Christian Oliver’s digital thoughts

I recently bought a Netbook, the MSI Wind U100-432 to be precise and I must say I’m very happy about it.

Granted I’m grumbling about having to use Windows XP and remembering why I love Mac OS so much. Nevertheless, the advantage of running full applications when compared with my first netbook, an early eeePC.

My setup is simple. I run Dropbox to synch a folder with the files I’m currently working on and Evernote to take notes.

I also have Firefox 3 with the same Extensions I use on the Mac (No Script being a MUST since I’m on XP) and TweetDeck to remain connected to the Twitterati.

Mostly I don’t worry about local downloads of emails since I use Yahoo! Mail and GMail mostly.

For my To-do lists I’ve been a long time user of Remember The Milk.

All this really helps me work remotely without much power requirements. I’m wondering if it would get to the point of allowing me to travel with a Netbook and leave my Laptop behind on short trips.

One very good upside of this setup is the cost. For less than $500 I have a working environment even capable of videoconferencing via Skype. This is very attractive specially when thinking of risky places like Venezuela. I would be much less worried about having this stolen than my MacBook.

To make things even more interesting, there are ways to hack this machine to run OS X. That would make it almost perfect, since an Apple version would be the ultimate.

Another very big upside is the battery life. I don’t have precise data but today it lasted the whole afternoon, even with intermittent WiFi and it even helped recharge my iPhone which almost died on me today with low battery.

On the downside, the keyboard is not the most comfortable and the Windows key mappings are a pain since I’m so used to Mac commands now. Also the screen is not so big, so really it’s only tolerable to do work on texts, small spreadsheets and small MindMaps. I wouldn’t do Photography retouching on it or other large scale documents such as Project in it. Not unless it was urgent to do so.

Yesterday I went to the MIT Forum’s Future of Wireless Event.

The audience was mostly suits from the telecommunications industry and the usual Atlanta networking crowd.

The forum itself was very TV like since it was being transmitted live to 26 other locations around the US.

Here are some of my notes. Nothing really groundbreaking or new was said though.

According to De La Vega, AT&T Invested an additional $500M in the 3G network just to compensate for the increased expectation of demand due to the release of the iPhone 3G.

RDLV: “We’re the one subsidizing the iPhone to really get it to the masses”. On why AT&T deserves part of the credit for the iPhone’s success.

On wireless bandwidth: Todays technology can go up to 14.4 MPBS. Already purchased the spectum for 4G. Will use LTE which can go to up to 100 MBPS.

Average per user bandwidth usage is decreasing as mass market adoption of the iPhone increases. First adopters had higher per user bandwidth usage.

World is drifting to LTE although some are stickin to Wimax.

Verizon is also going to LTE.

At AT&T 3G is being lunched also on 850mhz spectrum to improve the reach.

RDLV on Wifi: believe that Wifi is the unifiying force. Just purchased Wayport. Idea is to allow users to switch seamlessly from cellphone data to WiFi.

RDLV: Close to 290 million phones in the US

A whole world of machine to machine communications is comming. Sensor that allow them to know where they are and when to interact with each other. RDLV

RDLV: Would start a company to help devices network with each other and become temporary peripherals.

Many opportunities in emerging markets.

Retail channels are becoming “experience stores”, what they can’t get online.

Loopt is the killer app according to RDLV but Loopt+Twitter would be even better.

I went to Caracas for a few days of intense work with El Universal. Mostly I was at the Upfront sale for 2009 advertising space, where they exhibited a video starring me. Also got to work on other aspects of my project and see part of the family.

At El Universal’s Upfront sale event

More work with El Universal

El Universal in Caracas produced a video with me about their future challenges and how media consumption is changing with the advent of media fragmentation. Here it is.

I have to translate it into english but most will already see the point. It was hard to convey so many details in 3 minutes. The first script I wrote took around 8 minutes, thus we had to chop it a lot.

