Cogitare

Selling Second Life

Josh Jaffe (an interactive ad guru) just opened an agency simultaneously in the real world and Second Life. So now that virtual world even has its own ad agency to help virtual retailers and other businesses sell.

The virtual world is hardly new, back in the mid 90's there were lots of virtual world projects, and some of you may remember VRML, a Web standard for creating such environments. These in turn arose from MUDs and MOOs and other text-based virtual worlds, and the board game Dungeons & Dragons before that.

What's different is the much greater level of internet use now, the growing ubiquity of always-on, broadband connections to it, and most importantly, the massive amounts of computing power and bandwidth available to run such worlds at a relatively low cost. Second Life and the parallel universes that ultimately follow it are just that, universes, not places. They can expand infinitely, and if you don't like how commercial the "city" has gotten, you can build yourself a commune and live out in the wilderness. The frontier never ends.

That fact changes the game, because it makes it possible for all kinds of people to find a use for this virtual world. If you haven't read Neuromancer or other William Gibson novels and you find this fascinating, run out and get the book.

So what does this all mean for retail? If you thought in hindsight that brick and mortar retailers were late to the Internet game, and allowed the Amazons of the world to muscle in on their revenues, then you should be equally concerned that all kinds of retailers take virtual reality seriously. It's not just another web site; it's a different culture, by design.

My New MacBook Pro

It arrived this morning! There are surely plenty of unboxing galleries up by now, so I'll spare you most of the pix. I thought it would be useful to post some comparisons of the 2.0 Ghz MacBook Pro w/ 1 gig RAM to the 1.67 Ghz Powerbook 15" G4 High-Res with 1 Gb RAM, which I also happen to have, at least for the moment. Both have the faster 7200 RPM 100 gig HDs in them. They are also configured the same, as I just sucked everything over from the G4 during the MBP setup.

Speaking of setup, the MagSafe connector already saved my ass! I was checking on the file transfer, without turning the office light on, and tripped over the powercord. Seriously, how stupid is that? I've had the thing for 10 minutes! Well, the MagSafe connector popped right out and the MBP didn't even flinch. Didn't move a millimeter. Thank you, Apple!

Display comparison, boot and app launch comparisons after the jump...

Pandora

This is absolutely brilliant! These guys figured out the "genome" of music and wrote a web service that basically programs a radio station with music you'd like based on a song or artist you tell them you like. Looks like they'll make money by letting you buy the song through iTunes or the album through Amazon via affiliate links. Try it! http://www.pandora.com

via SonicFlare

Hi-Res 15" Powerbook

So the new high-resolution Powerbooks come out just 32 days after I bought a 15" Powerbook at work. Aaaargh. What to do, what to do? Simple, find some other closet Mac-lover in the office that needs a laptop and slyly suggest that it would be OK if they used a Powerbook instead of the usual Dell. Bingo, time to upgrade. Discussion after the break....

Bush: Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

Link: Bush: Radicals Seek to Intimidate World - Yahoo! News.

"Against such an enemy, there's only one effective response: We never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory," Bush declared.

Is George Bush auditioning for Galaxy Quest? For those keeping score at home, the justification for the war in Iraq path looks something like this:

Good Lord, those people have the bomb (WMDs!) >
Good Lord, that Saddam was a very bad man! >
Good Lord, these people were desperate for democracy! >
Good Lord, we've got to fight them there before they come here! >
Good Lord, these people will not stop until they've enslaved whole nations!

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400 USB2 Combo Solutions at OtherWorldComputing.com

Link: OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400 USB2 Combo.

Just set up one of these very nice drives with my Powerbook. It was worth posting about. I was looking for an attractive drive to sit on my desk, with FW800 for speed and large capacity but QUIET. The Elite AL is all of these. As you can see from the pic, it really complements the aluminum G5 or Powerbook G4s. The whole case is aluminum and is comes with a stand for vertical use. There's a blue LED behind the front grill to indicate power-on.

You can check elsewhere for actual performance tests, but booting from this drive vs. the internal Powerbook drive puts a little more zip in the 'book's step. Nothing spectacular, but the FW800 connection surely isn't slowing anything down.

The drive is pretty much silent and very quiet reading and writing--hardly more audible than the same activities on the Powerbook internal drive. The only noisy operation relatively speaking, is when the drive spins up or spins down--there's a little clunk.

Overall I'm very pleased with this external drive. Gripes? The case seems to have a little play in it--when you pick it or wiggle it, the various aluminum parts have a little rattle-room. Since I never do this, I don't mind, but I will see if some screws can be tightened somewhere.

OS X on Intel Hacked: Apple ... Giggles?

OK, so here's my crazy bit of speculation: Apple is pleased as pie that something hacked OS X on Intel. Crazy? Hmmm... let's think....

First, this is a developer build, and having it running around in the wild isn't such a big deal. It isn't going to cannibalize sales of anything except maybe a few developer machines that Apple's just leasing to developers anyway. I doubt they were hoping to make a fortune on those $999 machines. They are no doubt subsidizing them, actually. So the more developers that manage to get the kit running on their own machines, the better. Any serious developer will still have to have at least one Apple kit to make sure their stuff runs right. If anything goes wrong, Apple can always try to break the rogue copies in the next update.

The hacked version has a huge upside, though: the geeks who manage the install and run OS X on their own machines are exactly the kind of people that Apple should want running OS X at this point. These are the guys and gals who will write programs and utilities, replicate their favorite Windows stuff on OS X, and generally insure a robust software environment when the first machines come out. On the other hand, they are insignificant from a financial standpoint.

