area?

With Windows Mobile 7 waiting in the wings, it occurred to me that I just don’t see people using Windows Mobile devices that much any more. In fact, at work, we’ve seen a shift from WinMo to Blackberry and iPhone, with the exodus split about 60/40 in favor of Blackberry. The market share shift has been swift and decisive.

Now I know this isn’t exactly news, but I was trying to figure out why.  Microsoft correctly foresaw the mobile market as being the next big thing for them and the software industry, and they had very early foresight that mobile was going to sweep our eyes away from our desktops in a major way. They had the timing right, but their solution is, and has been, inadequate.

The Value of Ecosystems

One key difference between Microsoft and Apple is that, while they both offer end-to-end ecosystems (Microsoft with XBox, Apple with iTunes/iPhone/AppleTV), they seem to use their ecosystems to different ends.  I believe Apple’s tightly-integrated iTunes ecosystem was primarily driven by the “digital paranoia” of the record industry in the early 2000′s, and it may not have been Apple’s idea to provide such a closed environment. But, in the end, consumers seem to prefer the “just works” ecosystem over the “bring your own interface” approach. For this reason, Microsoft can be seen to have failed at establishing a clear content-to-consumer delivery model based on Windows Mobile.

What’s worse, the Zune, which could have been a great launchpad for a simplified, stylus-free version of Windows Mobile four years ago, exists on yet another Microsoft island, limiting its value to the consumer. Rectifying this problem by bringing the ill-fated Zune line into the limelight of the Windows ecosystem would go a long way towards making Windows Mobile relevant again. Think iPod.

Failure to Recognize Consumer Patterns of Behavior

It was only a matter of time before the average consumer was using personal devices to manage nearly every aspect of his life. Yet Microsoft took the wait and see approach, preferring to believe that the corporate world would drive personal device adoption, where, in reality, we can see that personal, entertainment-oriented device use has driven the entire mobile industry for the last several years.  Two parts gear lust, and one part nerdification of the general populous, this movement is the exact opposite of the strategy Microsoft used for Windows Mobile.

Most People Lose Their Stylus

The user interface options available on Windows Mobile devices, until recently, have been based on resistive touch screen technology, generally used with a small, inkless pen called a stylus.  Blackberry, by contrast, has always offered its trademark “scroll wheel”, and Apple developed a slew of UI technologies, including groundbreaking iPod controls, that culminated in a stylus-free touch-screen control environment for the iPhone. Windows Mobile never employed either approach, so solving this problem (and Microsoft is solving it) will help.

Give Developers a Reason to Develop

The real trick isn’t coming up with the idea. The real trick isn’t coding the program.  The real trick IS getting people to notice.  Apple has more than solved this problem, for better or worse, with the Appstore.  You bring the code, we bring the customers.  While some web sites have served as communities of developers and consumers of WinMo apps, they exist outside the ecosystem and don’t provide turnkey delivery of content.

When Microsoft finally did show up on the scene with an official WinMo store, they stubbed their toe by naming it “Windows Marketplace for Mobile”.  Srsly?

Stop Trying to Look Like Windows

Windows Mobile shouldn’t look like Windows and shouldn’t even be called “Windows”, since a windowing environment on a 3″ screen is a useless idea anyway. Yet when we look back at the releases of Windows Mobile (and its mobile predecessors), we get the idea that Microsoft has always wanted WinMo to look as much like desktop Windows as possible. Only with Windows Mobile 7 has this pattern been broken. (See above screen grab.)

Blackberry never had this problem, as their main objective was to develop a good mobile UI, and they had no ties to an existing desktop environment.  Apple, who does have Mac OS X, decided not to bother bringing the X look and feel to their mobile device. This was a great decision, of course.

When I first read about it, it sounded great.  When I read that it was developed by ex-Diablo engineers, it was a must-download.  While there was some meager novelty in “owning” the local community college, the shimmer quickly faded, because nothing at all interesting occurred as a result.

Sadly, 48 hours later, I think I’m going to remove it.  It’s boring, and it plays just like one of those Zynga social games where you have to check in as often as possible in order to “level up”.  I just don’t have time for that.

Friend Mike at Chronic Dawgs put up a post last week about how Joshua Cribbs, the best football kick returner of all time, is feeling under-appreciated by his team, the Cleveland Browns.  To put it in perspective, Josh had four return touchdowns and nearly broke the all-time pro football record for all-purpose yards this season.  No small accomplishment.

So the guy’s a big deal.  Anyway, he makes about a million a year and was insulted by a contract modification offer the Browns made for 1.4 million a year.  (As an aside, I’d be pretty happy making half that if my job was to play a game and stay in top physical shape using the best gyms and trainers in the world, but I digress.)

The din around Cleveland surrounding Josh’s contract has been constant and obnoxious the last few weeks. It all started when the new team president Mike Holmgren came in and started hiring coaches.  Fans feel that management has turned their back on Cribbs and are ignoring his request for a contract (never mind he has three years left on his current one) while they build up the white-collar staff in preparation for next season.

