The Demented Ravings of Frank W. Zammetti Visit www.zammetti.com for all things me

jQuery wins the 2010 Open Source JavaScript Libraries Award

Recently, I completed judging duties for Packt Publishing's 2010 Open Source awards in the JavaScript libraries category.  The competitors where jQuery, Dojo, ExtJS, Rafael and MooTools, all very good libraries.  The winner was jQuery, based on a couple of judges' opinions and the opinions of the voting public.  Congratulations to jQuery!

The judging experience was very fun for me, and was also the first time I had the opportunity to use Google Wave.  Let me just say about that technology that while I see how it could be rather useful, I can also understand why it's no longer being developed.  I think we're going to see something like that being quite popular down the road, and it's a good bet it'll come from Google, but it may have been a little ahead of its time in a sense.

My own judgment for the award was actually for ExtJS as I felt that when you compare it to the others, the only strong comparison is to Dojo... this is because jQuery, and to a lesser extent MooTools, out of the box don't come with a widget set, where as Dojo and ExtJS do (and Rafael is a little more specifically-targeted, so isn't really a fair comparison to the other more general-purpose libraries).  This to me makes ExtJS and Dojo automatically richer libraries than the others.  That being said, I completely understand why so many voted for jQuery... it's a fantastic library that has served many people extremely well.  So, even though it wasn't my #1 choice (I believe I had it as second runner-up after Dojo) this was in no way, shape or form an outcome I can really argue with.  jQuery has a ton going for it, and if you add in something like jQuery UI, it is very, very good in almost every way.

I also want to say that every library was represented by someone from its community... John Resig for jQuery, Michael Mullany for ExtJS, Dylan Schiemann for Dojo, Dmitry Baranovskiy for Rafael and David Walsh for MooTools.  I had interacted with John, Michael and Dylan before, but Dmitry and David were new people to me.  I just want to say that all of them are class acts and supremely talented individuals who represented their libraries and communities extremely well.  We judges had the opportunity to pepper them with questions via Wave, in a few instances somewhat pointed questions, and they were all answered extremely well... in fact, I can honestly say that I learned a thing or two in the process, so that was a nice added bonus!

So, thanks very much to Packt Publishing for inviting me to participate, thanks to everyone who represented their libraries so well and of course congratulations again to jQuery for the win and to all the competitors for being fantastic products... it's to all of your credit that the decision was not an easy one for me, and I suspect for anyone that voted!

Here's the press release, courtesy of Julian Copes from Packt, who did a fantastic job organizing this and making it a smooth, enjoyable experience.

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FOR RELEASE ON NOVEMBER 18, 2010

Press Release

jQuery wins the 2010 Open Source JavaScript Libraries Award

Birmingham, UK. 18 November 2010

Packt Publishing is pleased to announce that jQuery has won the inaugural Open Source JavaScript Libraries Award category in the 2010 Open Source Awards. The Award is a new category introduced to the Open Source Awards this year, featuring libraries of pre-written JavaScript controls which allow for easier development of RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), visually enhanced applications or smoother server-side JavaScript functionalities.

"On behalf of the entire jQuery Team, let me first say thanks to Packt Publishing for this award. I'd also like to give a huge thanks to the community of designers and developers that use jQuery daily and felt the urge to vote for jQuery as their favorite JavaScript library.  We'll use this prize to further the development of the jQuery Project." Said Ralph Whitbeck, jQuery core team member.

“While jQuery hasn't undergone any radical change in the past year, the project has continued to evolve at the same frenetic pace and the 1.4 release included a wide range of small but important improvements.” Added Michael Mahemoff, Google developer advocate, HTML5/JavaScript specialist and one of the judges for the 2010 Open Source JavaScript Libraries category. “jQuery covers all bases as its performance is high priority, it is easy to use, has a huge community, great documentation, and an excellent plugin ecosystem.”

While jQuery occupied the top spot in the 2010 Open Source JavaScript Libraries category, the other two extremely popular finalists Raphaël and Mootools tied and both projects will be awarded the first runner up position.

With this announcement, the 2010 Open Source Awards has two more categories left, including the Open Source CMS category, for which results will be announced November 19^th.

For detailed results on each category and more information about the Award, please visit: https://www.packtpub.com/open-source-awards-home.

----ENDS---

Notes for Editors

Contacts

Julian Copes

Marketing Executive, Packt Publishing

julianc@packtpub.com | www.PacktPub.com

Tel: 0121 683 1170

About the Open Source Awards

The Open Source Awards is an annual online event held by Packt Publishing to distinguish excellence among Open Source projects. The Award, formerly known as the Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award, is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward a wide range of Open Source projects.

About Packt Publishing

Packt is a modern, unique publishing company with a focus on producing cutting-edge books for communities of developers, administrators, and newbies alike.

Packt’s books and publications share the experiences of fellow IT professionals in adapting and customizing today's systems, applications, and frameworks. Their solutions-based books give readers the knowledge and power to customize the software and technologies they’re using to get the job done.

