@rwandering: Listening to the new 24 x 96 unlimited Ram from @paulmccartney — sounds fantastic.

@cgerrish: So you’ve taken sides in #occupyaudio ? Have you read this?

My response to that:

Yeah, yeah, us mere mortals can’t hear anything.  Sure.  (I haven’t read the article yet).

My own experience says the following:

• 24 bit mixing is really a big deal.
• 24 bit (or higher?) transfer from tape is a big deal.
• 24 bit mastering (i.e. 24 bits as the output ) is also pretty big.
• 44 kHz is probably just fine.

Microsoft is changing the free storage for SkyDrive from 25GB to 7GB.  If you are an existing user, though, you can get grandfathered in, but you have to logon and tell them you want it.

With Google Drive finally released, Aaron Levie of box posts When Elephants Attack. While I do agree with the sentiment (race to bottom for free storage / clear vision and value of box), I find the basic claim of “Elephant attacking startup” a bit weak.  Both Box and SalesForce (the latter also mentioned in the post) followed the same playbook going after one of the elephants from day 1.  I don’t have a problem with that at all, but the post implies this sort of passive “we became a target” and states explicitly that “Salesforce became the target of Microsoft . . .” without ever mentioning that they were actually hunting for that elephant all along.

I appreciate Mike Arrington’s post on Acqui-hires and the follow up today.   There is no doubt he has a vested interest in the venture capital standard terms — although, who doesn’t in this business? — but, I read his posts as being straight up, honest, and valuable.

McCartney’s RAM is being re-released in deluxe packaging (and better, in 24-bit 96kHz). great album, there is a cool video here.

I can only imagine there was some heated debate on whether to give it an evocative name or stick with a sequence of numbers. I’m glad the sequence won out, even if just for now.

I much prefer the “8″ and then, I hope “9″, etc. I don’t really care that these are names and not version numbers, but I do care that there they make sense to customers and partners alike.

Plus all the evocative names start sounding like brands of cars.

I just came back from Costa Rica, and I swear I saw someone driving a Windows Azule.

It took me about a month to get it shipped — the unit was still functional and we use it fairly often.  Anyway, I packaged it up and sent it off.

• Tuesday morning, I dropped it at UPS.
• Wednesday morning, they received it and I got an email explaining their process.
• Wednesday afternoon, I was told it was fixed and would be shipped back to me.
• Thursday (today) I received it.  All fixed, works great.

Great service, and something like a 6 hour turnaround from their service center!  Amazing!

This is truly an excellent unit, and way beyond a typical consumer player.  Blu-ray too is excellent.  Even my wife — who generally doesn’t care about video/audio fidelity — really prefers watching on Blu-ray.

For those who say they don’t need Blu-ray because of streaming, well, they  must have some pretty incredible bandwidth . . . or (more likely) they don’t actually care about fidelity.  In a world of 128-bit MP3s, I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised.

Anyway, thanks OPPO, keep up the good work!

BTW: When I opened the box, the top piece of cardboard was for the newer model, the OPPO BDP-93.  For a second I got my hopes up, “did OPPO send me a new unit?!??!”.  Of course, not . . .

Anyway, I’m not there this year.  I think I will go next time, if only because it seems weird *not* to be there.

This use of the word attention, though, doesn’t apply only to the Internet and media.  It also applies to plain-old products too – which cereal you eat and where you vacation, etc. – in fact, it can apply to everything.

So, it follows, that energy attention is the subset of your attention as it applies to energy:  what, where, and how, you do and don’t use energy.  Just like the more general attention data, such data can also be quite valuable, both to you in reducing your energy use and costs, but also to third-parties for marketing and sales purposes (note that carbon attention overlaps with energy attention, but I am not going into that now).

Electric and Gas utilities record one major aspect of your energy attention today:  your electricity and gas usage data.  Most utilities provide these data back to their customers in summary form on bills, and many provide it in more detail.  My local utility, PG&E, provides me with hourly electricity and gas usage data through their Web portal.

