What a Week of Baseball...

Wow. I'm spent, and I have a ballgame left tomorrow night. I was planning on getting up to The Phone Booth tonight for the Giants-Padres game, but chose to pass in an attempt to get caught up on some work, having already seen two Rockies-Nationals games this week at Coors. After Monday night's game, where we saw history made, who'd've thunk that Jonathan Sanchez would go out and throw a no-hitter tonight? Of course, had I been there, I'm sure I would've jinxed it, so I'm glad I stayed home to catch Kruk and Kuip's call. I'm psyched to have seen the end of the 258th no-hitter in major league history, and even more psyched to have seen something Monday night which is nearly 37 times as rare.

As part of the research I did on Tuesday to determine the rarity of half-innings which consisted of three 3-1 putouts, I ended up running across an interview with Milt Pappas and Bruce Froemming. All I've ever heard from my dad, his friends, and pretty much all of the Chicago media is that Froemming robbed Pappas of his perfect game in '72, by calling a full-count fastball on Larry Stahl ball four. Thinking about how a borderline pitch that goes the wrong way can ruin a perfect game (and maybe a W, if it's a close ballgame), I was getting edgy tonight as Sanchez led off the top of the 8th with three four-seamers to Adrian Gonzalez, all off the plate inside, before coming back to get him on a 3-1 flyout to CF. And, I was thankful that Major League Baseball Advanced Media and Sportvision have installed PITCHf/x in every major league stadium, to provide an impartial (and non-human) arbiter which wasn't available at Wrigley on that fateful second day of September in 1972. As you can see in the attached screen shot, PITCHf/x confirmed Brian Runge's called third strike on Everth Cabrera--no doubt about it.



I'm psyched that Sportvision's technology is not only installed in every major league stadium, but that they're expanding their analytical capabilities to include hitting, fielding, baserunning, and much more. I grew up listening to coaches talk about "The Book", which was comparatively simple when I was a kid--lefty reliever against righty pinch-hitter (and vice versa), when to issue an intentional pass, when to drop down a sac bunt, etc. Today, with the overwhelming volume of statistical data available, and sufficient computing horsepower in packages accessible to even the casual observer, sports analytics can be performed in real-time by Joe Fan--which is pretty freakin' cool.

Now, further advances by MLBAM and Sportvision have led to dramatic new capabilities, many of which are being revealed tomorrow at the 2nd Annual PITCHf/x Summit. I'm humbled to be part of what the New York Times has described as follows...

"Teams have begun scrambling to develop uses for the new data, which will be unveiled Saturday to a group of baseball executives, statisticians and academics, knowing it will probably become the largest single advance in baseball science since the development of the box score."

I'm not sure I can be easily dropped into one of those three categories (I'm closest to a statistician, knowing how much Strat-O-Matic I played as a kid, and the years of toil I spent as a Rotisserie Baseball player before the advent of the Internet), but I'm certain that I'll find the summit as valuable as the other esteemed members of the audience. More to follow over the weekend...and hopefully, maybe another historical event...

Stimulating...and The Stimulus...

I was fortunate to be asked to sit on a panel at today's Stimulus Opportunities for Small Business program, hosted by the Silicon Valley Small Business Development Center. Until recently, I wasn't familiar with the Small Business Development Center network, but wow...what a great resource for small businesses. SBA partially funds the 1,000 or so SBDCs, working closely with local colleges and state economic agencies, all to help entrepreneurs achieve success--and all for free or at very low cost.

My panel was composed of representatives from private sector entities...

• Denise Rodriguez-Lopez, formerly of the U.S. Department of Transportation, who now runs her own consultancy focused on federal and state procurement
  
• Don Gonneville, who runs his own service-disabled veteran-owned business
• Dorothy Davis, who runs her own business, providing software QA and CD/DVD duplication
  
• Carol Bowyer from The Federal Technology Center, which works throughout California to help small businesses sell to federal, state, and local governments
  
• Yours truly, providing the perspective of a guy who sold to federal and state governments for years, and worked closely with federal agencies on wireless information assurance policies such as DoDD 8100.2
  

Brian Burch from HP set the stage, and Brian Tippens from HP moderated.

The reason that I mention all seven of us and what we currently do is that we come from wildly different backgrounds, but to a person, each of us commented on the tremendous value of the professional network, the value of teaming, and the need to cooperate (sometimes even with your competitors) to advance your own agenda. As a guy who has cultivated a professional and personal network across a very broad spectrum of interests and expertise, I can absolutely vouch for the value of developing and maintaining a network of folks to whom you can turn when you need advice, support, or cooperation.

Each speaker contributed salient points in his or her own way. Hopefully, the key points that I got across are:

• the need to establish credibility with customers, prospects, and partners--the work I did in the federal space had much less to do with a hard sell than it did with educating stakeholders on wireless information assurance threat vectors, but the end result was significant customer revenue
• the need to educate yourself on your market, your competitors, and your potential teaming partners (even, or perhaps especially, if they're in markets outside your core competence), as well as the fact that many free or low-cost options exist to do so, ranging from local IEEE chapter meetings, to SBDC classes, to SD Forum meetings, and much more
• the need to find a champion in an organization who can be your flag bearer, who will go to bat for you in internal battles, and who will provide off-the-record commentary to assist in your success
• the need to attack via the flank on every deal, regardless of deal size; large or small, too many vendors deal with a single point of customer contact, which provides a horrendously incomplete picture of the opportunity

Regarding flanking, I related the story of how long the cycle was to earn a particular piece of multi-million dollar business with one of the uniform services, and how we as a team had to evangelize policy makers at the customer, at the prime contractor, and at related agencies, as well as educating end users, network managers, security architects, and many, many more folks on both coasts. But, we established credibility over the course of more than a year, because we were passionate about earning the customer's business, which we ultimately did, to the dismay of some very large companies who were left on the outside looking in.

I think that the ~400 attendees received tremendous value from the day's discussions, which also included presentations from Mark Quinn of the San Francisco SBA, Marty Keller of the State of California's Small Business Advocate office, and a public sector panel composed of city, state, and federal procurement officials--all told, an awesome lineup of folks at a half-day session which cost exactly $0.00 to attend.

Kudos (and thanks) to Patrick Cook and the team at SVSBDC for putting on a great event. Thanks also to Joanne Vliet, the director of the Department of Commerce's Silicon Valley Export Assistance Center, who recommended me for the panel. I enjoyed the event immensely, and came away with a number of valuable new contacts.

I'm not sure what the Latin would be for "I learned, I shared, I networked", but that'd be a good recap of the day.

Until then, Veni, Vidi, Vici.

A Record-Tying Evening in Denver...

I was fortunate enough to make it to last night's Nationals-Rockies game at Coors Field (which I think is now the 19th major league stadium I've visited). Prior to first pitch, numerous questions ran through my head...

• Coors Field...with the history of this place, and despite the fact that they keep their baseballs in a humidor, would this be a high-scoring three-plus hour game?
• Would the rain that had just passed through have left enough moisture in the air to prevent much carry, keeping the score reasonable?
• Or would the fact that the Nationals entered play nearly a dozen games worse than the next-poorest team in the NL translate into a Rockies slaughter?
  
• Would the Rockies be able to continue their hot streak, coming off a torrential stretch where they'd won 22 of 29, with much of the turnaround attributed to Jim Tracy replacing Clint Hurdle in the dugout?
• Could the Nationals achieve a similar kind of turnaround by showing Manny Acta the door?
• Are the Diamondbacks so devoid of talent that a Rockies-like turnaround (or even .500 baseball) is impossible under A.J. Hinch? And, are certain veterans still (to be kind) lamenting Hinch's hiring? Sure, he's young, came in with zero coaching experience, and came into play last night with a 21-32 lifetime managerial record, but he's a Stanford grad, caught nine years of professional ball, and has always been known as a bright guy. So, I continue to wonder what's going on with that organization, and why the club hasn't responded to the managerial change even remotely like the Rockies did to theirs (unbelievably so, in fact).
• Could the Cubs bullpen hold their 4-0 lead over the Braves?
• What the heck was going on with the Reds in Philadelphia, down 10-0 after 1?
  

After two innings where a number of hard-hit balls didn't carry, I thought we might be in for a low-scoring ballgame. Little did I know that we'd witness only the eighth 1-0 game in Coors Field history--not coincidentally, all after the introduction of the humidor. The game wasn't exactly a masterpiece--I can't tell you the last time I saw two runners from the same team doubled off second base on line drives.

But, we saw two major league records tied, which was certainly memorable.

In the bottom of the fourth, Todd Helton hit a hard two-hopper to first; the amount of topspin off the bat made me utter "tough hop" after the first hop, but 1B Nick Johnson masterfully played the in-between second hop, tossing a strike to P Craig Stammen for the out. On the very next pitch, Brad Hawpe hit a hard three-hopper over (and narrowly missing) the bag on which Johnson made an excellent backhanded diving stop, scrambling to his feet to deliver an underhand toss to the covering Stammen for the out. I made a note to self how rare it is to see back-to-back 3-1 putouts--tough ones at that.

Lo and behold, Troy Tulowitzki grounded a full count fastball to Johnson, who picked it and tossed to Stammen for the third out. I immediately turned to my friend Toby Nixon and said "We just saw a major league record at least tied, and maybe set--three putouts in an inning by a pitcher may've never happened before." The thought crossed my mind that three assists in an inning by a first baseman might also be a record, but I mentioned to Toby that since an assist can be awarded without a putout being recorded (e.g., ground ball to third, clean throw across to beat the runner in plenty of time, first baseman drops the ball, scoring goes 5-E3), it's possible that a first baseman could've had four assists in an inning.

With a little research this morning (thanks, Baseball Almanac), I've learned that:

• we witnessed two major league records tied--P putouts in an inning and 1B assists in an inning
• this was the 13th time in MLB history that a pitcher had three putouts in an inning
• this was the 12th time in MLB history that a first baseman had three assists in an inning
• this was the seventh time in NL history that three 3-1 putouts in an inning had occurred
• that three 3-1 putouts in an inning has occurred only once in AL history--ironically with Dick "Dr. Strangeglove" Stuart on the fielding end, in the summer of '63

The statistically interesting part of the entire equation is that while this was the seventh time in NL history that three 3-1 putouts have occurred in a single inning, it was the fourth time it's happened in the fourth inning. When you do the math on how infinitesimally small the chances are of this happening, it gets even cooler. I'm not even going to try to calculate this, but at 162 games per team per season, times number of defensive innings, times number of teams, then do the same going back through pre-expansion, 154-game seasons, you end up with a whole lot of defensive innings, but only now seven instances where this has happened--four of which happened in the fourth inning.

You know what? That's pretty freakin' cool.

A few more statistical niceties on the topic of three 3-1 putouts in an inning...

Well, wait a second. Baseball Almanac lists most putouts by a pitcher in an inning, and most assists by a first baseman in an inning. Comparing those lists is how I came up with the number of seven NL cases. But, maybe it's only six. Read on...

According to Baseball Almanac's records, the first recorded instance in NL history was in 1975, when Andre Thornton of the Cubs fielded three grounders, delivering the ball to Rick Reuschel. For all I know, I might've been watching Jack Brickhouse describe the action on WGN that day after school. The interesting piece here is that Big Daddy, while a decent fielder for a guy of his considerable (and I mean considerable) girth, managed to get to the bag all three times.

(As an aside, I think about how well Big Daddy moved for a big dude, then I think about Dennis Lamp, his Cubs teammate from '77-'80. I swear, at least once a game, Lamp would give up a ground ball to the right side which would turn into a base hit while Larry Biittner stood helplessly, ball-in-hand, hoping, praying even, that Lamp might consider covering the bag. I mean, he was right-handed...he fell towards first base when he delivered, for Pete's sake. And by Pete, I mean Pete LaCock, whom Biittner replaced at first after the '76 season. Circle gets the square.)

But, maybe Reuschel didn't. I wanted to see who the batters were who'd committed the outs, so I popped over to Retrosheet's play-by-play of the 4/24/75 Cardinals-Cubs game. While the second (Keith Hernandez) and third (future Cub Kenny Reitz) outs were recorded on 3-1 putouts, Retrosheet claims that Ted Simmons grounded out pitcher unassisted. I can envision a scenario where Big Daddy jams the switch-hitting catcher with a fastball, which Simmons tops weakly down the first base line. From the left-handed batter's box, the lead-footed Simmons stumbles away before righting himself. Big Daddy pounces (-ish) off the mound to pick up the squibber, chugging like a freight train directly into Simmons' path, applying the tag and a momentum-stopping hug. 1U, one out.

Maybe it happened that way, maybe it didn't. Either way, if Retrosheet is right (and I have to believe they are, knowing their penchant for accuracy), Baseball Almanac is wrong--meaning last night was the seventh case of this happening ever, the fourth time in the fourth inning. Wow. I'll have to circle back with the Baseball Almanac guys.

Okay, more interesting (to me, at least) nuggets...