For more information, please visit www.PacktPub.com

Efficient remote code loading in webOS applications

There was an interesting forum post in the private webOS dev forums that I saw today talking about the Google Map app and how lousy it was (paraphrasing a bit- LOL).  One of the biggest concerns, which I absolutely share, was around startup time.  We were all wondering why it seems to take a lot longer to start than we think it should and why it seems to hang frequently, or sometimes times out saying no network connection is available when one clearly is.

If you aren't aware, the webOS Google Map downloads code from Google's servers at startup.  Now, I haven't dug into the code so I don't know if it's every time or what the logic is like if it fails, but one can kind of guess what it might be like.  Specifically, what happens if the server can't be reached for whatever reason?  Do you think the code might fall through to a generic branch that says "network connectivity isn't available" and not something more specific?  I'd bet money it does.  Whether that's the case or not, it sure does seems like it's doing a "dumb" load from the server every single time, based on my own experience, as well as what others in that forum thread were seeing.

To be clear, having portions of your app's code "in the cloud", even when we're talking about a locally-running app, is a really nice idea.  For one thing, you can ensure the user is running the latest version of your code, so they automatically get all the bug fixes and nice new features you build without an explicit update (which we've seen a couple of times now with the Map app).  As long as it's not disruptive, I think users like to be surprised with shiny new toys to play with all of a sudden  You could also use it as a copy protection scheme, assuming you built a proper infrastructure around it (it's likely not going to be air-tight no matter what you do, but still).  You can also use it to collect usage statistics (I'm not a huge fan of such things frankly, but I'm not going to go nuts about it or anything).

But, being a good idea doesn't mean there aren't implications to it, as I believe the Map app demonstrates.  This all got me thinking about how I would implement something like that.  The pattern seems fairly obvious to me and I believe would avoid the startup issues seen with the Map app... although, admittedly I'm assuming I know what the startup delays are caused by with the Map app, and I frankly could be wrong... without digging into the code I'm only guessing... but be that as it may, I think this is probably the right way to do something like this regardless, so I thought I'd share..

So, your app is starting up.  There's obviously some amount of "scaffolding" code, if you will, that's on the device.  As part of this code you would load a much larger chunk of code from an on-device database and eval() it. You're app is then fully in memory and you can go off and begin doing whatever it is that the app does.

At the same time, in the background, you kick off a call to your server to check for a new version of the code.  If one is found you update what's in the database with the new version automatically and without the user even knowing it.  At this point, the user is going to get the new version at the next application run automatically, good to go.  You could also optionally pop an alert to the user asking if they want to restart immediately to get the changes.

If any problems occur, say your server is overloaded or the network is down somewhere, your user isn't impacted by the failed update attempt.  They aren't aware of the problem and they aren't slowed down at all.

Now, what code you're actually downloading could get interesting.  I'm not sure if you could have new webOS scenes for example... although, maybe. Would be an interesting thing to try (assistants probably wouldn't be much trouble but how you'd deal with the view markup I'm not sure).  But what you certainly can have is core application logic, stuff that, by and large, probably isn't webOS-specific anyway.  This is likely to be the kind of stuff you'd want to update frequently anyway, and that's the real demarcation point.  If you're adding a whole new scene it probably makes sense that there's a regular application update involved, but tweaking existing functionality or extending functionality, that's ripe for remote download.

The benefit here, by storing the code in the database, is twofold.  First, you don't impact application startup much.  I'd say it's likely to always be faster reading from the local DB and eval()'ing than it is to get the code from a remote server, and in some cases, depending on network conditions, it could be a lot faster.  It's probably not going to be much slower than a regular application startup with the usual JS loads and evaluations and such that happen as a part of any application load either.  Second, you don't require an Internet connection just to start your app.  If no connection is available the app can still start and run normally (assuming it doesn't require a connection to run of course).  Since the update is a background task anyway there's no impact either to startup or to the user- they're none the wiser!

I suspect the Google Map app isn't doing anything like this.  If it is then it's absolutely baffling to me why the startup is so lousy and seems brittle.  This is the way I'd implement such a capability for sure.  It seems logical and frankly pretty simple while providing all the benefits of remotely-loaded code.

History was made tonight: Shadow Gallery- LIVE AT LAST!

For anyone that follows me on Twitter or elsewhere you almost certainly know that I'm a huge fan of the progressive rock band Shadow Gallery (www.shadowgallery.com).  I have been for... jeez, about 15 years now, give or take!  I discovered them right around the time I got engaged to my wife, which means late '94, maybe early '95 (that I discovered them... we got engaged late '94 for sure!)

In all that time, they've produced six studio albums (seven if you count the "greatest hits" album Prime Cuts) and have been a huge influence on my own musical ideas and an inspiration for my own writing.  They've always impressed me by not only being one of the most technically talented bands on the planet but at the same time one of the best song writing bands around.  The two are not always one and the same unfortunately, but Shadow Gallery is one of the few that pulls it off, and they do so better than most.  In fact, for quite a few years now I've considered them my favorite band, although I've often argued with myself whether it's them or Dream Theater... frankly, each time one of them releases an album my opinion tends to change   But, Shadow Gallery is responsible for my single favorite album of all time, Room V, so the coin toss goes to them more times than not

Over the course of those 15 years, the one thing that has never happened is seeing Shadow Gallery play live.  This isn't because I've missed the chance, it's because they've in fact never played a live show.