It’s amazing how much Twitter action I’ve seen on this subject. People are tweeting, from as far away as Kuwait, using the #payjoshcribbs hash tag. There are Facebook fan pages called “Pay Josh”, and I myself have received 7 to 10 separate invitations to support Josh’s cause.  Of all the causes to worry about.

Yet public opinion doesn’t influence an NFL owner’s bank account. Just ask the Browns, who just put the finishing touches on their ninth losing season since returning as an expansion franchise.

Why, if Google were so afraid of wasteful business practices that they would pull out of their biggest growth market for content products, would they be involved in similarly valueless gambits?  Take things like GoogleVoice, Google Wave, the cloud, Android, and projects like that.  These aren’t profitable ventures for Google, but may indeed become so at some point, especially Android and Voice.  The point is, Google spends all kinds of money on things that make folks scratch their head because they believe there’s money to be made.

China is no different, except that something clear scared the balls off of Google in the process. Be it the communist secret police or a blackmail offer that would’ve been even more embarrassing to Google than the Chinese government-backed breach of Gmail they just revealed, SOMETHING scared Google away from the biggest treasure trove of the next decade.  And that something was big. Yet to believe TechCrunch’s assessment, you’d have to assume the move was purely profit-driven and not really borne of any moralistic decision.  Again, I tend to disagree.  Profit decision or not, at the end of the day, Google DID THE RIGHT THING.  Why is it so hard for all these young pay-per-post bloggers to understand we’re talking about brutal social communism?

So TechCrunch’s echoing of the silly notion that China is a bad market for Google because it’s just too hard for them—ahh, that’s justy a goofy idea.  Have you ever known Google to back down from a market fight? Me neither.  If you answer no, then TechCrunch advises you to “sit the hell down and shut the hell up”.  They should rename their web site BlowHard.

Somebody call Mike Arrington and hook his writers up with Critical Thinking 101 at the local community college.

1 – The Nintendo Wii should be menu version 4.2u. Newer versions may work but watch those automatic system updates from Nintendo as they can break the software pre-reqs used by the Amiga emulator.

2 – Obtain a 2 GB SD card.  This card must be a non-SDHC card and the 2 GB size limit is the real deal. The Nintendo Wii will not work with a larger card without some hacking.  So save yourself the trouble (and coin) and just get a 2 GB card. This card will be used to load the Amiga emulation and floppy images later on.

3 – Download and install the Homebrew channel for Wii.  This is a piece of software required to launch the Amiga emulator and other hacker projects.  Note that by installing the Homebrew channel, you’re essentially voiding your Wii’s warranty.   These easiest way to obtain Homebrew is the Hackmii installer, available here. Here are the instructions for this step:

4 – Once Homebrew is running (it will show up as a Channel on the Wii Menu), take your SD card back to your computer and delete everything on it.

5 – Download Simon Kagstrom’s UAE port for Wii and extract the zip file to the root of the SD card. There should be two folders — one called uae and one called apps.  You won’t need to do anything with the folder called apps, but the uae folder is where you’ll place your Amiga ROM files and floppy disk images.

6 – Obtain Amiga ROMs.  The easiest (and legal) way to do this is do purchase Cloanto’s Amiga-licensed (yes, the Amiga license holders are real people with real lawyers who actually exist) emulation product for PC and Mac, called Amiga Forever.   Copy the ROM files from the Amiga Forever CD-ROM into the /uae/roms folder on the SD card.  They should be called “kick13.rom”,  ”kick20.rom”, and so forth depending on the version of the Amiga you plan to boot.

7 – Obtain Amiga floppy images (games).  A great site is thegamearchives.com.  Save these ADF files into the /uae/floppies folder on the SD card.

8 – Re-insert the SD card into the Wii and launch the Homebrew channel.  You should now have a working Amiga.  Use the Wiimote to control the Amiga (keyboard support is extremely limited at this point but workable for most programs).

9 – Enjoy!

Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing.

After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. “My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide),” he said. “There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They’re not going up, and if anything they’re going down.”

It’s amazing to hear this stuff starting to come out. I wonder if the people in the trenches are finally beginning to realize that the monumental rush “Everything Eco”, the so-called Green Movement, is a collossal misallocation of fiscal resources at a time of 10% unemployment and a collapsed real estate industry. The federal government gives Tesla a half-billion dollars in what is a considerable R&D gambit, and I’m scratching my saying why isn’t our government keeping that money in order to stop destroying the credit of the American people?

Green I.T. is one of the chief offenders.  Even as we seek to move mobile apps to the cloud, we centralize power consumption in “hot spots”–the very same thing heavy industry did during the twentieth century. Load goes up, demand goes up, carbon is emitted. Manufacturing of mobile devices moves to China, whose plants are half as clean as American ones, and we’re worried about their Kyoto-boggling pollution instead of their murderous, liberty-defiling, anti-human regime.  Is all this the price of this Going Green?

Too rich for my blood.

When are our industry leaders going to get their heads screwed on tight again and get back to the business of innovating to help people instead of helping superstitious, political science?