Of the now seven games where three 3-1 putouts occurred in the same inning:

• six of them were one-run ballgames; the sole game decided by more than one run was a 6-4 Cubs victory (shocking)
• the only run scored in such an inning occurred in the very first instance, a Red Sox-Yankees affair at the Stadium; sandwiched in-between 3-1 groundouts by Tony Kubek, Roger Maris, and Joe Pepitone were a Bobby Richardson single to center, a wild pitch, and a Tom Tresh RBI double
• all seven cases happened in the fourth inning or earlier
  
• the Cubs participated in three, winning two (again, shocking)
• John Kruk committed outs in two of the instances, in '86 at Wrigley and in '92 at the 'Stick
• no game lasted longer than 2:52, with last night's 2:12 contest being the most efficient

So, yeah, you might think I've gone a little bit overboard here; but, it's a good warmup for this Saturday. I'm fortunate to have been invited to the 2nd annual PITCHf/x Summit, hosted by Major League Baseball and Sportvision. Picture an entire day of baseball analytics with a bunch of other baseball numbers folks, then a ballgame--a pretty great way to spend a weekend for this SABR member.

And, lest you think this is all irrelevant, think about how rare a perfect game is--only 17 instances of 27 up, 27 down, ever. Last night was only the seventh time three 3-1 putouts have occurred in the same inning.

Ever.

Heck, not just memorable. Historic, even.

boxee Gets Even Better...

I spent Tuesday evening at the boxee dev challenge (sic) in San Francisco, catching up with quite a few old friends and colleagues in the interactive TV space. I’ve been a boxee user since last November; some of the alpha loads have shown huge progress, while a few have flat-out sucked. But, generally, boxee continues to do many, many things right on their path towards, uh, whatever business model they’re chasing.

Personally, I made the move to boxee as part of a networked content revamp, where I got rid of a perfectly good original Xbox classic running XBMC (Xbox Media Center, coincidentally the core code underlying boxee), replacing it with various devices on various displays—boxee on my Mac Mini; a Verismo Pod for Internet TV and USB-based content playout; an Intel-based HTPC running a Windows 7 beta Media Center (which also supports Netflix Watch Instantly very nicely, although not Hulu from the get-go); and a Netgear Digital Entertainer Elite, primarily for networked content play-out from my Promise DLNA NAS. No, I don’t have that many sets of eyes, but I feel that it’s vital to understand what the options are in terms of set-top and home network video connectivity; without testing each of these platforms, I’d be shorting myself—and I certainly realize there are other platforms I’m not working into the mix, too.

(BTW, if you’re not currently running boxee, and if you have a little time and patience to experiment, head over to boxee.tv to download the client. Early on, you had to wait to clear the alpha list; now, it’s open season. Plus, hardware addressability just became MUCH broader with last week’s introduction of a Windows-based boxee client, joining its Mac, Linux, and Apple TV brethren.)

While I’m not ready to anoint boxee as the future of the living room TV-over-Internet experience, it’s a big step on the road to nirvana—or at least to a suitable experience with a user interface my parents could hope to understand. Avner Ronen and his very small team have evolved the original XBMC architecture (which was an absolute bear to install, particularly the hacks required to get up and running on the reasonably closed Xbox classic) into a free platform capable of supporting applications of interest to a broad slice of folks worldwide.

You’ll note that I said “platform”. Most media center architectures’ openness ranges from make-no-apologies closed (insert favorite intelligence agency acronym here) to open-ish, but not so much. What’s refreshing about boxee is that by “platform-izing” the media center, developers can write to a defined API, enabling greatly simplified publishing of applications designed to extend boxee’s usefulness. You may recall the pissing match between boxee and Hulu earlier this year; I’m not about to take sides on who’s right in that debate, but what I’ll posit (and that I think Avner would concur) is that the publicity generated by the boxee-Hulu tête-à-tête was a net positive for both sides—which could very well be behind Hulu's blocking the PS3 this past weekend.

Likewise, the dev challenge generated a ton of positive publicity for boxee; in the month between the announcement of the dev challenge and the close of voting, more than 40 apps were submitted. And, with more than 900 people registered, and (my guesstimate of) over 500 people in attendance, the boxee team was able to get the word out about a wide range of new applications. Some apps have both a broad audience and were of interest to me, such as Facebook integration. Some apps speak to a broad audience of which I’m not a member—no matter how many cute pictures of kitty-cats you might show me, I’m not going to fire up the app; plus, I’d probably start sneezing. Still other apps have a somewhat more targeted audience, but are of HUGE interest to me—in particular, the MLB.TV Premium application.

MLB.TV Premium has enjoyed an interesting second year of life, getting off to a rocky start in its shift from Silverlight- to Flash-based. But, overall, I’ve been very pleased with the offering, particularly the ability to watch multiple games at once, even though the streams peg my CPU utilization. I’d like to see MLB.TV Premium better integrate some of the extremely cool interactive capabilities present in the MLB Gameday application (which could end up as a huge UI/human factors challenge), but I commend the team at MLB Interactive (and Adobe) for their work in delivering a reasonably high-quality experience over my admittedly lousy AT&T DSL line. Applications like this are the future of over-the-top HD content delivery.

Except for one thing. MLB’s media offerings have always, ALWAYS required me to log into the service every single time I’ve fired up a new browser session. I was a subscriber to MLB Gameday Audio since its inception; from day one until last week, I had to log in to watch or listen to a ballgame. While I realize that the process of forcing a customer to log in also affords the opportunity to initiate heavy lifting in the background (e.g., stream buffering), it’s also a pain in the ass. Persistent cookies have been around since the Keebler Elves started baking, so I’ve never been able to understand MLB Advanced Media’s unwillingness to support anything but session cookies. While this behavior is annoying in a two-foot UI, it's unacceptable in a ten-foot UI, where the use of a QWERTY keyboard can not be assumed.

And then, along came boxee. In addition to looking really good from a ten foot UI standpoint (screen shot #1), the MLB.TV Premium app on boxee does the heretofore unthinkable—after logging in, the app stores a persistent cookie (notice the Login/Logout buttons in screen shots #2 and #3, which were taken in different boxee sessions).

Yippee!

Now, you might not think that’s a big deal. But, from a user interface/human factors standpoint, it’s HUGE. More than a dozen years ago, the WebTV team took the industry’s first serious swing at combining the Internet and television. WebTV didn’t invent the idea of data consumption in a ten-foot experience (on TV), rather than a two-foot experience (on the PC). But, we did a pretty darned good job of putting forth a UI for navigation and interactivity that was both powerful and simple to use. And, while WebTV wasn’t a huge commercial success, its progeny lives on as the basis of IPTV offerings from AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, and many other carriers worldwide. Likewise, TiVo hasn’t been a massive commercial success when measured by raw subscriber numbers, but it’s fair to say that any brand that becomes a generic verb (“I won’t be home to watch the race, so I’ll TiVo it”) has done pretty gosh-darned well even if they’re not printing dough.

Time will tell if boxee becomes the next generic brand in the living room, but they’re off to a good start. With its simple, well laid-out user interface, boxee could serve as the aggregator for forthcoming generations of over-the-top TV content. No, cable and satellite providers aren’t going away any time soon. And, despite some pundits’ claims that customers are rushing to cut the cord and move to Internet-only content delivery, the numbers don’t support it. Yet.

One of the big knocks against do-it-yourself home media center solutions has been consumers’ inability to access live content, particularly sports. If boxee is able to convince other sports leagues to open up their APIs to allow subscribers to access premium content via the boxee portal (which is truly what boxee is, even if that term went out of style back when Lycos was still a valuable brand), boxee could be sitting in the catbird seat, as the old redhead himself might’ve said.

(BTW, if you missed the event, and have a couple extra hours (uh, right), you can also find the stream here, courtesy of Justin.TV.)

The Connected Home: Services and Models Conference

I'll be moderating a rapid fire panel at Thursday's Telecom Council of Silicon Valley connected home meeting at Microsoft. Should be an interesting event, with presentations by established companies like AT&T, Cisco, BT, HP, Microsoft, Moxi, Orange/FT, Samsung, and Verizon, as well as startups including 4Home, Casabi, Gigle Semiconductor, Integra5, PacketVideo, Support.com, and Zenverge. The event is on the verge of selling out (if it hasn't already), but click here for more info, including the agenda and registration.

Wireless PAN Briefing Slides Now Available...

Here's the slides from the brief I presented yesterday at the DON CIO Wireless Working Group meeting...

heyCoop DON CIO Wireless Brief

View more presentations from heycoop.

A Rare Diversion from Tech...

If you know me, you know how big of a baseball fan I am. Baseball's pace allows for some of the most reflection this side of cricket and curling. While lots of folks believe that a ballgame is three hours of boredom, I believe it's seven minutes of frantic execution wedged into a mere three-hour timeslot. The ratio of strategic thought to actual execution is extremely high, maybe the highest in North American sport.

Not coincidentally, U.S. sports literature is dominated by baseball; while you might believe that's because all the time between pitches allows ample opportunity to muse, I'd like to believe it's the intellectual nature of baseball that lends itself to such a trove of writing.

Baseball's pace also allows for a significant amount of in-game teaching--on-the-job training, if you will. I was fortunate to spend four years playing for and learning from disciples of Gordie Gillespie, one of college baseball's most important (and least widely-known) coaches. EVER. Gordie is best-known as the architect of Joliet Catholic's football program, consistenly one of the strongest in Illinois, often nationally ranked. However, few people realize that Gordie is also the all-time winningest coach in college baseball history, having recently won his 1,800 game.

Note that's not *coached* his 1,800th game. *Won* his 1,800th game. Granted, you coach baseball for 57 years, you're gonna win your fair share of games. But Gordie's won more than his fair share--nearly 2/3s of the more than 2,700 games he's coached, he's won. Gordie's an awesome motivator, but as important of a motivator and innovator as he's been in six decades of coaching, I believe his greatest legacy may be as an educator. Similar to how Bill Walsh's disciples have made and continue to make their mark at all levels of football, so too have Gordie's scholar-athletes at all levels of baseball and football. Whether or not you played directly for Gordie, or played for one of the hundreds, maybe thousands of guys he coached who went on to become coaches themselves, you learned how to approach the game--how to conduct yourself as a young man, how to prepare, how to execute.

And, most importantly, how to think.

Which brings me to my point, which is not to pay homage to Gordie Gillespie, although he certainly deserves any and all adulation which comes his way.

Every time I go to a college baseball game, I expect to see the head coach calling every pitch from the dugout--which pains me to no end. Guys like Gordie, Mark Marquess (Stanford's skipper), and John Savage (UCLA's skipper) have forgotten more baseball than I'll likely ever know, but that certainly doesn't diminish my quest and thirst for baseball wisdom.

So, seeing what I'm seeing here today not only pains me, it pisses me off.

Before every pitch, UCLA catcher Gino Aielli looks over to the dugout for a series of signs, as does his Stanford counterpart. However, upon receiving the sequence, Aielli looks at a plastic-covered chart on his arm--much as a quarterback does, translating the complex series of signs into something that's likely a 1 for heat, 2 for a deuce, wiggle for a change-up, et.al.

C'mon, Coach Savage, you're killing me here. In addition to destroying the pace of the game (which the home plate umpire continues to try to accelerate by clapping while Aielli looks to the bench), I seriously, *seriously* question how this educates your catcher. NOBODY better understands what's working for a pitcher on a given day than the guy behind the dish, the one wearing the tools of intelligence. The catcher is (or should be) the guy who looks at the batter's stance before every pitch, saw exactly what happened on the previous pitch(es) from the best seat in the house, and is generally the best-equipped guy wearing a cup to determine what the sequence of the next 1-3 pitches should be.

No, I'm not going to argue with the fact that the coaching staff has decades of experience under their belts, nor will I argue with the fact that The Book is now a laptop showing the tendencies of every hitter's every at bat, how he reacted to a given pitch, in a given location, on a given count. But I'll vehemently oppose the notion that the catcher is learning how to call a game in best possible fashion. Aielli isn't learning much if anything today on the field. Sure, during film review, assuming he has a chance to look at the tape before his next game, he might have a chance to pick up a few things. But, by not getting the chance to call his own game, Aielli's losing the chance to make ~120-140 decisions per game, to receive instantaneous feedback on a decision *he* made (or at least suggested, assuming a pitcher was ever allowed to shake off a sign), to take responsibility for the number of fingers he put down.

In short, he's being less than fully educated.

Maybe I'm just old school. But, the fact that we may now have the highest percentage of catchers as managers (Torre, Scioscia, Girardi, Wakamatsu, Geren, Bochy, Wedge, Gonzalez) in MLB history leads me to believe that there's something to the concept of the guys behind the plate being pretty good learners, and pretty good teachers, too.

Assuming they're allowed to learn, of course. At the pace we're going, I fear that in 20 years, we might not have *any* former catchers calling the shots at the major league level, which would be shameful. Yeah, major college baseball is important stuff. No, it's not the revenue-generating sport that football or basketball is, but it's important just the same. But, depriving the guys behind the dish of an education on how to properly handle batters (and their pitching staff) is horribly detrimental to their development as signal callers. Right now, with most college programs calling every pitch from the bench, catchers aren't signal callers. They're signal relayers, in the loop only because of the need to know what's coming to be able to catch the ball.

That's a shame. I fully expect the next step to be a catcher's helmet with a green sticker on the back, just like a quarterback's, designating that he's the guy with the radio. Then we'll put a sticker and an earpiece on the pitcher's cap, so both hurler and receiver know what the skipper wants to throw. Sure, it'll look odd to see a reliever come in from the 'pen and have to plug in his earpiece and radio when he toes the slab, but maybe that'll be the new normal a decade or two down the road.