That is, until September 5th, 2010.  This very evening, history was made... and I was there!!

I was jazzed!  Here was my favorite band, playing their very first show, and it was within easy driving distance!  Barley Creek Brewery in Tannersville, PA is only about 1.5 hours' drive.  Not a hassle in the least!  And, it's in the beautiful Pocono mountains region of the state, which is a destination I like anyway.  It's a generally pleasant drive into a great area, so I was totally stoked.

What's better is that my 10-year old son Andrew was going to make the pilgrimage with me.  Now, I've taken him to a number of concerts already, even at such a young age.  He's seen Dream Theater twice, Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Fates Warning and Daughtry.  Shadow Gallery is special though because it was literally the first band I introduced him to, and he took a liking to them right away.  In fact, I have videos of him singing and playing along (on a toy guitar) to Comfort Me and The Andromeda Strain, two great Shadow Gallery songs, when he was maybe 5 or 6 years old, give or take.

Even better, Andrew is a fairly accomplished drummer already and continues to take lessons and improve, so the chance to see Joe Nevolo, one of the best drummers around in my opinion, live and in person made it even sweeter.

So, the stars most certainly aligned on this kinda chilly night in northeastern PA.  So, was it as great a spectacle as I had hoped?

In a word... almost entirely yes!

To be blunt, it was a fantastic show!  It was worth the money, worth the effort to get there and worth the wait, all 15 years of it!  Was it perfect in every respect?  No, and I'll get to that.  Let's start with the opening act though: Suspyre.

Suspyre in another progressive rock act hailing from New Jersey and to be very honest, I'd never heard of them before this week.  Well, that's not exactly true: I'd heard of them because the singer, Clay Barton, did a guest spot on Shadow Gallery's latest album Digital Ghosts.  To be more precise though,  I'd never heard Suspyre's material before this week.  Leading up to the concert though I checked them out, and I have to say I liked what I heard.  Seeing them live was definitely a treat.  They are a very talented band to say the least!  Fantastic musicianship across all members of the band and most definitely a worthy opening act.  They did a good job not only warming up the crowd for the main event but also in getting the crowd over to their side.  I noticed when they started that not too many people were huddled in front of the stage listening, and those of us that were didn't seem too excited overall.  By the end of their set however there was a large crowd of people headbanging along and cheering when they finished (in a good way I mean!)  So they really got people interested in what they were doing, not only in preparing for Shadow Gallery.  Interestingly too, my son was asking if we can buy the CDs when we get home.  Little does he know I already bought most of their tracks off Amazon a night or two ago   So, kudos to Suspyre, you did an excellent job and you have two new fans as a result!

Now, on to the main event!

At 9pm, Shadow Gallery took the stage... but not until after the crowd all sang along in unison to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody played over the PA!  Now, I've never been a big Queen fan honestly, and that song never thrilled me... but it was fun singing along with everyone!  More importantly though, it got everyone in the right frame of mind for what was to come because being a Shadow Gallery fan, especially for their first show, felt a lot like being part of an extended family.

Shadow Gallery came out and opened with the first track off Room V, Manhunt.  Right away I was psyched because I had mentally mapped out the set I would like them to do, the set I would do if I was them, and Manhunt was my opening pick too!  It couldn't have been a better choice: it's a technical masterpiece but it also has a great atmosphere about it.  It instantly got the crowd going, although I think they could have played Old McDonald at that point and got the same effect!

Now, I'm not going to go into each and every song they played, mainly because I probably won't remember everything quite right.  What I will tell you though is that they played what I'd consider a nearly perfect set.  They mentioned early on that they had picked most of their heavier songs, the ones that rock I believe is what they said, and I think they succeeded very well in that regard.  They covered every album they have, not a single one when unrepresented.  As I recall the songs the played, including Crystalline Dream, The Andromeda Strain, Strong, Deeper Than Life, Questions At Hand and Goldust, each and every one fits the bill perfectly in terms of heaviness (I think Ghost Of A Chance might have been the "lightest" song).  Not only that but they are some of the most well-known Shadow Gallery songs out there.  I can say for sure that there wasn't a single one I had any problem with them choosing, not a single one did I thought  "ehh, wouldn't mind if they hadn't picked that one"

Where there any missing that I wanted to hear?  Actually, there's only one that I missed, but unfortunately for me it was a big miss: Rain.  Rain is the penultimate song off the album Room V and it was the one song I REALLY wanted to hear.  Now, I kind of in my gut had a feeling I wouldn't be hearing it, so I was sort of prepared.  Even still, I did miss Rain quite a bit.  But, that's really my only complaint in terms of the set selection, and it's rare that you go to any concert and here EVERY song you want to when its a band with a number of albums (I mean, Daughtry played every song off two albums when I saw them, but that's only two albums' worth... not to mention the fact that Shadow Gallery songs aren't exactly short, we could easily have been there until 3am!)  Dream Theater failed to play Forsaken for me too, so they aren't perfect either

So, if an excellent set selection is the basis for a good show, they were off to a great start.  What about the rest?  How did they sound?  In short, excellent!