While functional, I wanted real-time usage data.  My first thought was to use the GE SmartMeter that PG&E installed.  While the data could be retrieved from there, my access to it is on an unknown schedule with an unknown feature set.  The California Public Utilities Commission, utilities, vendors, and other stakeholders have been wrangling over issues central to the ownership and sharing of such energy attention data.  Both the Commission and PG&E have good reasons to be careful with this data:  PG&E installed and owns that meter and paid for it with rate-payer monies.  There is a decent (though somewhat dated) overview at Giga OM.  And while the Commission released an update to their proposed decision (PD) yesterday (here), the wrangling isn’t over.

So instead of waiting for this to all get resolved, I followed Jon Udell’s lead and installed The Energy Detective 5000 (TED 5000).  This monitors my home electricity usage in real time, giving me immediate access to my own energy attention data.  This to me, is exactly in the spirit of the Attention Trust (AT), an organization that I did some pro-bono work for in the past along-side of Steve Gillmor.

Now what does this have to do with attention and the AT?

Back in 2005, the AT was formed to assert user rights over attention data, specifically as it related to that data collected by Internet  services.  For example, Google tracks user attention (through clicks and time on pages, etc.) and uses that  information for operating their various services.  You consent to their right these data  through their Terms of Service (TOS).   The AT asserted that the user also owns these data.  To assert this ownership, the AT provided the Attention Recorder with which a user could record their own attention data from the browser.  The act of capturing such data from the user side of the firewall ended the discussion of who owned the data.  Yes, the Internet service has their copy and can use it based on the TOS, but the user owns the data too.

So, the TED 5000 is my own personal Energy Attention Recorder.  I assert ownership over the data and authority to do anything I want with it – including exposing it to any third-party service I so choose.

Interestingly, the PD issued yesterday names the TED 5000 specifically (although in reference to a utility comment).  This is in response to one of the CPUC questions (paraphrased):

Does the Commission have authority over entities that receive information on a consumer’s energy usage from meter sources other than a utility?

While the Commission has deferred this question, it is clear that they will face an up-hill battle on protecting consumers from their own
actions.

I, for one, claim ownership of my own energy attention.

Here is an example, but first some background.

I recently picked up a Kill-a-Watt and have been measuring different devices in the house while on standby.   I want to get a handle on how much vampire power is being wasted.

It turns out that around 60 watts is bleeding from our main home entertainment system when on standby.  That is about 60 watts * 8760 hours = 525 kWH per year.

Aside from a classic power strip with a switch, there are solutions now that supply controlled outlets that only make power available when some master component is on.  One solution is the Zuni Digital smart powerstrip.  Another is the is the Belkin Conserve, though the latter doesn’t have enough outlets (disclosure: those our Amazon links).

So what am I on about?  If you look at the Belkin information, they present a very similar scenario as mine and conclude that the Conserve power strip can save up to $67 / year!  Unfortunately, they are using the wrong price:

Dollar figure based on US Department of Energy average retail price for residential electricity of $0.1132 per killowatt-hour.

Residential electricity rates are often more complex than that, though, and here in the PG&E territory, such a low rate only applies to your baseline usage.  The rates go up based on your usage.  The top rate is actually $0.40352.

If you are a consumer making a decision on saving 525 kWH per year, you should be looking at your top rate — i.e., the top rate you are actually paying to your utilty based on your circumstances.  Because if you shave off kWH, you are saving the money on the top rate, not on the bottom rate.   I’m embarassed to admit it, but our rate is 40-cents.  If I save 526 kWH that saves me $212.    (Of course, if your energy savings drop you to a lower rate, the calculation changs).

The Zuni sells for $39 — that pays for itself in just over two months.  Now, granted, our entertainment system is actually used sometimes, but I estimate it is unused 94% of the year, so that still nets nearly $200.

So, what is the marginal rate you pay?

I would have thought Microsoft learned its lesson here. It has already tried to take the full version of Windows 7 and run it on tablets. These “slates” — as Microsoft calls tablets — have gotten trounced by the iPad. Now, Microsoft has decided to take the full version of Windows and make sweeping UI changes so that it’s much more tablet-friendly and then apply all of those changes to the standard desktop/laptop version of Windows as well. Say what?