But I sure hope not.

(Apologies for any mistakes...this was a pretty lengthy diatribe to type on a BlackBerry while sitting in the stands. Thankfully, Stanford's now up 6-2 in the 7th. Might be karmic retribution for Aielli having to wear a friggin' play chart just to interpret the number of fingers to flash.)

What's in the Hopper?

In response to a number of questions about what's under test right now...

New stuff includes...

• Netgear's Entertainer HD
• Netgear's Powerline HD Plus Ethernet adapters
• Siemens' Gigaset A580IP DECT phones
• Major League Baseball's MLB.TV Premium
  

...along with the existing array of Boxee, Promise's 2-slot DLNA NAS, Windows 7 (which ABC.com doesn't support yet, annoyingly), the Logitech diNovo Mini (which is awesome--the ideal living room/HTPC keyboard), the new Blackberry App World, and a few other random bits of consumer tech...

I'd Like a Confirmation Number. Seriously.

Annnnnnnd, we're back...

Lots of stuff to work through. First off--non-repudiation for customer service calls.

I'm told that I may not be alone in being annoyed by service fees my bank charges. Yeah, really.

When I launched my consultancy, I had to do lots of stuff, including choosing a bank. Living in the Bay Area, you truly only have a couple of options. I've been with one of the big boys since I moved to California in 1993; The Wife has been with the other guys since she arrived in '96. Realistically, we had two choices; we ended up going with my bank. As part of the sign-up process, and despite vehement protests that I neither wanted nor needed them, I was "offered" a few services I needed to opt out of after 90 days.

Which I did. Except, they claim I didn't.

When it's my word against their word, guess who wins? Not The Little Guy (me), at least not immediately. The Wife and I have now called five times to cancel one of the services--including while sitting in a branch last week, where a personal banker even dialed the number for us. He sat there while I canceled (for the fifth time) a service costing $30 a month, one which I never wanted in the first place, one which I've been trying to cancel for way too long. Lo and behold, I'm getting onto a flight at IAD the other night, and in comes an e-mail--informing me of my monthly charge for $36. Yeesh--trying to cancel a service I had no use for costs me an extra six bucks for no longer wanting to have it.

Or something like that.

The last couple times we've called the bank, we've specifically asked for a confirmation number. When we've asked, we've been told "Oh, just check your statement to make sure it's canceled." I'm checking, and it ain't.

Similarly, I called my video service provider last night to cancel my MLB Extra Innings package. Lest you think I've suddenly found wisdom and renounced my beloved Cubs, I'm in no way giving up just because they're now into Century of Futility Numero Dos. Nope, nothing that insightful. No, I simply chose to cancel because A) the package costs $179.95 for me to watch many (but not all) games at (nowhere other than) my home; and B) the MLB.TV Premium package from MLB (at $109.95) has a sweet suite of capabilities this year, including HD, every single game on both video and audio, multi-game viewing options, and much more. Since I have computers hooked up to multiple TVs here at home, and since I'm on the road a fair bit, I figured I should the save $70 for a couple of bottles of Veuve for when the Cubs win the World Series.

A guy's gotta have hope, right?

I hopped on the service provider's portal last night; I've been with them for eight years, and have conducted the vast majority of my transactions over the Internet, so I figured this should be a no-brainer.

Not so much.

After logging in, I promptly went to my programming section, where I tried to uncheck the MLB Extra Innings option. No love--the site said I needed to call to cancel. So, I dutifully picked up the phone and dialed. After dealing with the interactive voice response tree, I was given the option to speak to a human being, or allow the IVR to help me. I like humans. In fact, much of the time, I am one. I figured I'd help somebody justify their job, which is why I said "AGENT!" to the IVR until she listened.

I was summarily transferred to a recording informing me that operators are only on duty from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time, and that I should call back during regular business hours. That's annoying--my friggin' TV's on at 1 a.m., and I'm working. To me, that's normal business hours.

I hung up and called back.

This time, I chose to let the IVR help me. She was such a cheery little chipmunk, I figured I should give her a shot. Once again, no love--she claimed that she was having trouble understanding me (when she'd told me on the last call that she was definitely able to help me out with my problem). I felt like I was trying to get into a European airport lounge that I knew I had the right to be in, but that the concierge/door guardian had decided that Americans didn't belong. I mean, I'm not trying to shop in Germany on Sunday. I'm just trying to cancel one component of my programming.

After she gave me the Heisman, I set a reminder to buzz them back this morning. I called around 10 a.m., and had a very nice conversation with a real, live (I think) customer service representative who said she'd be happy to help. While we were speaking, she told me that I should be able to see the charge reversal in real-time. I didn't, but I figured, hey, she knew what she was talking about. I asked her for a cancellation number so I had some kind of record of our conversation, but she said I wouldn't need one, since she'd taken care of everything.

Except that she hadn't.

Having learned from my experience with the bank, I watched the service provider's website like a hawk. All I saw was an $.80 credit--not really what I was looking for. I called back around noon; despite the IVR lady's protests that really, she could help me, I again chose to speak with a human being. I told him about my earlier call, and asked him to have a look at whether I'd been successful at canceling my MLB programming.

I hadn't. Which pisses me off.

I mean, this isn't rocket science. Customer service agents exist to provide, oh, I don't know, customer service. I acknowledge that the absolute vast majority of CSRs I've dealt with over the years range between competent and outstanding; dealing with the United 1K desk for the last dozen years has been particularly smooth, save for their short-lived foray of shipping the 1K desk offshore. Marriott's and Hyatt's top-tier desks are awesome, too. As a mega-frequent traveler, it's easy to be spoiled, but the regular line-level CSR desks at most places are staffed by really good folks--who sometimes suffer from horrible training (or a total lack thereof), as well as systems that aren't exactly cooperative.

I'm not sure the culprit in this case...I'm willing to blame it on the computer system, based on the fact that the first CSR I spoke with seemed very competent. During my second call, the CSR was extremely apologetic, and asked me to stay on the phone with him until the website updated to ensure (with my own eyes) that the service had been removed and a credit issued. Despite the fact that the process took 10 minutes, I was more than willing to do so, particularly since I didn't want to be forced to make a third call--or further calls, as we've done with the bank. While the bank issue didn't necessarily have any urgency (aside from them charging me for a bunch of stuff I neither wanted nor needed), the television issue did--if I hadn't been successful in canceling MLB Extra Innings before the first pitch of the regular season, I'd've been stuck with paying for the entire season.

Which brings me to my point.

My time's valuable. Every consumer's time is valuable. When CSRs go home from work, their time is valuable--not to denigrate the value of their time when they're at work, but when the shoe's on the other foot, I think they end up as frustrated as me. Being forced to make multiple phone calls to resolve an issue isn't productive for anyone. And, when it's the consumer's word against the big company's, it's pretty tough for the consumer to prove his case.

In the travel market, it's easy to do so, since a canceled transaction comes with a cancellation number. Why can't the bank or the TV guys give me one, too? When I make a financial transfer online, I receive a confirmation number from the bank, which I save as a PDF so I have proof of the transaction. That's my validation that what I said actually happened, happened.

When I call the bank or the TV guys, I have to confirm my name, my address, the last four digits of my social, et.al. All of these are in the name of non-repudiation--a mechanism for them to validate that I am who I say I am.

Why should non-repudiation stop there? When I execute a transaction via any method--online from my computer, from a mobile device, over the phone--why don't I receive a transaction number (whether for a confirmation, cancellation, change, you name it) every single time? If the system is designed properly--and that's a big if, in the truest sense of garbage in, garbage out--the CSR shouldn't be able to confirm that the transaction is complete until a transaction number is issued. Give it to me. I'll write it down. Then, when I call back because Big Company hasn't done what they said they'd done, it's no longer my word against theirs.

Thoughts?

ShmooCon ’09: Why My Next Wallet Will Be Metal (Not To Be Confused With My Tinfoil Hat)

RFID has been next year’s technology for about, oh, a century or so. The good news is that RFID’s here to stay for lots of applications which have been well designed from an operational and security posture.

And for some that aren’t.

Chris Paget’s talk on cloning travel documents wasn’t just interesting...it was kind of scary. Lots of reports have said he’s cloning passports; he’s not, although I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until RFID-embedded passports are pwn3d, too. Paget has been researching how to compromise and clone documents which are Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) compliant.

Government officials are very proud of their efforts on WHTI, so much so that in early December, Colleen Manaher, WHTI director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, stated about critics: "They said it couldn't be done. They said we're going to fight you every step of the way. Well, all the pieces are in place -- documents, technology and infrastructure -- to meet the June 1, 2009, WHTI implementation date."

Uh, okay. But what if the thing turns out to be so poorly designed that someone with a little bit of expertise and a couple hundred bucks worth of gear can readily read and clone the documents sitting in your wallet or purse?

Someone like Chris Paget, for instance.

Maybe Manaher should have said “They said it couldn’t be done securely.” I don’t think anyone would argue with that point. This isn’t some type of hysterical, theoretical attack, capable of execution on only a computing environment the size of a Google data center. This is an attack that Paget wrote, on his laptop, using readily available software, hardware, and RFID devices.

In their recap of end-of-year accomplishments for 2008, DHS took pains to point out that “technology upgrades under the WHTI were completed at land border crossings marking the start for new RFID technology deployments at 354 northern and southern border ports that account for 95 percent of all cross-border travel into the United States.” In the next sentence, they point out that “In 2008, CBP apprehended 1,020,438 individuals, including 200 individuals with serious criminal records such as murder, rape and child molestation.”

That’s awesome. But here’s the problem. With an RFID architecture enabling ready cloning of WHTI-compliant documents (including electronic drivers licenses, and cards like NEXUS, FAST, and SENTRI), have we just made it easier (rather than tougher) for the bad guys to get into the country? This isn’t rocket science, either—with an encryption-free approach using irrelevant/non-existing authentication, the limitation on access basically becomes a physical security issue. PHYSEC is great when guards, guns, and gates are involved. But, Paget has shown that he can read tags at 10 meters or more; with the right gear, he believes that he’ll be able to read tags at 60 meters or (a whole lot) more, enabling compromise/cloning at a couple hundred feet. Apologists will talk about the incongruity of building specialized devices to do this type of surveillance. These same apologists have never seen Renderman or the Bluetooth Sniper Rifle. This is a COMSEC issue—although with no communications security in the process, I guess it’s actually a lack of COMSEC issue.

Paget’s talk included a demo where he cloned a card in seconds, as well as one where he passed a bag of ~30 tags over a reader in a very quick wave; 16 of the tags were read completely. The latter part of that statement is actually beneficial to the cause—we want to get people through our land and sea crossings quickly, right? Right. But, don’t we want to make sure that we’re getting the correct people across the border quickly, while keeping out the bad guys?

We can thank our lucky stars that researchers like Chris Paget are working for the good guys, but an architecture this poorly designed simply screams to the bad guys, “Come get me”. I can only hope that common sense prevails at DHS, and that they collaborate closely with the information assurance community over the coming months to ensure that a 6/1/2009 turn-on date occurs only if the security issues are resolved—and if they’re not, that all stakeholders work together to eliminate the vulnerabilities as soon as possible. Too little risk has been mitigated in the current system.

Find Chris’ ShmooCon presentation here, as well as his and others’ work at http://www.rfidhackers.com.

ShmooCon ’09: Fail 2.0

Nathan Hamiel and Shawn Moyer gave one of the best and most broadly-applicable talks this year, focused on attacking social networks. Odds are pretty good that if you’re reading this, you belong to one or more social networks. In their talk, Hamiel and Moyer weren’t looking to ridicule any particular socnet, although some certainly make it easier than others to do so; they were looking to raise awareness of socnet vulnerabilities in general. As you might expect, they succeeded.

A huge vulnerability with socnets is that by enabling the aggregation of content from more than a single site, attacks like cross-site Javascript hijacking and cross-site request forgeries (CSRF) end up being easy as pie (mmm, pie) to execute. Or, as the presenters put it, “Link to crap offsite = epic fail.” True dat.

Hamiel and Moyer also launched some “experiments” of their own; they were hesitant to describe these as 0days, but instead called them “featureibilities”, or design flaws. So, yeah, they’re jackin’, but they’re jackin’ socnets.

They presented examples of attacks on MySpace and LinkedIn, as well as examples of seriously dumb Twitter usage (like the congressman who twittered that he’d just landed in Baghdad…nice job paiting a bullseye on your back, Pal). The MySpace attack was a more technical attack, whereby you could force someone to show up as a friend. The LinkedIn attack was more of a true social engineering attack, with fake profiles of plausible people, resulting in the coughing up of information that people really wouldn’t want disclosed publicly.

The presenters went on to discuss a bunch of other socnet vulnerabilities, also mentioning the Firefox extension they're working on called CSRFblocker, whose progress you can follow at their site. (As an aside, you should check out the extremely interesting paper on drive-by downloads called “All Your iFRAMEs Point to Us”). They also showed how one can compromise certain AT&T DSL modems from Netopia/Motorola; more on that here. Again, way cool stuff.

If you use socnets (and you know you do), make sure to check out Hamiel and Moyer’s slides. And, when I ignore your request to install a Facebook app tagging me as the coolest person on FB, or the app where you want me to throw a dead cow at Tony Soprano, you’ll now understand why—social networks as threat vectors concern me. If I’m going to get pwn3d, I’m going to get pwn3d somewhere else.