One thing I really appreciated is that they didn't feel the need to improvise and rearrange their material.  I know many people disagree with this, but I for one hate it when I see a band live and they totally butcher their songs.  People fall in love with songs, most of the time at least, as they are recorded.  To perform them live in some other way is annoying at best.  I don't mind some minor tweaks here and there, extending a section and such, a slightly different vocal melody, that's cool.  It seemed like Shadow Gallery got that, and I thank them for it!  There were certainly some mixed up pieces here and there, but like I said, a little bit is fun, a lot is annoying to me.  They got the balance right in this regard.

The band was just as tight as you'd expect such great musicians to be.  There's no question that the members of Shadow Gallery are some of the best musicians around  when it comes to the "simple" art of actually playing their instruments.  But, since they'd never played live before there had to be some question as to whether they could actually do it outside of a studio.  I'm happy to say they most definitely can!  They can downright go!  I also appreciated the work the sound guys did.  The band was loud but not overly so, and there was very little time where the sound wasn't clear.  Rarely can you make out the words so well at a live concert.  Great job guys!

In terms of individual performance, particularly worth mentioning... no, you know what?  You just can't start a sentence like that when talking about this band!  You could say Gary Wehrkamp deserves special mention because he took a page from Getty Lee and then wrote another six chapters, constantly switching instruments with relative ease.  You could say Brendt Allman deserves special mention because he put on a display of guitar skill that is matched by few guitar players today (in fact, John Petrucci is the only one that comes to mind, and I'll tell you, not by much!).  You could say Brian Ashland deserves special mention for fantastic lead vocals all night (even when his throat started to give him some problems) and then jumping to keyboard for parts and some serious shredding on guitar at other times.  You could say Joe Nevolo deserves special mention for one of the single best drum solos I've ever seen, and that includes the masterpieces I've seen by Mike Portnoy and Neil Peart.  You could say Carl Cadden-James deserves special mention for being more full of energy than any human  being has a right to be and of showing off some amazing bass chops all night.  No, they each put on a showcase worthy of special mention!  If you're a musician there's no way you weren't impressed as hell tonight.

So, a great setlist played the right way and done very tightly.  That sounds like it was perfect, right?  Well, no, perfect it wasn't if I'm being honest.  As much as I loved the show, I do see room for improvement and I do have some criticisms.

Before I get to those though, let me say one thing: I've been in a number of bands in my life, one of them fairly successful for a little while.  I've played a number of live shows, and I can pretty clearly remember all of them, especially the first.  I know what it's like to play to a crowd that size (actually, as I mentioned to my son, I believe one time we had a larger crowd).  I know that nervous energy the guys must have felt.  I know how absolutely fun it is, to the point where the word "fun" is nowhere near adequate to describe it.  If you've never been on stage like that before it's a feeling you almost certainly have no frame of reference to understand.  I also know that  no matter how much you prepare, no matter how much you practice, things never go *quite* right.  I suspect that's true of any band regardless of how long they've been performing live.

The point is that most of the criticisms I'm about to say I can pretty much dismiss as nothing but typical first-time jitters, or the inherent difficulties in performing live.  There was nothing I saw that was egregious and beyond forgiveness.  I think they guys need to do a bit of polishing, but that'll happen naturally the more they perform.  Because I'm such a big fan of theirs I want to see them giving top-notch performances every time they take the stage going forward, so maybe if they happen to see this they can take some of it and make improvements from it where they see valuable in  my opinions.

That all being said, what went "wrong"?

• Well, it looked to me like Gary at one point (I forget during which song) forgot to switch keyboard patches, or maybe missed a cue, I'm not sure.  It was pretty obvious though.  To his credit, he recovered quickly and even gave the crowd a little "yeah, I know, I blew it" look, which is about the best thing you can do in that situation.  Hang a lamp on it I believe is what they say when a fiction writer makes an nod to the audience when an obvious plot contrivance comes up.  This is similar.  No sweat Gary, nobody is holding this against you
• At one point, Brendt's guitar had a technical problem and he had to switch, which I believe caused Carl and Joe to do a little improving to cover (I'm  not sure if it was that or if they just extended a section, but whatever, they covered for Brendt while he switched axes, which was good).  What can you do?  Equipment fails on stage, that's part of live performance.  I think there may have been some mic issues along the way too, but if so they were a bit less obvious.
• During Joe's monstrous and phenomenal drum solo he dropped a stick at one point.  He did a good job making light of it though, which I think got the audience even MORE into it!  So, while dropping a stick is something going wrong technically, in a way I think it worked in his favor.