My comparison to the old Windows Mobile world, although not technically “One Windows to rule them all”, covers similar ground.

As a developer, I love the idea of write once and run everywhere, but in today’s world that applies to only one technology HTML5 and JavaScript.  It just doesn’t apply to the OS.

The users have already spoken on this.  And they are right on so many levels.

On the name:

• I hope this “codename Windows 8″ stuff is just a joke.  Just call it Windows 8.  Every other OS that I can think of has first and foremost a number associated with it.  In fact, I think this must just be a joke, because Microsoft is more and more coming around to the “Windows” name as the brand.  Calling it Windows Flambe or Windows Azule or Windows Enchilada doesn’t help with the brand.  8.
• Now, of course, this ignores the fact that Windows 7 is a name, not a version.  So implicit in my plea for Windows 8 is that it actually be version 8, not just named 8.  Sorry if that is confusing, but I’m not the one who decided that Windows version 6.1 would be called Windows 7.

On the new interface:

• Looks kind of interesting, but I’m concerned about the “one interface to rule them all” approach.  Remind anyone of the original Windows Mobile?  Just a small form-factor Windows machine with Start menu.  That seemed logical, but it turned out that it was nearly unusable.  The Windows Phone 7 Metro UI is pretty cool for a phone.  It would work well for a tablet.  It seems wierd for a desktop/laptop, but maybe not.
• The bigger problem is that I hope Microsoft gets that standard Windows applications don’t become productive tablet applications with the addition of touch.  I have a convertible laptop.  It would be interesting to have Metro on it, but that will only solve one piece of what makes it nearly unusable in tablet form.

On Silverlight:

• So, unlike Windows Phone 7, Windows 8 won’t use Silverlight for the Metro UI.  This isn’t surprising.  Microsoft has eschewed .NET for core Windows development from day 1.  OK, from day 2, because on day 1 they said .NET would be the new Windows API.  It never happened.  And this is just another indication that it never will.
• That said, I think it makes total sense for them to use HTML 5 and not Silverlight for Windows.
• This begs the question: if HTML 5 and JavaScript are good for Windows 8, then how long until these replace Silverlight for Windows Phone?
• Which begs another (future) question: what will Silverlight be good for then?

A little snarky, but I’m feeling snarky today.

Update: I’m filling in for Rizwaan at the CAISO on another panel. This time I’ll be speaking about ISO perspectives on DR.

If you are at that conference, look me up. Also, they provided a discount code. Email me at robert at rwandering dot net, and I’ll give you the code.

It seems like many people have had some form of this problem: When the zune software reboots the phone before the update, the phone gets stuck with the “connect your phone” picture.

Some people seem to get errors of some kind or a timeout, but on my machine I never got any error. It just didn’t work. I went through all of the troubleshooters I could find but just couldn’t get it to work.

The solution turned out to be to perform the update on a different computer. I did this with the February and March updates.

Note that I tried to update on the original computer after the February update, hoping the problem was gone, but no luck. I had to do both updates on the second machine. Who knows, maybe when the next update comes it will work on the original machine (or maybe Microsoft will fix this with Windows Update or a Zune software update).

Pure mudslinging about conflicts of interest based on things that don’t seem to be true. I won’t mention the mudslinger, but I can tell you that if I bothered to read that other blog — which I don’t — I would unsubscribe.

Build your brand on merit like InsideHPC did, not on publicity stunts.

In general, the utilities should have answered these questions for their customers before starting the changeover:

• How does a smart meter help the customer?
• Are meters read more frequently and/or read at finer intervals?
• What is being done to protect that data?
• Will the utility sell that data to others?
• (How) Will the utility provide that data to the government / law enforcement?
• How are the meters tested for accuracy?
• How do we know if my old meter was accurate?
• Why might my bill change and what do I do if I think there is an issue?