ShmooCon ’09: They Took My Laptop!

No, they didn’t take my laptop. That’s the name of the session Tyler Pitchford presented at ShmooCon ’09. Focused on the Fourth Amendment, Pitchford provided an excellent overview on search and seizure, as well as on clauses addressing “reasonableness” and “warrant”.

While a small percentage of ShmooCon attendees really do have something to hide, the vast majority of folks attend to learn, to share, to network. And to party. Definitely, to party. That said, even those of us with nothing to hide paid close attention to Pitchford’s talk. I spend enough time flying internationally that by some random principle, I’d guess that my number will eventually come up for a laptop search.

At which time I’ll be thoroughly pissed. No, I don’t have anything to hide. But, my laptop and everything on it count as my possessions, so I don’t really care to have someone rummaging through them without probable cause.

The good news is that I learned quite a bit from Pitchford’s talk, to be able to have a reasonable (?) discussion with folks who’d like to poke around my zeros and ones. To recap, the Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or the things to be seized.”

Things get a little complicated when you take those “effects”, put them on a computer, and return home from a foreign country. Pitchford focused primarily on discussions and examples of warrantless searches, which are the ones that I think concern most of us—when someone in a position of authority chooses to use that authority “just because”, without a legitimate level of suspicion.

Of course, one of the exceptions to the standard rules is when crossing a border. Pitchford discussed the case of U.S. v Arnold, in which the Ninth Circuit ruled in 2007 that laptops are no different that closed containers, and are thus subject to routine (suspicionless) searches. The case fits the bill as “routine”, since you’re crossing a border—but still annoys me. Again, I’d like to think I have nothing to worry about, since I have nothing to hide; and, having been on enough military installations, I don’t really have much of an expectation of privacy. But, I’m still concerned enough that I’ll continue to follow further developments in this space very closely.

One case whose ink is barely dry is if the entire drive is encrypted. In a case tried in Vermont over the past few years (most recently in re: Grand Jury Subpoena to Sebastien Boucher, 2009), the court had found that encryption keys are “products of the mind”, and are thus not subject to disclosure under the Fifth Amendment. The analogy here is a combination lock to a vault versus keys—you can be legally compelled to cough up keys (tangible), but not a vault combo (intangible). However, just a couple of weeks ago (shortly after ShmooCon), the District Court of Vermont ruled that Boucher would have to produce a copy of a portion of his hard drive; I don't think that this particular wording and this particular case counteracts the earliers findings, but the ruling is way too involved for me to go into here. Plus, I'm not a lawyer, so I encourage you to investigate the documents linked here. Warning: some of the content descriptions are not for the faint of heart.

I’d recommend that every international traveler have a look at Pitchford’s slides. Again, I’m not a lawyer, and Pitchford’s not your lawyer, but I’m still confident that you can learn something from his slides.

Recap: IEEE Consultants’ Network of Silicon Valley February Meeting

The February IEEE-CNSV meeting was again extremely well-attended, with a nearly overflow crowd for the second month in a row. Almost 100 members and guests spent the evening networking and learning. David Flynn, CTO of Fusion-io, gave the keynote, on the topic of NAND flash in the enterprise. Flynn presented an extremely in-depth overview of the technology and the market, and engaged in a lively debate with a number of other storage experts in the audience. My admittedly simpleton mind wasn’t able to follow much of the technical talk, but a few of Flynn’s points stuck with me.

• We need a new memory tier that follows Moore's Law (silicon) rather than Newton’s Law (spinning disk), which is what NAND flash enables.

• Compared to DRAM, NAND flash is 1/10th the cost per gigabyte; uses 1/100th the power and generates 1/100th the heat, and has 100x the capacity per module; all while being non-volatile and providing similar bandwidth.

• The flip side is that the read access of NAND flash has much higher latency—25 microseconds, versus single digit nanoseconds in RAM.

• Putting flash behind disk handicaps both the numerator and the denominator in the cost-benefit ratio. I found this statement particularly interesting, since we’re seeing more and more netbooks using exactly this architecture.

• NAND flash will eventually be cheaper than RAM on a per-gigabyte basis. I found SanDisk’s solid state disk announcements at CES this year to be very compelling; I’m hopeful that through the efforts of SanDisk, Fusion-io, and everyone involved in the flash industry, I’ll soon have an affordable yet powerful netbook running multiple operating systems with long enough battery life to get me from SFO-Hong Kong on a single charge. THAT is gonna rock.

Don’t miss the next IEEE-CNSV meeting on 3/17/09, where CNSV member Dr. Jonathan Wells will be speaking on disruptive forces in the cellular industry. Jacky Hood of Foothill College will present “The Engineers' Survival Guide to the Service Economy” at the CNSV meeting in 4/28/09. As always, no RSVP is required, but show up early to network and get a good seat. Also feel free to join the marketing meeting which occurs prior to the general meeting itself. More details on the IEEE-CNSV website.

Bogus: The DTV Delay Becomes Reality...and Backfires...

Yesterday, the President signed the bill delaying the digital television transition from 17 February 2009 to 12 June 2009. You may recall my post from a couple of weeks ago talking about what a silly idea this would be.

Well, lo and behold, we're here. And I'm not just chuckling, I'm laughing my head off.

I know comparatively nothing about the stimulus plan. I understand little about many political issues deemed important to so many of us. But, I've been actively involved in the development of DTV here in the U.S. for the last dozen years, so I feel a little bit qualified to comment.

When I made my earlier post on 28 January, there were a few possible outcomes...

• No delay of the DTV transition; having worked up to this for the last 22 years, sane heads would've realized that an extra four months would deliver little additional benefit
• A delay of the DTV transition, with some portion of the stations planning to switch off on 2/17 taking advantage of the option to do so; this was a delicate trade-off between alienating advertisers & consumers versus having to throw an additional four months of money down the drain by continuing to simulcast
• A delay of the DTV transition, with few or no stations turning off their analog transmissions prior to the revised deadline of 12 June

Honestly, I expected we'd get no delay. Folly, I know, but I was hoping against hope. Instead, we have yet another four months of foot-dragging--and we have nearly 700 stations planning to turn off their analog transmissions in the next week. True, most of the big market broadcasters will continue simulcasting through 6/12, but in those markets likely to be hit hardest by the lack of an analog signal, viewers will soon be out of luck.

Thus, on 2/17, many consumers in smaller markets will lose their analog signals due to the flawed economics of the four-month DTV delay, a 180-degree outcome from what the government thought they were championing. That's right--smaller market consumers will lose the most over the next four months, due to cessation of analog broadcast and a totally hosed coupon program.

That's what our legislators wasted so much time and effort for? Seriously?

Yeesh. As I suggested in my earlier post, Congress could've fixed the coupon program with emergency funding a couple of weeks ago, looked like heroes to the affected masses, and generally delivered a solid outcome. Instead, we're going to end up with stories of folks whose TVs go dark on 2/17, blaming the government for not doing enough.

Methinks they did too much.

The Absolute Coolest Video I've Seen in Ages...

I can't think of a better way to introduce this video than by saying, just spend 4 1/2 minutes watching this, because it's freakin' cool. If you've already seen it, pass the link on--assuming you think it's cool, of course. And if you don't think so, I'm surprised you've stumbled in here.

Navy CIO Rob Carey just showed the video to the crowd during his keynote on building a cyber workforce, here at the Navy's CIO conference. I can't tell how many people were silent because they were absolutely transfixed (like I was) or because they just don't grok Web 2.0, but you could hear a pin drop while the video was playing.

Cool.

ShmooCon '09: Open Source UAVs

Ethan O'Toole and Matt Davis of 757Labs gave a very intriguing talk on an open source unmanned aerial vehicle platform today. Net-net, for about $1100 (not counting some of the foam parts and their time), they've designed an open source UAV. Yep, that's right--an open source UAV.

They've obviously given this a ton of thought--rotary versus fixed-wing versus payload versus computing platforms, and lots more. Here's the net-net--they've hacked together a Linksys NSLU2 core (running a 2.6 Linux kernel); GPRS/EDGE radios; GPS navigation modules; and a bunch of software, all with the goal of improving search & rescue and aerial photography (and more, but nothing Big Brother-ish). They're also adding an Analog Devices inertial measurement unit (for three-axis accelerometer and three-axis gyroscope user), although Ethan needs to get Linux running on the dev board.

And it's freakin' cool. A colleague of theirs is building a foam plane with a 12-foot wingspan, which will enable them to mount their gear, as well as provide a platform for nicely stable photography. Serious flyerage.

Needless to say, all of this will be remotely controllable. Picture an RC-plane. Make it big. Make it bad-ass. And do it for a fraction of the cost of what you think a UAV might cost.

Lots more here, at their site...

ShmooCon '09: The Srizbi Botnet

Julia Wolf of FireEye Labs just gave a fascinating talk deconstructing the Srizbi botnet, its domain registration algorithm, McColo itself, and a whole bunch more. She's planning to post her slides on FireEye's blog, but in the meantime, check out a few of these links for background...

• Botnet fallback channels
• Technical details of Srizbi's domain generation algorithm
• More on the domain calculator
  
• Srizbi's return from the dead

UPDATED: Julia's slides are here.

The Fifth-Largest Helping of Moose. Ever.

I know that a number of you will be attending ShmooCon this weekend. For those of you I've talked with who'll be there, I look forward to seeing you. For those of you I haven't who'll be there, in addition to between sessions, look for me on Friday night at the Podcasters' Meetup, then at the HacDC festivities late Friday night, and at the con party Saturday night.

And for those of you who won't be there...why not? Fear of Moose?

Bogus: The DTV Delay

Thank you, House. Not the doctor on Fox, but the bigger part of our bicameral legislature. Today, the House voted down the bill proposing a delay in the switchover from analog to digital television--a bill which passed the Senate unanimously less than 48 hours ago. True, more than half the House voted in favor, but it luckily fell a couple dozen votes short of the required two-thirds needed to pass.

Why am I thanking the House for their sane and reasonable approach to this issue?

For starters, lots of folks have asked for my opinion on the DTV delay. I've been holding off on saying anything publicly, but my cousin tagged me with this question Monday night on Facebook, so I figured I'd finally jump in. Here was my character-limited (by Facebook's number of letters, not by personality) reply...

"Thoroughly a mistake. Giving the disenfranchised four more months simply prolongs the agony all around. I *absolutely* feel for the six million homes at risk of going dark upon switchover. But, Congress would've much better served its constituents to expedite coupon funding, rather than to delay four months. After 37 months to prepare, those who are going to be proactive, have been. Those who are going to be reactive, will be. Until the switch is thrown, the reactives won't, uh, react. Four more months on top of 37 will change little. Once sets go dark, affected homes will take the plunge to purchase a converter box, or a new television with an integrated digital tuner. With millions of converter boxes on store shelves today, the issue facing current analog TV viewers is how to pay for them--and the government isn't solving that with a 4-month delay. Fund the coupons now, throw the switch soon."

And, here's my additional $.03...

I don't want to come across as insensitive to the plight of those who can't afford to go out and buy a converter box--like many of us, I lived paycheck to paycheck for more years than I care to admit; for a lot of U.S. residents, throwing money at something like a converter box could certainly be used for something better. Like food and shelter.

But, let's try to keep a few things in mind, items which the Senate obviously didn't consider, but which many in the House thankfully have.

First off, let's be crystal clear about the fact that the DTV conversion isn't something that's snuck up on us. U.S. efforts to move to a more advanced form of television than NTSC began in 1987. 1987! Let me repeat that, in case you missed it--1987, when the FCC formed the Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service (ACATS). Six years on, ACATS' work led to the formation of the Grand Alliance in 1993. The Grand Alliance collaboration ultimately led to the publication of ATSC Standard A/53 in 1995. Was it perfect? No.

But ya gotta start somewhere.

If you never step off the curb, you'll never cross the street. Sure, you might get hit by a bus, but that's why our parents teach us to look both ways first.

We've been looking both ways for way too long, my friends--we need to cross the street.

The reluctance to step off the analog DTV curb isn't helping anyone, despite what the Senate would like you to believe.

Shall we consider who would be harmed by this four-month charade?

Let's start with broadcasters. The need to continue supporting dual analog and digital transmissions (called simulcasting) is an additional four-month expense that I doubt most TV stations budgeted for, although the wisest ones likely planned for this very outcome. I realize that many consumers don't possess much sympathy for broadcasters, believing that to deep-pocketed folks like ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, the expense of switching to digital is a drop in the ocean--despite the fact that a lot of mom and pop shops in mid-sized and smaller DMAs have had to increase their budgets by alarming amounts, in some cases doubling (or more) typical annual expenditures.

Next, we move to first responders. Public safety groups are receiving 24 MHz of spectrum as part of the digital transition. Why? So that nationally, first responders can communicate on the same spectrum band. You might be surprised that this capability doesn't exist today, but it doesn't. With a delay, public safety users like police and fire departments will suffer a further four-month hiccup in their attempt to provide more efficient and effective first response. First responders oppose a delay. You should too--your very life may be at stake.