Yep, that's about it!  Some pretty minor stuff, and nothing out of the ordinary.  Oh, but...

One thing that's maybe a little bigger though... Brian didn't seem to know the words to some of the songs!  Now, hey, I wouldn't hold a mistake or two against a singer.  Remembering EVERY word EXACTLY right over an entire set list is tough and a few flubs here and there aren't a big deal.  And it's also the case that he may have just been playing with some minor changes here and there, and I can live with that.  But there was more than a few times where I was singing along, knowing the words very well, and Brian appeared to be mumbling through.  It was some of the older material, so it's somewhat understandable, Brian having not been around for the writing of that material.  Still, unless I'm somehow mistaken about what I think I was seeing and hearing, this is an area Brian needs to work on a bit.  It's not *too*big a deal the first show or two, but a few shows from now I wouldn't say the same thing.

Now, I have one last general criticism...  if you didn't know this was their first show I think you could have easily guessed it.  There's a certain polish to a band that's done a lot of performances together.  Knowing each others' ticks and preferences, knowing how to interact with each others' stage presence, being excited up there without it overwhelming you and acting almost giddy, knowing how to get the crowd involved in various playful ways that don't seem too contrived, smoother transitions between songs and segments of the set... these are things you learn over time, nothing else does it.  Like I said, I remember my bands' first show and it was similar, at least for me (my guitarist and drummer had been on stage before so they were already a little more accomplished, but myself, the bass player and singer were first-timers and we certainly weren't as polished).  For example, at times I almost expected Carl to pull a Tom Cruise and jump up on the nearest couch yelling "WE'RE PLAYING LIVE!!  WE'RE PLAYING LIVE!!"  Now, maybe Carl is like that all the time, in which case, ok, fine.  But I suspect not.  I think a few shows into this tour he'll have that "I'm excited, and I'm going to BE exciting, but I know how to not go too far with it" feel to him and it'll be perfect.

Again, this was their first live show EVER, so expecting complete fit and finish and total polish would have been unfair.  In fact, if you take everything together I don't think there's any question they did a better job than a lot of others bands have their first time  out, and they're only going to get better.  I'm hoping they do another U.S. tour in a few months somewhere close because I think  seeing them after they have a few shows under their belts is going to be an even better experience.

One other miscellaneous note: the lighting all night was a bit on the dark side.  I don't know to what degree the band has any influence over this though so it's maybe not fair to label it a criticism at all.  But, from an audience standpoint there were a lot of instances where I wished I could see things a bit better.  All the video I shot was dark for sure, and while stage lighting isn't meant to make my video-taking ability better, being able to clearly see the band *most* of the time is important.  It wasn't drastically bad, but there was room for improvement I'd say.

So, just very minor quibbles really so far (aside from the not knowing the words thing), and nothing that isn't easily explained by being a first-time live act.  But, I have one criticism left, and it's a little bigger, and it's frankly the only one that I'd say actually bothered me.

There was no mention of Mike Baker.

If you don't know, Mike Baker was the original singer for Shadow Gallery who sadly passed away in 2008.  If you by chance read by ExtJS book you know it was dedicated to him.  I never had the chance to meet Mike, but through his music I felt like I knew him.  He was a fantastic talent who brought so much more to Shadow Gallery's music than was even in the words in the first place.

Now, let me be clear: Brian Ashland has stepped in to replace Mike, an unenviable task for any musician, but one he's done an awesome job at.  Brian has a lot of the same qualities Mike did and I think the guys made a perfect choice with him.  I also think they went about it right.  I know the loss of Mike hit them hard, as it did many of us fans.  They grieved, waited a respectful amount of time, and then moved on.  I remember some fans saying they should just close up shop after Mike died, but I never subscribed to that opinion.  The show must go on as they say, and the guys clearly had a ton left to offer the world, and Brian has I think been an integral part to making that happen.  Yes, its a shame that we didn't get to see Shadow Gallery with Mike Baker fronting, but that's the way life goes sometimes.  Brian is here now and it's worked out great despite being spawned by a terrible circumstance.

All night I was waiting for some sort of  mention  of Mike though.  I felt like it was the right thing to do, especially given this being their first-ever show.  It didn't have to be a big thing... they could have just picked one song that Mike especially liked and said "This one's dedicated to the memory of Mike Baker.  We miss you buddy."  It didn't have to be a long, drawn-out affair... but Mike was a big part of what made Shadow Gallery so great over so many years, he's certainly a big part of why I am such a big fan today.  To not say *something* at *some* point just felt like something really big was missing.

Now, there's not a doubt in my mind that the guys were thinking of him tonight.  I'm sure he was in all their hearts.  I also know this to be true of many, probably most, of the people there watching.  I just wish we all had gotten the chance to share that together.  I suspect that would have been the biggest ovation  of the night and probably a big emotional release for many too.  If there was one disappointment from this show it was this.

But, let's end this on an up note, shall we?!?  It's real easy to do!

