As you have probably already noticed, Google is paying homage to PacMan’s 30th birthday! Happy Birthday little yellow man! I can only imagine the national (and international) productivity hit being taken over this PLAYABLE logo!

GAME ON…

…..GAME OFF…back to work!

Before I start to bash AT&T and it’s femtocell launch…I want to say that technically, it’s a great idea! Think about it. You’re a provider who has some spots in the country where you lack adequate  cell coverage. You have customers that while frustrated, continue to pay for your service in these areas. They have broadband at home, can add a femtocell unit and suddenly expand your footprint, provide them (and their neighbors) better coverage on your behalf. All of this while not even impacting your infrastructure since the traffic from the femotocell rides over your broadband…which could be AT&T DSL or possibly some other provider!

Awesome huh? It could be…except AT&T decided that they had a better idea on how to implement the program. For the low low price of $150, you too can help AT&T improve their network! So when you buy and install the femtocell device, and with your cell traffic now going over your Comcast broadband connection, you don’t get charged minutes on your service plan…right? I mean, the minutes you are charged for on your plan are basically to pay for the AT&T cellular infrastructure. Not so fast, even when using your newly paid for mini-cell station, AND providing the backhaul, you are still charged as if you were using the AT&T network. :-/ …well at least your friends and neighbors can take advantage of your new (and paid for) mini-cell site right? well, no. kinda. You have a limited number (10) of users that you can add via the web to access your site. But you have to manually add/remove users, making this functionality a real PITA.

Will Smith of Tested.com (former MaxPC fame) articulated his frustration much better than I was able to. Read his rant here.

Should AT&T give this device to current subscribers for free? Perhaps no. There needs to be *some* barrier to prevent everyone (read: people who don’t need it) from requesting one. $20, $30, $50? Here is what I would do: Customers that are in *known* fringe areas and have confirmed logged complaints against service coverage problems should be issues the device for free. Others, well, how about $30. AND, all calls over the femtocell should be service plan minute-FREE. Access to the device should also be controlled by the owner, since they also have to pay for their broadband and should be able to determine who is able to piggy-back onto it. There should be a setting to make the device totally OPEN, and another to set connectivity restrictions, but not by specific device, maybe by a max number; 10, 20, 50, 100. All you need is to be in a densly populated area and have 1,000 users connect to your cell station and consume all your bandwidth.

Just think though, if AT&T would do this correctly, they would be patching the holes in their network, increase consumer loyalty, and save on infrastructure costs. But instead, some product dude sitting in their cubical is being pressed to meet numbers to fill in the gaps from lost POTS revenue. :-/

AT&T FTW!  NOT!

The blogosphere is very hot-and-cold on the iPad…actually, mostly cold. It seems that even though Steve Jobs stated where he feels this product fits in the market (between a smartphone and a laptop), people can’t seem to grasp it’s usefulness. Those who have a laptop, regard it as pointless, especially those with a netbook. Cost seems to be another factor. $500-$800 is no small entry fee for a ticket into a confusing tech marketspace.

I get all that. This product fills a niche market. For those people (like me), this is the PERFECT device (I’ll get into that more in a bit). For those not in-the-niche, it just doesn’t make sense…and proponents can’t seem to convince/sell them on it either. At least not yet.

Additional iPad bashing includes things like:

No camera? come on… This bugs me the most. I was so hoping to be able to Skype with my family from this device. Maybe v2.

…

Honestly, I’ve been wanting (and waiting) for a tablet device for about 6 years now. Up until now, there hasn’t been a device that meets MY requirements. Up until now, tablets have been laptops with swivel screens and maybe pen-based screen support. 2010 is going to be an exciting year for tablet devices, and Apple is leading the way. Will they ultimately win? dunno. Will they have the best device? dunno. But I will tell you what I’ve been looking for and what I like in this device:

…

My goal for this post isn’t to convince YOU that this is a device you must have. It’s simply to help in understanding WHY some people are excited for the iPad. I know expectations are high. People will expect high sales volumes. I don’t think we will see that. This device could possibly land on a future 10-worst-Apple-failures like Apple TV. But you know what? I know some folks who have Apple TV and don’t consider it a failure. In fact, they love it. Why? Because it meets a need, solves a problem for them. That’s all this is. It’s another device that may not be something accepted by 80% of the public, but meet (and hopefully) exceed the needs and expectations of the millions of people within this niche market Apple is bravely addressing before all others. Don’t hate it for that.

If you have ever been abducted (mentally) by one of PopCap’s games, PvZ will not disappoint! While I’ve played this previously on the PC, this game was meant for the mobile platform. And at the low-low price of $2.99, it’s a bargain!

Using your green thumb you must protect your house against the impending hoard of approaching zombies. While the zombies come in many different flavors, so does your plant inventory, and you must select plants that will defend best based on the situation. Front yard, backyard, roof, they never seem to stop.

This game is entertaining for all age groups and can be purchased directly from your iPhone or via iTunes HERE.

It looks as if Google is planning this rollout as an experiment into their giant lab (AKA America). I guess this isn’t really new, most of their products are released in sand-box fashion. Google is no stranger to throwing the spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. Remember their WiFi trials? Maybe not, that pasta didn’t stick.

Not many companies have the ability to trial cool new things without a business case as Google is. So from this perspective, I am grateful for their innovation attempts.