When the Intel machines hit, 99.9% of the buyers are going to be people that wouldn't even consider running a computer with an unsupported operating system that may or may not totally work right. No business user can afford to and hardly any home user would want to let alone know how to. Lost sales are not an issue. But the ranks of the teen geniuses who have the time and energy to get OS X running on their aging Dells are exactly the kind of people that may produce the next killer app, and Apple should desperately want them to fall in love with OS X. Finally, they will have a way to allow that to happen, without having to in any way compromise their "we make the whole widget" ethos.

By officially saying OS X cannot run on anything other than a Mac, and making it pretty difficult to circumvent that, but not doing very much to stop those who can figure it out, Apple gets the best of both worlds.

The Worms

A long, long time ago (1987-88 to be more precise) my friend Barry and I used to hang out in a bar called The Nightengale in NYC and listen to a band called The Worms. Barry has posted some of their songs on his Blog, go check them out.

We were law students at the time, and our Saturday night routine was often to head down to 6th St. for an amazing and inexpensive Indian dinner, then head to The Nightengale around 11 or so and wait for The Worms to hit the "stage." Okay, it was pretty much just one side of the room. The place was always packed; mostly the same crowd every Saturday. The bar had a coin-op M&M Peanut dispenser and another for peanuts, which was the extent of the menu. Between sets everyone would pile out onto the sidewalk for fresh air. Pretty typical for an East Village bar, to be sure, but the Worms were awesome. Much more popular than the Friday night band, the Spin Doctors, if I recall correctly. The front man at the time was Jono Manson. Short guy, big chops!

The Worms would rock 'til about 3:30 or 4, and then we'd head to the Kiev diner for some kielbasa and eggs and maybe some borscht, or even matzoh brei. Stagger home about 6 AM and sleep until noon or 1. Ah, those were the days...

Just a little mid-life reminiscing, folks. But do check out the Worms tracks on Barry's site!

More Apple on Intel thoughts

OK I've had some time to cogitate on this and I guess the sky isn't going to fall. Apple "will not prevent" people from installing Windows on their Macs, but it seems like it's not going to be that smooth an experience. I expect Apple will use its own motherboard design, and unless Microsoft flat out starts building support for Macs into Windows, it'll probably take some tweaking to boot into Windows.

But what will happen, is you'll have a Virtual PC environment or equivalent that doesn't have to emulate an Intel processor. All it will have to do is translate the Mac's hardware configuration into a standard PC configuration, and run Windows in a window or something. With some more work, Windows apps will run as Mac applications under OS X, with the emulator doing things like translating DirectX calls to OpenGL calls and such.

So what about my scenario where everyone says "just run our Windows version under OS X?" I still think it is going to happen. But not with major software vendors. They'll make the transition. After all, they already have Mac versions. They'll probably be able to share a lot of optimization from the Windows version, so maybe we'll see apps that were not well-optimized for PowerPC get performance boosts.

But many smaller vendors that might have been considering a Mac version may not bother now, or won't update an existing program. The question is, will more software from vendors who were not considering such a version be available by running the Windows version than we lose? I now think that is the case. Let's face it, Virtual PC was only useful if you had no choice. But all that vertical market and specialty software that was never, ever, going to appear on a Mac, running at full speed in a translator under OSX, that is going to be interesting.

Man, this was a rambling entry!

Apple and Intel -- What is Going On?

Update:Um, I guess I was pretty wrong. Hmmm. Well, being a Mac user has always been interesting....

OK, I can't help myself. I'm weighing in on this insanity tonight, before the big unveiling of something, or nothing. Then I can either say I'm incredibly prescient or I got it wrong like everyone else. So what the hell is going on with Apple and Intel?

There is just too much credibility in an CNET and WSJ report to dismiss this as idle rumor. Apple and Intel are up to something. But what? I'm in the camp that says Apple cannot simply announce a switch to x86, and not only because I just bought a brand new G5. Lots of reasons have been cited, including the pain for developers, but I think the biggest reason is that developers would simply stop developing for Mac.

Think about it: if Apple switches to x86, they either have to have some weird hardware lock that makes it impossible to boot into Windows, or they don't. I can't imagine how the former is going to go over in the market, and if the latter is true, doom ensues. If a developer knows that most Mac users can simply boot into Windows, why spend the money on a Mac version for such a small slice of the market? Mac software development stops, and Apple is suddenly a maker of high quality PCs with an esoteric operating system that runs some elegant Apple apps and shareware.

No, I don't buy it. What I do buy is the scenario laid out over on Blackfriar's Blog. Apple, I think, owns enough rights in the PowerPC platform to put another player into business. If they didn't before, think about that 3 Ghz guarantee Steve made long ago: how much you wanna bet there was a clause in the IBM supply agreement that if IBM didn't hit 3 Ghz by the end of '05, Apple had the right to turn to another supplier? That's where Intel comes in.

So Apple gets Intel in on the PowerPC game. Intel's 64-bit Itanium has languished. The PowerPC architecture is making major inroads in embedded systems, game consoles, and of course scales all the way up to 64-bit servers. Intel is no Microsoft, and is far too dependent on Microsoft. Imagine Intel with an alternative, mature OS running on Intel 64-bit PowerPC-based motherboards. Dell is probably chomping at the bit, too. They toyed with Linux, but Mac OSX is really better for any commercial systems vendor.

Intel can push other initiatives like WiMax, and Apple gets another vendor, newer high-volume parts that wind up on custom Apple motherboards as well as Intel motherboards for other PC vendors.

So that's my prediction: a PowerPC-based chip from Intel. Not x86. We'll see...