On September 5th, 2010, at Barley Creek Brewery in Tannershville, PA, one of the greatest bands of all time, Shadow Gallery, played their first live show ever.  I had the honor and privilege of being there.  It was an awesome show from start to finish, not far from perfect in my estimation.  This will be filed into my brain as one of my more cherished memories in life so far.  I think after a few shows, after the band has had the opportunity to polish the stage act a bit, they'll wind up being one of those bands that you really should see live at least once in your life.  It's already exactly that if you're already a fan of course!  It was a great night overall and I just want to say thank you to Shadow Gallery for doing it!

And hey, Mike Portnoy, now that Shadow Gallery is a "real touring band", when will you get them to open for you?  Then again, that might not be a good idea... that much musical awesomeness in one place has GOT to somehow be dangerous for any human being to experience

Twitter: it’s really not (all) just mental diarrhea!

Twitter is stupid.  It's a waste of time.  It's people self-aggrandizing and trying to make themselves feel better about their pathetic lives.  It's idiots telling you every little last bit of minutia about their day, as if anyone cares about their boyfriend problems or how lousy their boss is or how they are feeling "down in the dumps" or how they're thrilled because their baby said their first word or...

Does that sound familiar?  Sound like you?  If so, join the club because that's some of the *nicer* things I was saying about Twitter just six or so months ago.

Now, it's a whole different ballgame.

You know the funny part?  It's not that any of those comments aren't true!  Indeed, a lot of Twitter is purely noise.  It's nothing but a soapbox that any Tom, Dick or Harry can stand on.  It's a place where people can drop any old thought they have for anyone that wants to see, whether it's a thought worth putting out there or not.

But folks, I'm here to tell you, that's exactly what's so *right* about it.

What I've come to know over my years of life, as a generality, is that it's the little thoughts that you have throughout the day, the seemingly insignificant bits of trivia that pop in and out of your brain, that are actually worth the most, you you as much as to other people.  Oh, to be sure, most of it, whether it came from your mind or someone else', is just garbage that you have to filter through (and that includes anything I have to say as much as anyone else).  But, as the saying goes, inspiration strikes in odd places and at odd times, and the fact that you can tweet those thoughts is a blessing in disguise because even the ones that you think are fairly lame after the fact is often-times just what someone else needs.  Sometimes, it's just the clue as to which thread to tug on to unravel the tapestry of doubt and mental inertia that people frequently get into.

How does it work?  Well, say I'm working on a difficult problem in some area, be it just life in general, something at work or some side project.  Maybe I tweet that I'm frustrated because things aren't working out.  It's just me bitching, which is pretty pointless.  However... what can happen is someone sees it... they say something that triggers a new train of thought in your mind and before you know it, and without them necessarily trying to, they've set you on a course towards a solution.  It's those random associations that the best problem-solvers excel at that makes Twitter worth something... free-associating with other people multiplies the effect, and that's precisely what Twitter lets you do.

But, there's something else that makes Twitter really something special, and I can illustrate it with a personal example.

I'm a big Kevin Smith fan.  You know, the guy that writes and directs movies like Mall Rats, Dogma, Cop Out and Clerks.  The guy that's too fat and gets kicked off of airlines   He's a funny guy, and judging by everything I've seen of him, I suspect he and I would get along quite well if we ever were to meet.  We share a lot of common interests, have a similar sense of humor and don't mind making asses of ourselves.  I think we'd get on great, as the Brits like to say.

But, the chances of me running into him are pretty slim.

Unless it happens on Twitter.

That's what happened the other day: I follow Kevin because he's entertaining in his tweets, and every now and again I comment back.  Kevin doesn't follow me, but he does look for mentions of him in order to reply to fans.  This is a cool thing to do, but it's not the point.  Kevin replied to one of my comments a few days ago.  It was a quick little silly reply, as was my comment to him.  It's not like we all of a sudden struck up a deep conversation and are going to start dating or anything like that.  It was just two ships passing in the night, a quick little back-and-forth, nothing more, and nothing that Kevin hasn't done with thousands of other fans.

So, on one level this is nothing special really, nothing unusual, but at the same time it's neat just because I'm a fan and it's cool to get a reply.  But think about what really happened there: I was able to interact with someone personally, albeit briefly and virtually, that I likely never would have otherwise.  Twitter allows for those sorts of connections, even if only fleeting as in this case.  It allows us to make connections with our heroes in some cases, those we look up to, the work of who we respect.  It in a very real sense makes the world a lot smaller, contrary to what some say about all the virtual interactions we all have these days.  Making the world smaller, making more people interact in more ways is a Very Good Thing(tm) in my estimation.  It allows us to understand people and things we otherwise wouldn't, learn and experience things we otherwise couldn't.  Twitter is an avenue to that.

Also, maybe Kevin checks out some of my tweets, thinks I'm an interesting guy, and begins following me.  Maybe some day we become friends.  It's a possibility born of this new form of social interaction called Twitter.  It's a new way to make friends, possibly friends you never would have had the chance to make otherwise, and that too is a great thing.