How about the environment? You might think that the cutover from analog to digital wouldn't have an impact on the environment, but you'd be wrong--all the gear required to maintain and power simulcasting consumes a tremendous amount of electricity, either directly or indirectly.

You heard it here first--the DTV delay is anti-green.

Finally, consumers lose. As Nielsen notes, the number of U.S. households unprepared for the DTV switch dropped more than a full percentage point in the four-week period ending 1/18/09. Across the board, every demographic measured at least a 9/10ths of a percentage point increase in readiness--white, black, hispanic, Asian, old, young. Congress, this is what we call progess; thankfully, the House appears to understand the meaning of that word. The Consumer Electronics Association, the National Association of Broadcasters, and many other organizations heeded Congress' call to more heavily promote the DTV switchover as the calendar crept up on 2/17/09. They've done a yeoman's job of getting the word out, via television and radio public service announcements, via newspapers, via weekly and monthly periodicals, and even via the CEA's innovative YouTube contest. Everyone is eager to make this cutover.

We're ready. That's what we're here to tell you. The small percentage of U.S. consumers who still rely on over-the-air programming are ready for a better TV experience. Broadcasters are ready to deliver just that, along with looking forward to turning off their simulcasting albatross. First responders are eager to have better methods of interoperable communications. Consumers who've already acquired their DTV converter boxes are ready to go; those who haven't won't be spurred into action until the analog spigot is turned off.

When that spigot is turned off, consumers who haven't made the move from analog to digital will have the impetus to do something--request their pair of $40 rebate coupons, use coupons they already have, or purchase a new television with a built-in digital tuner. If the Senate really wants to do something beneficial, they can work with their House counterparts to immediately pass a bill providing two items: emergency funding for additional rebate coupons, and a provision for those with expired coupons to re-apply.

That's a bill I'd support wholeheartedly.

Let me reiterate this a final time. A delay serves no one's purpose. The alarmists who are yammering about a 2/17/09 cutover being a train wreck would better focus their energy on convincing Congress to pass an emergency bill with my two suggested items--funding and re-application--rather than wasting their breath on further attempting a delay.

If you agree, support your local first responders and broadcasters by forwarding this page (with a conveniently shorter URL: http://tinyurl.com/heycoopdtv) to your Senators and Representatives. Let them know that you're ready for America to take the final small step in a journey launched more than two decades ago. Babies conceived at the same time as ACATS are old enough to drink, more than 21 years on.

Let's stop rewarding inertia. It's time for DTV to have its champagne toast.

OOBE, Review, and Follow-Up: Joby Zivio Boom Bluetooth Headset

You may recall that at CES Unveiled, the folks from Joby gave me their new Bluetooth headset. The Zivio Boom is an interesting industrial design, a bit different from other Bluetooth headsets I've used. We'll get to that in a moment. For now, let's take a look at the packaging.

Prior to my purchase of the original Jawbone two years ago, every Bluetooth headset I'd bought was similar to that of most consumer electronics devices, packaging-wise--Bluetooth vendors hadn't really thought about how to make their packaging stand out. While I didn't record the out of box experience (OOBE) on my original Jawbone, the OOBE on my Jawbone 2 remains one of the most popular posts here, along with my posts on modding the Jawbone 2 for better fit.

The Zivio experience reminded me of the Jawbone experience--somebody spent a few extra bucks to make a good-looking package, which probably translates into another $10-30 at retail. Good stuff, packaging guys. I like the Zivio's package for the following reasons:

• Product name is in big freakin' letters
• Rest of front is free of clutter
• Black matte finish survives shipping wear and tear much better than black glossy
• Plastic tab for ease of hanging
• Rectangular shape enables easier shelving and most efficient shipping
• "Red light district window" (a teaser for what you're buying) shows product itself
• Huge image of product on the side

Removing the package's outer case, you're presented with a very cleanly laid-out inner package, broken into thirds--documentation, the device itself, and attachments. Note that the boom on the headset is extended--instant visual gratification! Shipping the product with the boom retracted would have enabled a package smaller by at least a third, maybe more--but Joby is obviously trying to appeal to a market that understands quality, and is willing to pay a premium for it. No, an extended boom doesn't guarantee quality, but it certainly does convey elegance. For me, it works. Beyond that, assuming the manufacturer's ability to secure shelf space, a bigger package equals a bigger product advertisement.

The left side contains a very simple, icon-heavy pocket guide. Color-coded and very cleanly laid-out, the pocket guide is commendable for both its brevity and its clarity. The center contains the device itself, which we'll examine in a moment. The right side contains a plastic insert holding six earpiece attachments and an earhook. Three of the attachments are gel-style; three are etymotic-style, intended to fit firmly inside the ear canal. The earhook is an interesting design--the base of the earhook attaches magnetically to the Zivio itself, allowing 360 degree rotation of the hook's base; the earhook piece rotates in the base's socket, providing further flexibility.

Below is a shot of all the pieces in the package; apologies for the lousy quality of all these photos, but I wasn't expecting to attempt to document an OOBE in a poorly-lit Las Vegas hotel room. In addition to the insert holding the earhook and earpieces, the package contains a small power brick, a short and a long USB cable, and the earpiece itself. You'll note a plastic bag containing more earpieces; I don't believe that this bag ships in the standard retail package, but I could be wrong.


A few more things to like here. First, the power brick is black matte, very similar in finish to my MacBook, meaning it's relatively impervious to wear and tear. The power brick has two USB connectors, enabling charging of two devices simultaneously, which is awesome. Each connector on the brick has a blue LED, which illuminates when a device is connected, providing very nice feedback. The cables are USB on one end, micro-USB on the other. As I've noted a couple of times, micro-USB is the way of the future, so I'm excited that the Zivio Boom uses micro-USB for its charging method.

The device itself is compact, with a beautiful industrial design. The first shot shows the Zivio without its boom extended; the second shot shows the extended boom, as well as the blinking light during the pairing process. A close-up look shows three simple buttons, used for volume control and for typical functionality. A look at the reverse side shows a polished, reflective case absolutely modeled on Apple's industrial design--"designed in California, assembled in China".

Despite the blatant rip-off of Apple, I agree with this approach to labeling--the former conveying the implicit quality in a U.S.-designed electronic device, combined with the truth in advertising concerning where the device was built. Plus, manufacturers could do a lot worse than ripping off Apple's approach to packaging and design. On the earpiece itself, you'll notice a speaker reminiscent of a Western Electric 500 handset's earpiece--one of the classic phone designs of all-time.

The earpiece swivels around an axle, enabling a range of angles at which the headset may be used once in the ear. Combined with the six gel & etymotic options and the magnetic hook, the range of permutations for fitting your ear are nearly infinite.

And yet, I still couldn't find a comfortable fit. I don't think I have particularly unique ears, although that might be a tough assessment to make without speaking with an otolaryngologist.

But, despite trying all six earpiece attachments and using the earhook in a ton of positions, I just flat-out couldn't make the Zivio Boom work for me. My personal assessment is that the device's evenly-balanced weight across the length of the device actually works against it in my ear--the mouthpiece side kept drooping, no matter which earpiece I was wearing, and whether or not the boom was extended or retracted. I wore the unit for three days at CES, and was always aware of the fact it was in my ear. Contrast that with my Jawbone 2, which (with the Jabra mini-gel) I can keep in my ear for an entire day with almost no realization that it's there.

As I mentioned in my initial look at the Zivio Boom, there's a lot to like about this highly stylish device, particuarly its advertised 10-hour talk time. Lest you think I've thrown the unit into the drawer of tech detritus, fear not. My buddy Vince Murdica recently joined SiBEAM, Inc., running sales in the Americas and EMEA. Vince recently lost his Jawbone 2; as a guy who can easily spend his entire day on calls spanning a dozen time zones, he needed a Bluetooth headset which would provide long battery life and a comfortable fit, as well as minimizing incentives for Officer Friendly to pull him over. I'm happy to say that he's absolutely thrilled with the Zivio Boom, reporting that it's the most comfortable Bluetooth headset he's ever owned.

So, while the Zivio Boom wasn't for me, it's working great for Vince, who's at least as tough and demanding on Bluetooth headsets as I am. I think that I could've eventually made the Zivio work for me, but I would've needed a ballistics gel earpiece (for which I've had molds made) and an adapter to attach it to the Zivio; for now, I've chosen to not go down that path.

CES: Wireless High-Def Recap

At CES, I met with just about every relevant purveyor of wireless high-definition gear.  Let's go alphabetically...

Amimon (co-founders of the WHDI consortium)
As they did last year, Amimon had a three-room suite at the Hilton--a large living/dining room, with bedrooms at either end.  And, as they did last year, Amimon showed a number of systems working simultaneously, free from interference.  I've been one of Amimon's skeptics, curious about how they're able to send a 1080i/720p signal in 20 MHz of bandwidth, and eventually a 1080p/60 signal in 40 MHz of bandwidth.

Amimon claims that their approach delivers uncompressed high-definition video, and wrote a now-very-long-in-the-tooth white paper on compressed versus uncompressed.  I think that they made some very valid points in their white paper, but A) a 26-month old white paper in a market where companies are already failing begs to be updated, and B) consumers really don't give a damn--they have no religion about compression, but simply want a cost-effective solution.

Which, by golly, Amimon seems to be well on the path to providing.

Of the five systems (Amimon, Radiospire, Pulse~LINK, SiBEAM, and Tzero) I wrote about during CES 2008, and the one that I couldn't write about (Sigma Designs), I felt that Amimon had the best demo in terms of distance--the only demo that one could reasonably call multi-room.  I also felt that they had the worst quality, by a longshot.

What a difference a year makes.  The progress Amimon has made with their existing chipset and continued software development is huge--so huge that Sony is currently shipping a $799 transmit/receive pair under the Bravia Wireless Link brand.  This is not "currently shipping" as in, let's recycle an old press release.  This is shipping as in, I was in the employee store at Sony San Jose last week and was shocked to see it on sale.  The store had a demo of a Blu-ray movie playing across the show floor at a distance of about 25 feet.  I'm not Joe Kane, but I was very satisfied with the quality--so much so that for a fleeting moment, I thought about buying the set, until I remembered that I didn't actually need it.  Amimon is also present in devices from at least a half-dozen manufacturers, including in select high-end Sony, Mitsubishi, and Sharp televisions currently for sale in Japan.

Amimon's next generation silicon promises to be even better.  However, I'm still left with a few niggling questions.  First and foremost, I'm concerned about what happens to performance once the 5 GHz band fills up, just as the 2.4 GHz band has.  When it comes to interference and bit/packet error rates, video is nowhere near as forgiving as data is; consumers (and retailers) won't tolerate a device that either doesn't work out of the box, or gets hinky after a year or two of use.  Second, with the industry's stampede towards higher refresh rates, I'm concerned whether Amimon will be able to scale with the increased demands of 120/240 MHz (usually countries with 60 Hz mains, almost all of whom are/were NTSC) or 100/200 MHz (usually countries with 50 Hz mains, almost all of whom are/were PAL/SECAM) sinks, as well as sources putting out wider and wider bitstreams (e.g., Deep Color).  Finally, I'm just not sure that Amimon knows who they want to be.  Are they an in-room solution?  Are they a multi-room solution?  Are they a whole-home solution?

But, for now, for users who don't mind paying a hefty premium over an HDMI cable, they're the only game in town.

Axar Media
I have to confess that I hadn't heard of Axar, prior to bumping into a buddy who's working for them.  Axar is a division of ProVision Communications, a British company who've been working on wireless video since 2001--which may make them the longest-surviving company in the space.

Axar's solution differs from the other systems I saw in that in its current testing stage, it uses component connectivity, rather than HDMI.  I see this as a mixed blessing.  As a new entrant to the market, they'll need to come up to speed on physical issues (e.g., HDMI 1.3c & 2.0) and content protection issues (e.g., HDCP 2.0, DCP LLC doing away with ART).  But, not having to worry about those issues right now allows them to focus on the development and delivery of their system.  Their demo suffered from some judder issues (which should be fixed in software even as I type this) as well as pretty severe latency challenges, but I think Axar's worth keeping an eye on, based on the price points they shared with me (which I unfortunately can't disclose here).  One final hurdle they're working on is the issue of tying up a tuner in a remote room.  Axar's initial target is European service providers; the application is sharing of living-room set-top box content to other rooms in the house.  In my own home, I don't see a ton of applicability for pausing a stream here in the living room, then resuming it in the bedroom.  Admittedly, this is a feature that's been desired by lots of folks, so maybe I'm in the minority.  But, if Axar could work with the carriers to take existing dual-tuner boxes and allow one of those streams to go to their transmitter while the other stream is being viewed in the living room, they'll have a huge winner on their hands.  Carriers will do just about anything to avoid provisioning another full-price box in a second or third room in the home.

Axar...exploiting the analog hole, in a good way.

Celeno
If you caught my post on my favorites of CES 2009, you'll recall that I was extremely impressed with the demo from Celeno, who're taking a little different approach to this market than others.  Celeno is building a Wi-Fi chipset for the transmit (source) side, and is capable of being received by any off-the-shelf draft 802.11n chipset with sufficient radio & antenna chains.  They're also using a compression partner to make the signal bandwidth more manageable; as I noted in my earlier post, their demo at CES was in partnership with Cavium Networks (nee W&W Communications), and looked rock-solid.  I would guess that based on the physical state of the demo, Celeno is probably a year behind Amimon and SiBEAM, whom I'd consider the leaders at this point.  But, keep an eye on them--they count Cisco as an investor, which makes them worth watching above and beyond how great their demo was.