Business Week posted a story guesstimating the costs of this roll-out. Below is a quote from the story (full story linked to the left):

Google wants to offer 1 gigabit-per-second speeds to some 50,000 to 500,000 people. At 2.6 people per household, that roughly translates to 20,000 to 200,000 homes. Our friend Ben Schachter, Internet analyst with Broadpoint AmTech, estimates that it will cost Google between $3,000 and $8,000 per home, or roughly $60 million to $1.6 billion, depending on the final size and footprint of the network. If Google reaches, say, 100,000 homes, it would cost the company about half a billion dollars.

Interesting. We know that Google has about 25 Billion in cash so this effort is well within their means. But don’t expect this to happen anytime soon. Just look at how long Verizon has taken to lay down FiOS, and AT&T U-Verse, which isn’t even FTTH (AT&T took a FTTC (C=Curb) approach which reduces the cost and decreases roll-out times).

I’m still a little fuzzy on their model. Maybe they are looking to take their control of data to a lower layer? Should the MSOs and LECs be scared? Maybe. Everyone is (or should be) aware that the residential digital service anchor is broadband. Both voice and video are slowly but surely converting to data-based Internet-driven technologies (VoIP, Hulu, etc..). In the next decade it will be all about robust broadband to the home. Hey…that’s what this story is about! Ahhhhhh, maybe Google is on to something here.

When considering data one must understand how the data was gathered, from whom the data was gathered, and from how many entities sampled.

Surveys can be a great way for a company to obtain data on its product(s), or a way to understand consumer wants and needs. A couple recent examples I want to present are: 1) The 2009 Engadget Awards and 2) Steam Hardware Survey

Both surveys produce lots of data in their results. Engadget is a survey completed by the user directly from their website. There are lots of categories and technology products to vote for. Below is a snippit of a few:

I consider myself fairly acute to the latest tech products. However, I was a little surprised to find some of Engadget’s survey questions…well…leading. For example, in the ‘Wireless Device or Technology of the Year’ category (see above), I feel like I am looking at the old Sesame Street bit entitled ‘One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other‘. The options are 3 wireless technologies, 2 consumer electronic charging devices and a home automation product. HUH? WTF?! Did they not have enough Wireless Technologies to have their own category? AND…the choice that is currently leading is a technology that while only recently officially *certified*, has been around for ages. I voted for MiFi BTW.

Also, ‘Tablet PC of the Year’ (see above). There are/were tablets before the iPad? hehe. I scratch my head wondering if the Lenovo is simply in the lead because no one knows ANY of the devices and simply chose it due to length of characters and inclusion of the word “capacitive multitouch”. I know I did.

Finally, and definitely not least (visit Engadget’s survey to see the rest) we have the ‘E-reader of the Year’. Yea Baby! The newest and arguably one of the biggest subjects in the tech world today. I don’t think there is any question the Kindle 2 (leading in the polls) should win this one. But wait, close on its heels is the Nook. The Nook? Wasn’t that released in very limited inventory only weeks prior to year end? Bravo Nook for capturing the hearts of the voters! You’re almost like a Republican with a Pickup truck!

One of my favorite surveys is the yearly Steam Hardware Survey. As a self proclaimed GAMER, I like to see where I fare in comparison to my running-and-gunning rivals around the world. For those of you not in the know, Steam is an online distribution medium for PC games. It’s an application that allows you to shop, pay for, and download games instantly. It’s also a community in the fact that it has built in friends lists, chat, and voice functionality. It allows you to see what games your friends are playing and join them (if you also have the game of course). Honestly, it’s great. Since Steam I can’t think of the last PC game I actually purchased at a brick-and-mortar store or other etailer in years.

Now that you know what Steam is, know that they have a mechanism for sucking all the technical data from your PC and sharing it with the world! Scared? I’m not, I love it! this method is harder for people to manipulate the results. In the end it produces more accurate data.

Would I use it to drive the optimum resolution I should build my businesses website? No. Would I use it to determine whether I should optimize my application to support multiple core CPUs? Maybe. Like I said earlier, take all this data with a grain of salt and consider the source (and sample).

Click on the image to visit the Steam Survey results…and feel free to consume the data anyway you see fit!

Now that the hub-bub is all over. What are your thoughts? After a day (and night of sleep) I’ve had a chance to really think about the device. I’m still up in the air. I want one, but I think if I waited, I wouldn’t miss it. Anyway, here is my pro v. con list. Feel free to comment and post your opinion(s).

Unless you have been living under a boulder, you should be aware of Apple’s big unveiling today. The bar has been set VERY high so some web personalities are expecting crushed expectations and disappointment. Others are having prophetic dreams about a device that will change the way we consume content. Regardless of your assumptions, position, expectations, and predictions, if you are a techie, you *should be* interested!

There are enough sites out there splattered with speculation and rumor so I will save you from that here. Besides a possible new product line, I would expect many other great updates to existing Apple products. Now I’m starting sound like a fan-boy.

Here are a couple places where you can tune in to feed on Steve Job’s latest dissemination of Apple slices. The event is today (January 27th, 2010) at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco at 10am PST.

CNET Live Blog
Mac|Life Live Blog
Engadget Live Blog

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that YouTube is considering entering the movie rental business with the likes of existing participants such as Apple and Netlfix.

The one thing I see missing is the delivery mechanism/application. :-/ …so Apple has iTunes and Netlfix has the Xbox (and other consoles), how will YouTube deliver it’s movie rental content? Via PC only? Roku maybe? I’m also hearing that the only payment medium is via Google’s payment service, Google Checkout…YUCK!