Much has been made of Twitter's utility as a news source, and that's very much true and another big part of its attraction.  I've heard about things before many others via Twitter.  For example, following certain people has allowed me to learn about upcoming Palm releases before the news showed up on any web site (we're not talking a huge lead-time, but still).  Obviously, in big news situations, Twitter is even more valuable.  Being able to see those first-hand accounts of the unrest in Iran earlier this year shows the true power of what is, really, a whole new medium of communication.

You know, it really is an odd feeling to be saying positive things about Twitter, given how against it I was for so long.  In fact, my first 15 tweets or so were absolute jokes meant to expose what I thought of Twitter at the time... they went something along the lines of:

"I'm walking down the hall to the bathroom"

"I'm opening the door"

"I'm lifting the lid"

"I'm unzipping my fly"

"Aaaahhhh, that feels good!"

"Hands washed, returning to desk"

It's absolutely true that some people do nothing but that sort of stuff all the time.  But you know, those people aren't really worth following.  They aren't contributing anything meaningful, not even trying to.   That's of course something you have to decide for yourself on an individual basis... if someone like that is your friend then you'll clearly be more inclined to want to know every last detail of their life.  Some people don't think I'm worth following either, and that's fine, they made that determination and who am I to argue?  I know some people follow me and find that I tend to be entertaining while occasionally throwing in a real, serious thought about various things (and yeah, sometimes tossing in a total clunker of a comment).  I do make an effort to make at least *most* of my tweet something that I think those following me would be interested to read, whether it's purely a joke tweet (which tends to be most of them) or something more serious in nature.  Likewise, I follow people that I enjoy reading the thoughts of, even if not every one I find compelling.

You know, think of it this way: if you're in a crowded room, with 100 people yapping at each other and having all sorts of overlapping conversations, most of it you're going to ignore because its just obvious gibberish that you can't even make out.  Some of it you can make out and conclude is banal, silly and not worth your attention.  Every now and again though, a stray couple of words will come along and make you go "hmmm, interesting".  Its those bits of randomness that enrich us in ways we can never anticipate.

I like to tell my kids that learning, in and of itself, is one of life's greatest pleasures.  It's really kind of a rush when you realize you now know something that you didn't five minutes ago.  This can happen quite frequently with Twitter.  You get pointed in directions you never expected and you go on journeys of discovery that you never would have otherwise, all because someone tweeted about something they thought was interesting.

There's another aspect to Twitter though that's extremely interesting that I think will gain more attention as time goes by, and that's the amount of influence you gain over people.  The more people follow you the more people you can reach with your thoughts, the more people you can potentially swing to your point of view on things.  You know that saying, "be the change you want to see in the world"?  Well, Twitter gives *anyone*, potentially, the chance to do just that!    Of course, that makes it sad to realize some of the people that have the most followers, people you really wouldn't want influencing anyone!  But, if these are the people society has collectively decided are its de-facto leaders, whether it leads to riches or ruin, I suppose it's right.  You've still got to think for yourself anyway... but it can't be denied that if someone has a million followers, anything they say *could* influence a lot of people.  It's a new form of power that some are beginning to exploit and it's something that bears watching in the future.  There's a lot of good that can come from that, but clearly there's a lot of bad too.

So, in conclusion: if you aren't on Twitter yet, give it a shot, against your better judgment!  Follow a few choice people (might I suggest: ME?!?) and see what it's really all about.  Get involved, post some things yourself and interact with others.  That interaction part is key!  It's certainly worth something just to see the thoughts of others, but you take it to another level when you start to interact a bit.  Don't be shy, tell the world what's going on in that warped little mind of yours

Take it from someone who never would have been caught dead with a Twitter account just a few months ago: there truly is value there, and possibly a lot.  And don't let the bits that actually do confirm your worst fears turn you off to the parts that run completely contrary to them... I think you'll find more of the later.

Palm, EVO or iPhone 4.0? My feeling is…

I've been away from blogging for quite a while here, although I've been tweeting a lot (I'm SSOO lame!) and since I've been asked this question a number of times over the past few days I figured now is a good time to get back to it.

I'm a Palm Pre owner, and a fairly happy one at that.  There's a lot to love about webOS and the Pre, and the future looks pretty good too.  But, there's no denying that the EVO with Android is out there and looks impressive, and of course the iPhone with iOS 4.0 was just released this week.  Am I thinking of switching?  That seems to be the current question, for me and for a lot of people.

The quick answer for the iPhone is no, but maybe not for the reasons you think... I'm an avowed Apple hater, even though I own an iPad and frankly like it quite a bit.  That doesn't change the fact that I detest many of their practices and philosophies, and I absolutely despise Steve Jobs in particular.  None of this is news to anyone that knows me.