I don’t think it is sufficient to have a bill insert that explains these things.  I have a new PG&E smart meter, and have never seen any literature about the smart meter change.  I was out of town when PG&E came knocking at my door, and again I was away when the installer showed up.  I might be able to go find some of this information on the PG&E site, but my point is that I don’t think I should have to go look for it.

And, I certainly don’t mean to pick on PG&E.  I actually don’t know that “People don’t like PG&E”.  My relationship with them has always been a good one.  For example, some foundation contractors knocked my gas meter out of whack (and left the house with an audible gas leak), PG&E came right away to fix it and turn the gas back on.  No charge, friendly and professional. 

My personal opinion about the reports of inaccuracies is that it has a lot more to do with the meter being replaced than the new meter.  I have talked with others in the utility business who have experienced this over the years (e.g., the customer is complaining about their meter, so we replaced it and now their bills have gone up).  Utilities must know this in the metering department, so why didn’t they lead with this in customer education instead of just hoping it wouldn’t come up?

Somesegar just announced that Microsoft is letting BizSpark Startups keep their production licenses after they graduate. 

The program is designed to get people hooked on the Microsoft platform.  They just removed a major hurdle for companies who were worried about what happens after they exit the program (not that the licensing issue goes away, mind you).  Anyway, BizSpark was already a great deal for startups with a Microsoft bent and now it is a lot better.

Great move by Microsoft.  The Microsoft developer story is truly a great one, and getting better all the time.

New API surface for simplifying EF:  DbContext, DbSet<T>, more. DbContext gives a vastly simplified view at an EntityContext.

Code first can created a database automatically.

Of course, makes all sorts of assumptions based on conventions.

• Pluralization convention
• Infers references between tables into keys and foreign keys
• EdmMetaData table contains snapshot that is kept to keep code/database in sync.
• Attributes can be used to override conventions (e.g., StringLengthAttribute overrides the default length of 4000 for strings).  In Microsoft.Data.Entity.Ctp System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.
• StoreIgnore
• DatabaseInitializer can force your code to be in sync.  Automatically?  Sounds dangerous, but they give you many options. Pretty cool, really.
• Conventions for inferring many-to-many relationships.

They added an OData service on top.  OData is really cool.  May change my itinerary to go to an OData session.

Other things:

• Enum support!
• Spatial
• Alternate keys
• TVF support!
• Migrations and deployment
• Perf & scalability
• Designer improvements (multiple models!)
• Better SQL generation

Available now in a CTP, 5th CTP out in another month.  2011 Q1 will be the first full release.  Terrific that Microsoft is delivering on their out-of-band enhancements.

Ray Ozzie was sorely missed in the keynote.  I can’t help but wonder if this PDC was put on just to show that Microsoft is still developer focused even with Mr. Ozzie’s departure.  Ballmer did a fine job this morning, but without Bill Gates and now no Ozzie, it doesn’t feel the same.

Anyway, in terms of the announcements (i.e., the “reveals”), not too much and nothing I would say is truly big.

There are lots of announcements though, but mostly they are incremental additions to existing products (e.g., all the new Azure enhancements) or the completion of initiatives that have been in process for years (e.g., Dallas).

All together the announcements show terrific strides for the Azure platform making it all the more compelling.

Windows Mobile 7 is also pretty cool.  I don’t know I’ll every use it, but I can see why a lot of people will.  I think they’ll have a homerun here.

Here is a live view on my PDC10 tweets:

I mostly agree with what he says, except I think his underlying premise is wrong:

It’s good for entrepreneurs and good for users to have angel investors caught in hell. When they feel they have to spend more money to stay in the game, that’s good for all of the rest of us (press, users, entrepreneurs).

First, there really is a place for the classic angel – that is, the Ron Conway kind that is in it to help entrepreneurs succeed.  I don’t think it helps anybody if these angels are “in hell.”  The angels that Robert talks about are really VC in my book and frankly I don’t think they belong “in hell” either.  Now some do, of course . . .