Yesterday I received my new MacBook. It’s meant to replace the MacBook Pro I’ve had for more than 2 years now. It’s not that that MacBook Pro really needed replacing as it works great. I’m most surprised at how long I was able to keep my old MacBook Pro and how well it still performs. That NEVER happened to me while I used Windows based PCs. I think my record for keeping a laptop might have been a year and a half at MOST.

I’m still impressed at how quickly one can be operational on a new Mac. It would normally take me days to have a Windows machine fully operational with all my software and settings properly adjusted.

Here are some pictures of my unboxing and I placed a video in YouTube which has been surprisingly commented. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU73tOt4GHY

Yesterday was the release of Google’s first Android based phone, better known as the G1. The hardware is from HTC and it is tied to T-Mobile in the US. True availability will be by the end of October.

I was excited about this but now I must admit I’m a bit disappointed. The G1 is no iPhone killer, at least not as it is now. I get the feeling Google and T-Mobile rushed into releasing something but it’s flaws could really hurt it’s long term prospects.

To me the main flaws are:

- No standard headphone jack! If people complained about the original iPhone’s recessed headphone jack, imagine how absurd it is to not even have a true headphone jack. I guess this phone decided not to be an iPod. But then why build an Amazon MP3 store into it?

- No video playback whatsoever. The argument is that third party developers will create this soon but come on!

- No built-in storage. You HAVE to have a MicroSD card to store anything on the phone. So, don’t forget to buy one at the time of purchase or you won’t be able to do much with the G1.

- No desktop synching options. Again, supposed to be developed by third parties. To make things worse, there is no Exchange support either. So, you are forced to live with Google Apps, which is not that bad but having no alternatives is not good enough.

- As restricted as the iPhone in terms of modem tethering.

There are many other smaller details and certainly there are good things about it. Most of all, it’s Open Source which promises a lot for the future. Nevertheless, I’m sure the adoption rates won’t be even near those of the iPhone, after all, I haven’t even talked about the cool factor.

The question is, how difficult is it to port apps from the iPhone to Android and vice versa. Right now it’s clear that if you are a mobile developer, developing for the iPhone should be the wisest business decision.

I gave a seminar on Monday at the American Press Institute (API) about the newsroom of the future. It was a quick trip except for a cancelled flight on Sunday that almost made me loose the conference entirely. Fortunately they rerouted me to a different airport and after a long taxi ride I made it to the hotel.

The conference went very well, the audience was engaged and I got many congratulations and requests for contact information.

Here are some pictures of the trip. Click on them to see them larger:

Working “multimedia” on the plane during Sunday’s Ground Stops.

The Hyatts are very good for me because they come iPod ready with a bedside radio and inputs on the TV

Introducing me and ready to start

As many of you know, I couldn’t resist. I have the black bag and now want the white one…

I’m honored to have been invited to Full Sail University’s Advisory Board. I’ve heard of Full Sail for many years but I never had the chance to visit before. Now I must say I’m incredibly impressed. This University is a model to follow and the most cutting edge, multi-disciplined production oriented university out there. There may be equivalent facilities somewhere else but none with the variety of disciplines covered at Full Sail.

No wonder they can’t keep up with growth. There are so many opportunities for companies like Full Sail yet their main challenge is managing their growth. They currently have more than 6,000 students and the facilities are used 24/7.

What I found to be most amazing was the incredible mood everyone seems to be in. You can tell people are learning and working while having a lot of fun.

Let me give you a little tour.

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We are having an internal meeting in INNOVATION at Norfolk, near Juan Antonio Giner’s home. We are discussing our latest lessons learned regarding newsroom integrations and the 2008 WAN congress. Very interesting meetings. One important message from the WAN; its not a matter of wether or not to integrate, its all about how and there are no unique magic formulas because each company has different realities, different skills and different audiences and since media companies can no longer force content to their audience, they have to be really innovative and listen hard to determine how to compete.

Here are some pictures of us working:

Juan Antonio Giner and Marta Botero

Javier Zarracina and Marcos Foglia

Carlos Soria

Carlo Campos, Ernesto Rinaldi, Christian Oliver and Alvaro Moncada

Ernesto Rinaldi and David LaFontaine