Monster/Sigma Designs
Monster is working with Sigma Designs to bring a unique system to market.  The Monster/Sigma approach combines coaxial cable and wireless to deliver a backbone and access solution--coaxial for whole-home connectivity, wireless for in-room access connectivity.  Since this system is based on WiMedia ultra-wideband, the partners had to face the reality that their wireless solution is at best an in-room technology--meaning, either scrap the idea of whole-home video networking, or come up with an innovative solution.  They chose the latter.  The good news is that the wireless link will co-exist nicely with Certified Wireless USB devices in radio range, owing to its WiMedia compliance.  Further good news is that WiMedia's 528 MHz channels give the partners a lot of bandwidth with which to play, on both the wired and wireless sides.

However, the solution is not without challenges.  While WiMedia has a relatively massive amount of bandwidth, its transmit power is pretty much the noise floor, making in-room connectivity extremely variable, and multi-room connectivity all but impossible over wireless.  Also, while the coax solution operates in the 3.1-4.8 GHz spectrum (avoiding programming, DOCSIS, HomePNA, MoCA, et.al.), the higher attenuation present at those frequencies can be an impediment, particularly in older homes with poor quality coax and/or splitters.  And, like the others, the list price (in this case, $999 for a pair) of the system reinforces my belief that 2009 isn't yet the year for wireless high-def.  But, like the others, the Monster/Sigma solution has its own unique benefits, and could fit the bill for quite a few folks, particularly in North America.

SiBEAM (co-founders of the WirelessHD consortium)
I was fortunate enough to visit both SiBEAM's demo suite at Harrah's, as well as the WirelessHD interoperability suite at the LVCC.  Similar to my feelings about Amimon, I've been very skeptical of SiBEAM's claims.  And, similar to what happened in my meeting with Amimon, the scales fell from my eyes.

Maybe skeptical isn't the right word to describe what I'd been thinking about SiBEAM.  "Disbelief" might be more appropriate.  Over the last 2.5 years, I've heard a lot of claims in this market, most of which have turned out to be malarkey.  And, based on what I've heard from "those who oughta know" (i.e., engineers who are way smarter than me), there's no way that the SiBEAM guys were gonna be able to do all the stuff they wanted to do by using the 60 GHz band.

Wrong.

The demos I saw in the SiBEAM suite had three different sources sending HD content to a sink.  Not only did they work, they looked great, had negligible latency, and only broke up when I covered the transmit antennas by pressing my hand against them--and even then, recovery was nearly instantaneous.  Similarly, the demos I saw in the interoperability suite also looked great, with products from LG, Toshiba, Panasonic, and a host of others all humming along simultaneously.  After last year's demos in the Panasonic booth, which were akin to something you might see in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum (look over there, beyond that velvet theater rope, where no one's allowed to stand...yes, over there...that's the demo...don't exhale), I found this year's demos to be refreshingly robust.  Refreshingly high quality.  And yes, refreshingly real.

Do I believe that SiBEAM is going to hit the magic price point for Christmas 2009?  No, of course not--I'd have to rescind my earlier prediction, and I'm not prepared to do that.  But, do I believe that Wireless HD will begin to show up as a feature in higher-end televisions, just as WHDI has?  Yes, absolutely.

The horse race throughout 2009 and beyond is going to be interesting; I look forward to continuing to cover it.

Recap: Australian Innovation Shoot Out

Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the Australian Innovation Shoot Out, held in conjunction with G'Day USA Australia Week 2009.  Each state chose a single finalist to pitch folks here on Sand Hill Road, in hopes of landing further investment.  (I felt bad for the Northern Territory and ACT...hard to believe there's no innovation in the Top End or the capital)

The mix was a little different than the standard pitches typically seen here in the Valley.  Sure, a couple of the companies were nascent, looking for funding to help them take the next small step.  But, a couple others were firmly established companies looking to go big-time.

The format was interesting, although I think it could use a little improvement for next year; more on that in a second.  Robert Joss, Dean of Stanford's GSB, led things off with a talk on (appropriately enough) innovation.  After he spoke, Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat was introduced as moderator; he in turn welcomed the judging panel--Mark Fernandes (Sierra Ventures), Deborah Magid (IBM's VC Group), and Harold Yu (Orrick).  The panelists were responsible for listening to each of the talks, then voting to determine which company won first prize, valued at nearly US$30,000 in services.

Conducted in DEMO style, each company was afforded five minutes to make its pitch--one minute of professionally-produced video, followed by four minutes of presentation.  Upon conclusion, the judges huddled to determine the winner.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a company already publicly traded on the Australian Stock Exchange took home the prize--Impedimed, the entry representing Queensland.  The company makes a medical device used to treat lymphedema, a condition where fluid is retained in various parts of the body.  While each company's video served as an effective demonstration of their offering, Impedimed's enabled the audience to readily visualize exactly what lymphedema looks like.  With a solid business opportunity, investors from both the U.S. and Australia, and a compelling story, Impedimed ended up being an easy choice for the judges.

The other presenting companies were:

• NSW--Nuix, providing e-discovery and investigation software
• SA--m.Net, providing mobile Internet marketing
• TAS--JadeLiquid, providing automated testing for web applications
• VIC--E Ball Games, providing participatory sports simulators
• WA--Sensear, providing speech enhancing noise suppression technology

I thought that each presenter had a compelling pitch for a relevant set of potential investors.  All told, the event was two hours well-spent--an opportunity to learn more about the state of innovation in Australia in a very conveniently packaged presentation.

Three thoughts for next year...

First, if the companies are truly striving for coaching and constructive input moving forward, a minute of public feedback per judge for each of the six companies would be very helpful--identified strengths, visible weaknesses, and potential market and partnering opportunities.  As it was, the audience wasn't entirely certain how and why the panel chose Impedimed as the winner--although I think that at least three-quarters of the crowd would've voted the same.

Second, this wasn't exactly a level playing field.  Impedimed should absolutely strut proudly as the winner of this year's Shoot Out.  But, anything less than first prize likely would've (and should've) been a disappointment to the one publicly traded company on the docket.  Six similarly-sized private companies (or six similarly-sized ASX-traded companies) would've evened things out quite a bit.

Finally, with the success of (I can't believe I'm saying this) shows like American & Australian Idol, Dancing with the Stars (U.S. and Australia), and many more, reality TV has demonstrated that audience participation is paramount.  With the rapid growth of social networking tools like Twitter, adding an audience voting capability would be both useful and welcome.  Embracing the audience for some portion (half?) of the voting input would further liven things up.

I'd certainly be interested.  As a Chicago-area native, I'm all about vote early, vote often.

Recap: IEEE CNSV Meeting

Good stuff at the IEEE Consultants Network of Silicon Valley meeting tonight.  I've been meaning to attend a CNSV meeting for at least a year; the stars finally aligned for this evening.  From what I'm told, attendance was way up compared to 2008's meetings--mainly attributable to the economy, I'm guessing.  That said, tonight's topic seemed to be of pretty broad interest to the ~100 or so folks in attendance, so I'm sure that made an impact, too.

Tonight was the third in a series of "Consultants Forum" sessions; this evening's meeting focused on four different approaches to marketing, addressed by Brian Berg, Sean Murphy, Ahmet Alpdemir, and Peter Salmon.  As a guy who's spent 20 years in the marketing and selling of technical solutions, I was a little bit surprised at some of the seemingly basic (to me) questions that came from the audience.  But, I know how out of my league I am at engineering presentations where much of the audience would've been right at home; putting the shoe on the other foot, I readily understood where a lot of the questions were coming from.  I'm the one asking (or not asking, due to embarrassment) the really basic questions at a lot of technical sessions, so I absolutely felt empathy with the extremely bright engineers posing the queries.

Brian focused on the importance of:

• a well-linked website
  
• involvement in relevant professional organizations
• public speaking

Sean talked about:

• being involved in relevant professional communities
• the importance of consulting being a two-way street--help others as you wished to be helped
• Bootstrapper's Breakfasts and other professional networks
  

Ahmet covered social networking by sharing:

• statistics on social networking sites, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace
• do's and do not's for what to do in LinkedIn
• how to expand your professional network on LinkedIn, as well as suggestions for setting up your own network on a site like Ning

Peter discussed:

• his authorship of articles and white papers as marketing tools
• recommendations on negotiating publication agreements with editors
• how writing an article led directly to business

Each approach resonated on a different level with each audience member, leading to an in-depth Q&A session at the end of the presentation.  Slides can be found here; whether you're a newbie consultant looking for ideas on how to market yourself, or whether you've been at this for decades, I'd encourage you to have a glance at the presentations.  As I noted, I've been marketing technical solutions for two decades, and I still found nuggets of wisdom from each speaker.

If you're a technical consultant in Silicon Valley, or in one of the other ~30 geographies where IEEE consultants' sections can be found, I'd encourage you to investigate your local chapter.  Tonight's meeting was very informative, as well as being a great opportunity to expand your personal network.  I met a number of folks whose cards I requested, to file away in the virtual Rolodex for when a project comes up requiring unique expertise.

I look forward to next month's meeting.  One final tidbit--I have no idea about the policies of other IEEE consultants' sections, but the IEEE CNSV meetings are free, and don't require IEEE membership to attend.  So, show up at one soon--and tell 'em Coop sent you!

magicJack's CEO Responds

For those of you who may've missed Dan Borislow's comment in response to my post on magicJack's Terms of Service (TOS) agreement, I'd like to highlight it here, as well as provide a couple of follow-on thoughts...

Here was Dan's response:

"I can appreciate this post. Why you ask? Because The Parent company, which I am the majority shareholder of, also has to subscribe to terms of Service with verizon, AT&T and many other companies we interconnect with. So if we have a few pages of TOS, what I subscribe to is thousands of pages of a TOS, but it is never shown to me, but filed as a tariff in most cases. I am sure that most readers did not know, when they buy there home service from Ma Bell, that they also subscribe to thousands of pages of a TOS in the form of a Tariff. So whatever I have made available to show my subscribers, is light years better than what they commit to with tariffs to there home service, wireless, etc. which they do not know about. that is the real sneaky way out of it, not what we show you with magicJack. There is various ways we try and protect you including making it an option to elect getting you a free service mentioned above. That comes with being in the business for over 20 years and knowing what the FCC rules and State rules are all about. There is so much legal mumbo Jumbo in providing 911, because that is the way it is designed to be with all the regulatuions in place and lawsuit happy people. We do not dream this stuff up, regulators or lawyers do it first then we have to respond with what appears or is an unusual TOS. Then to top it off, we have to protect ourselves from the millions of lawyers we have in the US, the great majority ethical, but many who are not. So the best way to protect you and I is to say we are the boogey man-although we are quite the opposite, and spell out the worst it can be, but of course, be mindful that we want as many customers as we can get, treat you right and protect your privacy. Customer care is priority one for us. The service is very straight forward, works great, is very inexpensive, easiest to use, has a hell of a following and there is nothing funky going on. It is unfortunate that we have so many legal issues in the US, adding great costs and agg for all of us and we have to have a TOS that looks like this. The alternative, is Ma Bell, that costs 50 times more and there TOS is thousands of pages long in the form of a Tariff, and little does anybody know, that you have given up everything but your first born to these companies. Again, the other thing we must do, is protect the base and us from these ever hungry, lawsuit happy sharks out there. I wish life were easier, and I try my best to make it that way for all my customers, and am proud of the fact that we have built something nobody is close to copying that provides such great savings and benefits to so many people."

Dan, first off, thanks for taking the time to respond to my comments, and thanks to Beth for her coordination.

I agree with you on about 98% of what you're saying. Absolutely, most customers who subscribe to any service never read the relevant terms, just as few if any customers ever read the end user license agreement (EULA) accompanying just about any piece of software. Thanks to the transparency of the Internet, tariffs are much easier to track down these days, but as you note, they're still full of mumbo-jumbo which taxes the patience of pretty much everyone.

Here's my first point of contention--I agree that the TOS you show your subscribers is light years better than what a traditional telephony provider offers, from a brevity standpoint. Absolutely. But, the verbiage you use as part of the sign-up process is confusing. Obtuse. Borderline deceptive, particularly to those who aren't used to reading TOS agreements. I mean, I'm a geek, and I know a little bit about privacy, so I tend to look at TOS agreements when they're presented. This one, I found to be particularly annoying. If you're not a geek, or not privacy-aware, you're probably going to ignore the TOS completely. Fine. But Dan, since you obviously need to have a TOS in the first place, make it accurate, make it useful, make it clear. You'd be doing a great service to magicJack by cleaning up your already brief TOS, and you'd be in much better stead with privacy advocates who truly are concerned about what magicJack does with consumer data.

Second, I agree that 911 service requirements are a mess for VOIP providers. But, clarifying the language you use could make this a lot less messy for magicJack. A few sentences in the TOS defining what information the FCC requires consumers to provide to their VOIP provider would both clarify why magicJack's asking for the information, as well as take a target off magicJack's back. This shouldn't be difficult, assuming you can get a good marcom professional and a good lawyer in the room at the same time.