What may be news though is that I'd have a very difficult time not getting an iPhone if it wasn't for one thing: AT&T.  I'm a Sprint customer, have been for a long time, and I have almost nothing but good things to say about them.  The service has always been solid for me, and the price is unbeatable.  They have a decent lineup of phones nowadays, which wasn't always true.  In fact, the lack of good phones a few years ago chased me to Verizon temporarily.  But AT&T is pretty awful.  The price isn't great and the service is pretty crappy from what I hear (although interestingly, it seems to be a bit improved with the new iPhone).

I don't think I could ever bring myself to suffer AT&T's service for the iPhone, even though the device itself is something I'd be interested in.  It's still got all the same downsides as any Apple device: lack of freedom, overhyped (but generally pretty good) operating system, some missing features I'd hate to be without... but it's also got a lot of positives that largely overcome the negatives... excellent hardware (Apple has nearly always gotten the hardware right, and usually better than most others), tons of apps, most of the features I want in such a device.

Yes, if the iPhone was available on Sprint today I'd frankly have a very difficult decision to make.

EVO is the other competitor in my mind, and hardware-wise it seems to be a winner... although, I've seen some issues reported early on, but I expect they will be solved in future production runs.  Regardless, it's hard to argue it doesn't have some killer hardware lurking under the covers.  What about the OS?  Well, Android, in my mind, is just OK at this point.  It's got warts for sure... interestingly, I think it has more warts than webOS despite having been out longer.  I haven't seen any showstoppers though, but lots of little thing that would probably annoy me.

Still, Android is relatively open, which is a positive.  There's a good and growing number of apps out there, which also is a big positive.  With Google backing it I expect it's going to continue to improve rapidly, which is a third positive.  I think the bottom line is I wouldn't be at all against owning an Android device, but the EVO is the only one I'd currently consider, given it's available on Sprint and given that it has killer hardware.

And then there's webOS and my Pre.

First, I'm still burnt that I can't have a Pre Plus on Sprint.  I'm sure exclusivity was a dependency in getting the phones onto Verizon, which Palm had to do to try and build the user base.  Makes sense.  But it still sucks big-time for us Sprint early adopters.  It sucks because it goes a long way to solving some of the lingering annoying problems with webOS, primarily the "too many cards" errors.  Yes, they still happen, and more so now with the PDK-based games.  It's frustrating to say the least.  Not to mention that I can't have all the music and videos and eBooks I want on my phone now because the memory is constrained.

So, that sucks.  The Pre in  general, hardware-wise, is behind the curve for sure at this point and the gap is widening greatly.  I mean, I can't really compare a Pre to the new iPhone or the EVO and have too much positive to say.  In  fact, the Pre having a physical keyboard is about the only positive thing I can say.  We're starting to get some hints about new devices coming in the next few months, but those are already 3-4 months late in my opinion... I hesitate to say they are too late because if they come out in a few months and are top-notch then all would be forgiven... my fear is that any new Palm device will always be a few months' behind the kings of the hill in terms of hardware...

...which means that webOS has to REALLY impress and make up for the lack of hardware.  Any you know what?  For the most part, it does, and it's really the only thing keeping me with my Pre.  Look, to be clear, iOS and Android have their strengths and weaknesses, as does webOS.  I love how smooth iOS is under nearly any circumstance (based on my iPad and iPod Touch experience) and I wish webOS was always as smooth (it certainly is some of the time, but I can't honestly say even most of the time).  Then again, webOS beats the snot out of iOS and Android when it comes to notifications.  Pluses and minuses to all of them.

Taken as a whole though, I'm still very much smitten with webOS and especially its development model (sans the PDK, which I personally don't have too much interest in at the moment).  Palm still has the very best multitasking implementation out there.  Synergy still kicks the crap out of any alternatives on other devices.  As I said earlier, notifications are still unmatched.

I guess at the end of the day it comes down to this to me: I'm not switching, at least not right now.  I won't get an EVO because I like webOS more than Android, and I like it enough more to overcome the EVO's superior hardware.  I won't get an iPhone because I won't go with AT&T... but if Sprint offered it, I'd have a tough decision to make.

The takeaway here for Palm is this: I'm still a happy customer, but there really had better be a killer hardware refresh coming in the next 3-4 months.  I think webOS is fine.  I know you'll continue to improve it of course, but I think you're in good shape there.  The hardware though... it's starting to take away from your great OS work and is looking worse and worse practically by the week compared to your competitors.  If I don't have a new device from you in my hands in a few months, and not just a Pre Plus, well, I may be looking with longing eyes to an EVO... and at some point I MIGHT even be willing to take the AT&T hit to get an iPhone (that's a lot less likely... maybe 5-10% chance... but I won't rule it out completely).  I can be patient, and I understand the whole acquisition thing (I'm going through an acquisition at the moment too actually, and it's the third I've been through in the past 15 years, so I really do understand the effect it has!)... but the window is closing.

Don't let me down Palm!  Let's see some new hardware that compliments what I still think is the best mobile OS out there... let's see the total package that can go head-to-head with the EVO and the iPhone 4.  And get'er done sooner than later!  I know there's some things brewing, but don't make me wait too much longer or I may not be able to resist the temptations out there...

I'm weak, I need a greek fix soon!!