Second, more money thrown at entrepreneurs is not in and of itself a good thing. On some level it gets more people building companies, but does it really get more people innovating?  Before the “dot bomb” hit, the same thing was happening in VC.  Everyone and their brother formed a venture company and all sorts of things were funded that were patently ridiculous.  That was a part of why the crash happened.

24 hours later and my GAFD account worked as a logon – and more importantly, my account was integrated – with just about everything.  14 hours after that and I even have my Google Voice account and phone number ported into my GAFD account.

Awesome.

A couple of points:

1. Once you migrate your accounts, it will appear that you need separate browsers for your accounts.  You don’t, you just need to read the following and do what it says for each of your accounts:  http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=182343
2. If you want to move your Google Voice account, fill out this form: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cjlWRDFTWERkZEIxUzVjSmNsN0ExU1E6MA.  They say it could take two weeks, but for me it was 14 hours.

GAFD being more integrated is actually a great help because I’m now managing one fewer contact list.  Now I’m just hoping for a Google desktop app that can take calls.

I did go back to Chrome after some time as I became more embroiled in the different Google Apps services, but I have always found it irritating that speech recognition wasn’t supported.

Every once in awhile I try it again and found today an important improvement.

WSR does work in GMail now, albeit just with the “dictation scratchpad”, but that is a big improvement.  It doesn’t quite work in Google Docs, but I’m hopeful they’ll get that working soon.

Thanks, Google!

BTW: I actually don’t know if this is Google’s doing or the result of a Windows patch . . . I hope it is the former, otherwise this is likely the end-state.

In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.

Nothing in the release mentions the browser.  In fact the part that says “apps do not download any code” seems to imply not allowing RIA at all.  This part is a bigger pain point for users.

But if the Silverlight runtime (full .NET?) or Flash can be used to built full applications, that is pretty cool.

904 days ago I posted Counting the days till Silverlight announced for iPhone.  That sure was more than I expected, but how many more days now?

Mike Arrington says Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now:

About 30% of my inbound calls have the caller muted – they can hear me but I can’t hear them. And outbound calls are worse. In the last 24 hours at least 75% of them failed completely. Either it never starts ringing, or it rings a couple of times and then dies. In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too. As did a second attempt.

He goes on to say that sources tell him there won’t be a quick fix to the problem.  Like I said, I’m not having any of these problems, but Google has sold me on the value of such a service – I would even pay for it!

So if this becomes a problem, I’ll probably jump over to Ribbit.  They actually are a telephone company.

Anyway, this new Google feature was enabled on my account yesterday.  While it holds some promise for me once GV is moved into GAFD, it has too many caveats today.  Why?

Because the in-browser VOIP phone is a flawed premise for receiving calls:

• Hunting for the incoming call dialog within a browser tab is a terrible user experience.  Perhaps they can fix this through an extension that allows a non-modal, “always on top” popup for notification of incoming calls. 
• What if your browser stops working, is restarted, etc?  You don’t get your phone call.  Of course, you can say the same thing for the Skype client (i.e., if it isn’t running you don’t get your call), but I restart my browsers several times a day.  And browsers crash a lot more than Skype (or Google Talk), for that matter. 

Google really should resuscitate the Google Talk client – or the Google Voice Desktop App – and enable the same functionality there.  In fact, I’ll go further and say that they will have to release a native Windows client if they want enterprise adoption of GV / VOIP.

Granted, the in-browser premise is great for the casual user, making outgoing calls, or as a backup when away from your actual work environment, but it just doesn’t work as a Skype replacement.

Does anyone know if the the GV Desktop App is actually dead?  The last reference I find to it is the Arrington post: Google Voice Desktop App Launch Delayed, May Be Scrapped.

PDC’s are quite valuable to attend (access to Microsoft product teams, exposure to their roadmap, opportunity for light-bulb” moments, etc).  That said, I may decide not to go after the session list is released – a simple balancing of priorities.

Anyway, I’ll likely keep my registration – I would actually love it if Microsoft could change my plans about Azure this October.

Are you going? Or not? If so, please share your reasons.