Third, you have made life easier for the vast majority of your subscribers. In admittedly limited testing over the past few days, I've made a handful of calls--all of which were easy to place, most of which were nearly toll-quality (with occasional audio clipping which eventually disappeared), and all of which were absolutely free. A couple more simple steps would make life even easier.

So, here's some constructive criticism to remove (or at least mitigate) those final percentage points of concern...

First and foremost, during the sign-up process, your TOS page comes up after the page where consumers enter all their personal information. That's wrong. Move the TOS page before the personal information page, and you'll relieve a lot of pain, both surrounding the perception of magicJack and around consumers' concerns. You own the software company; further, the software is dynamically downloaded to the computer upon initial connection of the magicJack device, so changing this in the code tomorrow means it's fixed in new consumers' hands tomorrow. I can't imagine that recompiling the code to flip-flop two screens would be all that difficult. If magicJack has nothing to hide (and I'd like to believe you don't), you should do this, pronto.

Second, clean up the references (e.g., Section 19 referring to something in Section 5 that doesn't exist). The updated TOS is a web page, so cleaning up the entire document should take little more than a business person, a marcom person, and an attorney. Seriously, you could do this over lunch. Posting it to the website URL would take another minute for your webmaster. Easy fix, tangible results.

Dan, your passion as an entrepreneur comes through in your response. And, the fact that you've created a device and a service that for the most part just works is hugely admirable.  It's awesome.  Fixing these items would go a long way to further removing concern about magicJack and its intentions.

As you state, there's "nothing funky going on", and that you want to protect customers' privacy. I urge you to back those statements up by correcting and/or clarifying your Terms of Service statement to that effect.

Selling Government-Grade Security? Stop. NOW.

While thumbing through one of the myriad of show publications at CES last week, I happened upon an ad from Honeywell, touting their product's "government-grade security".

What a crock.

Lots of vendors who understand nothing about the government's security requirements like to advertise that they offer "government-grade" security, or the even more impressive-sounding "military-grade" security.

Neither of these terms means a thing. You're validated, or you're not. Period. Typically, vendors using these terms are trying to promote their use of 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard for privacy.  Since just about anyone outside the Axis of Evil can readily access 128-bit AES, I don't really see the point.

Are you marketing security products?  Are you eager to use terms like "military" or "government" in your collateral?  Here's a handy checklist to see if you qualify...

• Are you protecting information classified as Top Secret, Secret, or Confidential?
• Are you selling a Suite A or Suite B product?
• Are you selling a HAIPE product?
  
• Are you selling a product with a FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic module?

If you can't answer "Yes" to one or more of these questions, you're not selling government-grade or military-grade security.  The government won't buy your product until it's undergone some form of validation or certification, which looks at issues like key generation and management, integrity, entropy, and a whole bunch of other items--not just key length of your encryption algorithm.  If you're not submitting your product through the processes required to validate compliance, you have nothing which can be legitimately marketed or sold as government-grade or military-grade.

So knock it off.

Coop's 3 Tech Predictions for 2009: #1--Wireless Goes Over a Cliff

My #1 tech prediction for 2009 is...

Late.

A week late in fact. You'd think that I'd done enough shows in Vegas (CES, NAB, NATPE, N+I) that if anyone, I'd understand the futility of trying to get an in-depth analytical piece published once I physically arrived in Sin City. Whoops.

Thanks to those of you who've been hounding me about when I'd finally have this prediction finished; particular thanks to the one of you who used to work for me who's been on me like white on rice about getting the piece finalized and up. I hope that I can make it up to you by including heyCoop's very first embedded YouTube interview (conducted by Intel, not by me); look for more in the future.

So, my number #1 tech prediction for 2009? Cliffside, Cliffside, Cliffside.

What's that, you say? You've never heard of Cliffside? Well, that was kind of my point. I could've come out and said "TVs will get thinner! Blu-ray will get cheaper (and still not sell well)! Ballmer will talk about Windows 7! Circuit City will fold!" But, c'mon...that's not very insightful. I wanted to go out on a limb and predict the arrival and growth of something few people had heard of.

Cliffside.

Ironically, Intel publicly announced Cliffside at the show, which A) makes me look like a genius for having chosen this as my number 1 tech prediction for 2009; B) makes me look like an idiot, since I didn't get the post up before the announcement; and C) didn't get nearly the coverage you might've expected, since they chose not to use the project's code name, but rather chose to label it Intel My Wi-Fi Personal Area Network, or Mobile Wi-Fi PAN, as the sign called it.

I suspect that a committee may've been involved.

But here at heyCoop headquarters, we're gonna keep calling it Cliffside, rather than IMWFPAN, or however that acronym plays out.

Great. Now I'm on record. What the heck is this Cliffside thing, anyway?

You might call it a competitor to Bluetooth, Wireless USB, or TransferJet.

Let's start with a comparison to Bluetooth. I don't know the numbers (and I probably should, since heyCoop, LLC is a member of the Bluetooth SIG), but I'll take a guess and say that >99.99% of Bluetooth pairs worldwide are between cell phones and earpieces. Cool. But, I really wish that the pairing between my MacBook and my BlackBerry allowed me to do everything I wanted to, rather than still needing a USB cable. Yes, I can tether via Bluetooth, enabling my MacBook to use my Curve as a wireless modem. Very useful. However, I'd also like my contacts to sync over Bluetooth; since RIM's Mac support is still sorely lacking, I use Missing Sync for the BlackBerry to synchronize my contacts. For e-mail, I use Google Apps' IMAP; for calendar, I use Google Sync. But, there's no clean way to get contacts on my Mac synched to my BlackBerry except by physically connecting my device.

Which I detest. Sure, I could attempt to connect my BlackBerry and my Mac via an access point (infrastructure mode), then get them to communicate. Unfortunately, I've tried that, and they won't sync.

So...where does Cliffside come in? Well, much as Shimmer was a desert topping and a floor wax, Cliffside does two things well--infrastructure support and ad hoc support.

Cliffside...

• Supports four modes on the LAN side--11a, b, g, and draft-N
• Supports three modes (currently) on the PAN side--11a, b, and g
• Supports 450 mb/s or 300 mb/s of capacity on the LAN side, depending on chipset
• Supports 54 mb/s of capacity on the PAN side
• Supports separate networks on each half of the MAC, with a DHCP server for the PAN side
• Already has Avega Systems, G2 Microsystems, and Ozmo showing demos 

Let's start by looking at infrastructure support; that's the Wi-Fi we all know and love. Embedded in a bajillion devices, Wi-Fi has become a way of life for connecting devices to the Internet. With a wide range of silicon options available from a number of vendors, Wi-Fi is the world's most popular wireless local area network technology, hands down. Infrastructure mode requires an access point to function, which is fine when you're looking to connect back to the big bad I.

However, for ad hoc support, Wi-Fi hasn't been quite so good. Ever tried setting up an ad hoc, peer-to-peer network using Wi-Fi? Easy, it ain't. Bluetooth rules for personal area networking applications, with more than two billion chips shipped. All the cool kids here in Silicon Valley wear their Bluetooth earpieces all the time. (Wait, what? Huh?) But Bluetooth hasn't been great for synchronization, since much of the profile focus has gone towards applications like headsets and hands-free use. Wireless USB shoulda been a contender, but hasn't made it yet; skeptics believe it may never make it. Bluetooth 10x and 100x are going to be interesting; I look forward to the further development and delivery of both.

But, what I really look forward to testing is Cliffside. By using a split-MAC architecture, Intel's new Centrino 2 chipset enables a single chip to perform both infrastructure and ad hoc duties, delivering some very compelling new use cases. Synchronizing content between Wi-Fi enabled devices is now not only possible, it's easy--and doesn't require an access point. Local network access while on a VPN is now both safe and secure. Have you ever wanted to print something to your home printer, but you were connected to your enterprise VPN, which doesn't allow split tunneling? Cliffside's split-MAC capability would allow exactly that use case--secure local wireless connectivity in ad hoc mode, and secure infrastructure wireless connectivity while using your VPN.

I spent some time on Sunday with Scott Doenecke, who looks after Cliffside for Intel. He took me through a full demo, and seemed pretty excited that I'd actually sought out Cliffside on the show floor. I certainly wasn't the only one, but having dealt with split-MAC issues in conjunction with remote access using FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic modules in a past life (buy me a beer), I'm digging what Cliffside enables.

In addition to the cool features mentioned above, Intel has both a Flash demo and an interview with Scott which will educate you on Cliffside.



No, Cliffside's not perfect. In fact, the capability isn't even available yet, but expect to see it enabled by the end of first quarter. The Centrino 2 chipset itself is shipping; look for a software download in the next couple of months to enable the split-MAC functionality. Cliffside will be available on a device-by-device basis within laptop manufacturers' lines, geared towards consumer (rather than enterprise) platforms initially.

And, since Apple doesn't use the Centrino 2, don't expect to see this on a Mac anytime soon, darn it anyway. Hopefully Cliffside will prove itself to be so useful that Apple will see the light; the iTunes remote control demo that Scott showed me made me want to call Apple and suggest that they have a look post-haste.

Use cases abound for Cliffside. No, this isn't as sexy as a TV the thickness of a hair, or of a Blu-ray promotion where I receive a free disc every week for the rest of my life, simply for buying a Blu-ray player. But, in terms of dramatically simplifying users' interactions with their devices, Cliffside has huge promise.

And might save us a bunch of time so we can go watch Blu-ray movies on our paper-thin TVs.

Waiting on Ponch and Jon

Trying to get caught up on some testing, post-CES. My desk feels like an episode of CHiPs--crashes all over the freakin' place. I've done a ground-up, ISO-image install of Windows 7 build 7000 on VMWare Fusion, running on Leopard (Kalyway), running on my 2 GB MSI Wind netbook--the ultimate in kink. Forget the feather--I'm using the whole chicken. Generally, Win7's running nicely, but I can't get the network stack to come up--neither NAT nor bridged are working, so I can't get to the 'net. For my 1 GB MSI Wind netbook (msiwindosx86.iso), I'm pulling down a torrent of a pre-built Win7 VMWare appliance to do a similar style install to see if that makes a difference; I'm sure that there's just a setting I'm missing somewhere, but this is annoying.

The newest build (4825) in the Boxee private alpha is now wicked fast, but is choking on the 5543 artists, 36192 songs, and 205+ gig of music I'm asking it to grok from iTunes. Having built an XBox Media Center using XBMC on an original Xbox in what was my most involved hack of 2008, I'm a big fan of what Boxee's doing, but this is also annoying me. After a bunch of ~10 second hangs, I'm just gonna let it run overnight to see if it somehow manages to recover. The Boxee team rocks, so I know that they'll have a fix for this soon, but I'm bummed that I picked tonight and this build to try to make some progress.

And, most annoyingly, I'm setting up magicJack on one of my sandbox machines, and it's asking for a raft of personal information. I absolutely understand the need for VOIP providers to map IP telephony services to physical addresses for 911 service resolution. However, with no link to magicJack's privacy policy, I have no way to know how they're going to use this data, which pisses me off thoroughly. Gimme terms of service and disclosure, and I'm happy to give you some information about me. No terms of service and disclosure? I'm John Q. Public, at 123 N. Any Street, New York, NY, 10001. Further, the "I elect to accept free outgoing service (recommended)" checkbox that's pre-checked...what the hell is that? Recommend by whom, exactly?

magicJack, you guys caught me on the wrong night. After filling in Mr. Public's information, I did finally reach a Terms of Service page. I do appreciate the fact that you've put in a TOS page; I don't appreciate the fact that A) when I select all the text in the TOS to copy and paste into a word processor for easier reading, I can't actually copy & paste, and B) the link to the TOS page on your website isn't clickable. Silly.

But wait, there's more.

Have you guys read your own TOS lately? I mean, I know that manufacturers don't expect users to actually read the TOS, just as few people read EULAs. But, whenever I'm suspect about information disclosure, I read 'em. In this case, I'm not sure what I'm most concerned about, but I'm concerned. I'm annoyed that Section 19 talks about "Upgraded Software described in Section 5 above", but that Section 5 doesn't actually talk about upgraded software, or software at all. What Section 5 does talk about is mandatory enrollment in magicJack's voluntary 911 service. Yes, gentle reader, you heard that right. Here's the exact phrase from Section 5 of the TOS: "when you register to use the magicJack device, you will be enrolled in magicJack's voluntary 911 service, if you register a U.S. service address". Uh, seriously? I'm enrolled in a voluntary service, that if I don't enroll, I can't use magicJack? Where's the 'voluntary' part of that equation?

I love the privacy policy, too: "Your registration data and certain other information about you are subject to this Terms of Service. You understand that by using the magicJack device you consent to magicJack's collection and use as set forth in these Terms of Service, including the transfer of this information to and from the United States and/or other countries for storage, processing and use by magicJack, its affiliates and business partners to provide you with information about communications-related service."

Yeah...not knowing which information is heading overseas gives me a real warm fuzzy. Brilliant.

The real catch-22 here is Section 20, which says "You represent and warrant that (a) all of the information provided by you to magicJack to use the magicJack device and Software is correct and current..." Well, no, actually, I don't. You play games, I play games.

Honestly, I want magicJack to work, and to be successful. Prior to picking up magicJack at the blogger party on Friday night, I'd heard very little about the product/service, aside from a few TV ads and random comments on the 'net. On Friday afternoon, I read an article about the founder's response to a number of stories relating to magicJack's business practices, its interaction with the Better Business Bureau, and its customers. I was so impressed by how straightforwardly the company founder seemed to honestly and accurately address each issue that I specifically mentioned it to magicJack's PR representative at the party.

Now, I'm having second thoughts.

magicJack, this is an easy fix. Hire an attorney with some background in online privacy law. Rewrite the nefarious (or potentially nefarious) parts. If there's truly nothing to worry about for the user community, don't leave in TOS loopholes large enough to allow you to introduce spam, Trojans, and other types of malware.

Consumers just want stuff to work. If magicJack works as promised, you'll have a happy and loyal customer base. If it doesn't work as promised, you'll go the way of the Gator, which I doubt is the outcome you're looking for. I hope that in my testing, it works beyond my wildest expectations. Heck, who can beat a year of calling using a USB analog terminal adapter? That's worth money, absolutely, but only if there's nothing hinky involved. Despite public assurances that there isn't, I'm wary, and will be until I've shaken down the product.

The shame here is that in the time it's taken me to write this up, I've gone through the activation process and made my first couple of phone calls, and the quality is great--my non-golden ears would probably assign a MOS right around 4.0, which is fantastic. But, there's one more voice in this conversation--the one in the back of my head that believes I should be running a port scanner in the background to see what's happening on my machine.

I'm in touch with magicJack's PR person, so I hope that they'll be able to provide some clarification as to when they expect to resolve (or at least address) these topics. I'll pass along what I hear as soon as they're back with me--they seem like good people, which is why I'm a little weirded out by the reputability issues.

Like I said, magicJack, you caught me on the wrong night. But, this would've been an issue any day of the week. Seriously.

CES: Recap, Thoughts and Favorites

CES rocked. CES always rocks. Sure, this year it may've rocked less than the past couple of years, but if you're in the consumer electronics market, you need to be there, full stop. This year flushed out quite a few companies that didn't belong over the past two years; I wouldn't be surprised if next year's show remains a similar size, although if rumors of Apple moving its trade show presence from Macworld to CES 2010 hold true, we might see some growth.

Show floor traffic was down, absolutely. The first and last hours on the show floor each day were lightly attended; mid-day traffic was decent, although not nearly overwhelming. Friends and colleagues reported in via e-mail, IM, and Twitter (@heycoop) throughout the course of the show; it's fair to say that no one in my crowd was disappointed by the fact that CES was less busy, to the point where the show was actually manageable this year.

That said, traffic to and from the convention center still sucked, even with tens of thousands fewer attendees than the past couple of years. Remind me again why I didn't stay on the monorail this year?

And, yet again, I totally missed the Sands. I'd love to see CEA open the Sands on Wednesday, a day earlier than the LVCC. They'd enjoy better traffic for Sands exhibitors, better attendance at the (excellent) keynotes, and enable attendees to have a more thorough CES experience overall.

Also, I didn't see anything earth-shattering this year in terms of serious break-through technologies. Inductive charging pads like Powermat are very cool, but they require either new industrial designs or new carrying cases to function. Yes, I want that technology, but it's not showing up in my house this year. A better option might be a charging station like the one from Idapt, providing a wide range of charging tips for drop-in charging. On the one hand, it's a very cool capability, to simply drop your device onto the charging tip. Further, this design enables me to keep my gadget chargers in my bag so I never forget them when I'm on the road. On the other hand, I'm not sure I need to spend cash and space for a charging unit like this, since I can just keep plugging my devices into their respective chargers, assuming I can remember to grab all the chargers when I do hit the road. Beyond that, with the vast majority of the industry moving to micro-USB (again, I reference Anton Wahlman's excellent post on the topic), I'm not sure how long I'd need a charging unit like this. I mean, my life is all about gadgets, all of which need to be powered somehow; I really do like the Idapt offering, but I'm not sure I'll be jumping on it anytime soon unless they offer me a review unit.

So, onto favorites...

Favorite software application: AstoundStereo, a stereo expander for Macs and Windows PCs. Lots of folks don't realize that the process of ripping/encoding a CD (or downloading music from iTunes, et.al.) in MP3 format delivers a song with dramatically less information than the original, due to the lossy nature of MP3 compression--the tradeoff being, MP3 files take a fraction of the space of the original songs. The resulting file is much smaller, delivering a correspondingly narrower range of fidelity. Expanders attempt to re-create the higher fidelity experience present in the original audio track. I've downloaded the free 30-day trial from Astound's website, and am running it on my MacBook, my Mac Mini, and my MSI Wind netbook. On each, the audio experience is dramatically improved; on the netbook, whose speakers deliver output that's generously described as tinny, the experience is night and day. I was listening to my netbook in my hotel room in Las Vegas, and couldn't believe how bad the sound was; after installing AstoundStereo, I was able to move beyond the lousy sound and actually enjoy my music. Definitely worth the $29.95 license, which they're knocking down to $19.95 through the end of January.

Favorite hardware: I'm not a DJ, but I absolutely loved the Pacemaker, a handheld DJ system from Stockholm-based Tonium. DJ friends of mine have evolved from carrying turntables with milk crates of LPs, to compact disc players with milk crates of CDs, to laptops, to multiple iPods, all of which have typically required some type of external board to enable proper mixing, cueing, fading, etc. The Pacemaker embeds all of those capabilities in a single, 120 GB hard drive-based device, while adding useful features like beat matching, independent mixing, and a whole bunch more--all in a single, hand-held unit which can live for 5 hours on battery power. Freakin' cool.

Favorite accessory: Cocoon's Grid Technology. Cocoon Innovations launched a number of items at the show; while their bags are extremely cool, the technology inside them was even cooler. Cocoon's patented elastic organization straps offer endless flexibility for organizing everything in your bag. I carry too much stuff, all of which is typically at the bottom of my bag. With Cocoon's Grid, I finally have a place for my stuff. George Carlin (R.I.P.) would approve.

Favorite cell phone case: I didn't attend Macworld (or as Dean called it, iPhonecaseworld), but CES did have its fair share of mobile device cases. For the second year in a row, my favorite device case comes from OtterBox. I'm not Victor Kiam, but I like their stuff so much that I use an OtterBox case for my BlackBerry Curve. I drop my Curve about once a month, whether I need to or not; I hope I'm not jinxing myself here, but to date, the OtterBox case has saved me multiple times. Pictured here is OtterBox' new case for the BlackBerry Storm. Despite the fact that I absolutely cannot use virtual keyboards, I highly recommend the OtterBox case for those who do--the typing experience on the Storm (or on an iPhone) is exactly the same in an OtterBox, with the added value of drop protection. As with their other cases, OtterBox has designed a case that makes a good tradeoff between robust protection and bulk; the Storm case isn't on the website yet, but keep an eye out over the coming weeks.




Favorite building block: FlatWire's flat HDMI wire. The wire is, uh, flat. You're gonna look at this and decide whether you think it's cool or not. If you don't think so, move on. If you do, look at the photos, then hit their website for more. To summarize, they're taking their existing flat wire technology and adapting it for carriage of HDMI. The wires require a physical connector to be punched into the wire itself, hence the white junction box with the HDMI connector at either end. I was so speechless at how cool this was that I forgot to ask about the maximum distance supported, but you can paint over it, mud over it, and more. With a price point expected to be at least double that of regular HDMI cables, this won't be for everyone, but a lot of folks will immediately understand the value simply by looking at the above images.

Favorite device for my parents: While I saw lots of network-connected photo frames, I still don't think they're ready for me to have a point-and-click dashboard where I can determine which photos to sync to multiple remote frames over the cloud. So, while I know that this category has huge legs, my favorite device this year is the LG Decoy, a cell phone with a built-in Bluetooth headset. No, this isn't new--in fact, the Decoy has been out since last summer. And no, it's not perfect--many reviewers have commented on the shortcomings of the device in terms of audio quality and battery life. But, in a world where more and more states are mandating hands-free cellular phone use, and where we all hate having to remember to charge yet another device, a phone with an embedded, detachable headset is a great idea. Your neighborhood geek won't like the Decoy, but your parents will--assuming they're Verizon customers, of course. I asked LG if they hold patent protection on this design; they said they didn't, which shocks me, as I'd've expected other companies to have introduced similar designs by now. Maybe they will in 2009.

Favorite reception/party: It Won't Stay in Vegas, the blogger party at the Atomic Testing Museum. I had a ton of interesting conversations with bloggers and vendor sponsors from across the consumer electronics spectrum; look for upcoming reviews on Burton's Acoustibuds, magicJack, Monster's Outlets To Go, and more. I hope I make the cut again next year.

Favorite TV: All of 'em. Thin to win. 240 Hz. Local dimming. Lower power consumption. Built-in DLNA. Widgets. Over-the-top delivery. I want 'em all, and I want 'em now. I want 3D while I'm at it. Hell, why not.

Favorite demo: I saw a lot of wireless high-def demos this week; in fact, of the 100,000 plus attendees at CES, I can say with a high (def?) degree of confidence that very few if any people saw more wireless high-def demos than I did. I'll have a full recap and comparison of each solution in the coming days; for now, I want to focus on the most compelling demo I saw, from an Israeli company called Celeno. Having spent 18 months in a previous life traveling the world with TVs, DVD players, and wireless devices for demo purposes, I thought I'd seen most methods of doing a wireless high-def demo.

I'm not ashamed to admit I was wrong.

This year was my second-busiest CES ever, so I didn't make it to Celeno's booth till 3:30 on Sunday afternoon. Weaving and wending my way through South Halls 3 and 4, the aisles littered with the detritus of early tear-down, I hoped against hope that the Celeno guys would still be at their booth. Thankfully, they were. I spent a couple of minutes speaking with Kapriel Karagozyan, Celeno's Boston-based VP of Sales. Kapriel then showed me a demo, which was anything but the same ol' same ol' wireless high-def demo; instead, we went on walkabout.

Celeno's transmit-side demo was a Blu-ray player connected to a reference design they've built in conjunction with Cavium Networks; the design uses Celeno's Wi-Fi chipset combined with the PureVu H.264 chipset from Cavium (nee W&W Communications). The receive-side demo was a Samsung TV connected to the PureVu system, using an off-the-shelf 802.11n MIMO chipset. Most interestingly, the receive-side demo was mobile, sitting on a battery-powered cart. Actually, the demo was battery-powered; the cart was Kapriel-powered.

This view shows us after rolling about 30 or 40 feet from the Celeno booth, which was in the second blue-carpeted aisle, to the left (as you look at it) of the support post. This was interesting, particularly knowing that the high ceilings of the convention center don't provide much of the reflection needed to optimize 11n's MIMO capabilities, but I wasn't that impressed.

Onward we pushed. (Actually, Kapriel pushed; I just kept saying "Dude!" every 10 feet or so.) When we were finally about 140 feet from the Celeno booth, the demo began to break up. Knowing just how difficult it is to deliver high definition TV wirelessly, I was absolutely flabbergasted. To give you some idea of just how far away we were, see if you can find Kapriel in the following picture.

If you click on the final image, then look very closely, you'll be able to see a TV screen in the middle of the image, a loooooong ways away. That's the receiver. I'm standing about 140 feet from the booth, where the HD video signal finally broke down; Kapriel is ~90 feet from me, waving, on his way back to the booth. Mind-boggling.

Kudos to the Celeno team for delivering a hugely compelling demo, one that won over even me, a guy who's seen just about every wireless high-def demo in existence.

In the next couple of days, I'll give you the rundown on many of them.

CES: Why Not To Tear Down Early

Over the years, I've had some of my most interesting conversations in the waning seconds of CES. That happened again this year, although I was the one approaching the booth, rather than the one waiting for the final bell. With less than 30 minutes to go till closing, I experienced the most compelling demo I saw this year. Stay tuned for who I'm talking about.

CES: With a Half-Day To Go...

I feel like I have the show floor to myself...and that's not necessarily a good thing...

CES: Windows Coffee Maker?

Somewhere, Joe DiMaggio is rolling over in his grave.

For those of you too young to remember, Joe D was the face of Mr. Coffee; when I was a kid, there was no Starbucks, no tall soy latte, no "lifestyle" associated with coffee. You made it at home, and were looked at funny if you were too rich or too foolhardy to do so.

Coffee came pre-ground in a big can, and you used one of Joltin' Joe's coffee makers to brew it. You just did.

Now, coffee and everything surrounding coffee has evolved. The old coffee ecosystem was a can of coffee, a Mr. Coffee, paper filters, an old mug, and maybe some cream & sugar and a wooden stir. Today, it's obviously a whole different world. And, yesterday, the coffee ecosystem got a little weirder.

That's right--the networked coffee maker.

I'm actually a huge fan of the capabilities Microsoft and their partners are bringing to bear here, and it's certainly generating enough discussion to get folks writing about it. (Guilty)

Don't focus on the coffee maker. Focus on the serious, useful, real-world applications like digital photo frame synchronization over the network. That's awesome, and it's coming soon.

Precious few of you likely remember the SNMP toaster, so we'll save that discussion for another time. Good stuff here from Microsoft...I look forward to being able to buy some of these devices embedded with smarts--but I think I'll take a pass on the coffee maker. I might be a Cubs fan, but I'd feel weird slighting Joe D.