Ardent Meridian… incoherent rambletastic techno-babble …

After missing having access to a subscription music service, I decided to re-subscribe to the Zune service with a ZunePass and start using my original 30GB Zune device.  I actually quite liked the service (though I have never been a fan of the hardware), but I was driven away by the lack of support for 64-bit Vista.

The x64 build of Zune 3.0 installed seemingly without incident.  Initial configuration and re-activation of my ZunePass subscription was smooth and simple, even if it flipping you over to Internet Explorer for any account management operation is rather silly and disjointed.

The Zune 3.0 software is generally slick and fast in local operation.  At least as long as it is not talking to the Zune servers.  Getting it to display a simple list of the top 100 rock tracks took over a minute.  Other, similar, operations were also unfathomably slow.  iTunes on Windows gets a, deservedly, bad rap for being slow, but it moves like a whippet with a bum full of dynamite compared to browsing the Zune marketplace.

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Microsoft really confuses me sometimes.  It really shouldn’t, I worked there for 8 years and saw enough bone-headed decisions in that time to last me several lifetimes.  Even so, every so often I come across something that is so illustrative of restrictive, myopic or just plain backwards thinking that it tends to make my blood boil.

This week has been replete with such issues, mostly centering on brain-dead management of disks and the raw hassle that is trying to get a bare-metal restorable backup of the operating system and provisioning new disks the way I want to.

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I wrote recently about the Ion "Drum Rocker" I had purchased, partially in response to a broken Rock Band drum pedal, and the excellent experience I had, and am having, with it.

However, as there are options to repair or replace the original pedal, and it was the "only" thing "wrong" with my original drums, I spent some time looking at those options with the intent of fixing the pedal, and giving the old drums to a friend.

That’s my broken pedal above, snapped clean off at the hinge.  A little research research pointed to two primary options for getting my broken Rock Band drum pedal fixed, and several more for a complete – and more expensive – replacement:

• The first was to go through the official warranty/repair process, which is probably the route most people would go.  However, assuming a simple swap of the broken pedal for a new one, this is just going to lead to the same problem occurring again somewhere down the road.
• The second was a third-party solution, either replacing or repairing the existing pedal.  The options I found for this looked like they would result in both a more solid and durable end-result, and a better looking one as well.

I opted to repair my existing pedal, partly because that option was slightly cheaper, and partly because the premium replacement pedals look like they might even be upgrades to the "Drum Rocker" pedal!

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So, despite the initial, disappointed, and apparently false, impression I got from reading most of the interesting technical sites/blogs on the release of the T-Mobile G1 – it has apparently sold out all 1.5 million pre-order units.

That’s pretty impressive for a cool looking and sleek phone with every feature known to man …

For a phone with a relatively dull appearance, apparent ergonomic issues, and the inability to do anything useful in the context of Microsoft Exchange, like the G1, it is downright staggering!

I am smart enough to admit when I am wrong about something, and in terms of the G1′s or, at least, Android‘s appeal: I was wrong!

Not that I am about to change my opinion on wanting the G1 device for myself or not: I don’t – I’ll wait for something a lot more "current" looking.  But as a platform to develop for, well, 1.5 million pre-orders is not something to sniff-at.  One has to believe that for every pre-order there are as many people that will snap it up at retail, and that just bodes even better for the platform as a whole.

I am going to finish my current iPhone projects, and see how they fair, before spending any more time on learning and coding on Android.  At least now, however, my enthusiasm for the platform has been restored and I do plan on releasing applications for it as well.

If Android can generate these kinds of sales on a relatively, to me at least, uninspiring handset, one has to wonder what it could do when coupled with some pretty hardware with no obvious ergonomic issues – coming out to a populated applications market …

A few days ago a good friend of mine suggested I buy him some new drums for Rock Band for his birthday.  He’s a bit of a cheeky bleeda’, with some very strange ideas, but the drums he pointed out looked really cool.

As it happens, my own Rock Band drums just suffered a pedal-snap so those were in need of repair or replacement.

The drum kit in question is the Ion "Drum Rocker", and I was sufficiently intrigued by what I read on the product’s web site, and in various reviews, that I decided to buy a set for myself (for his birthday).

Anyone that has played with the standard Rock Band drums for any length of time is well aware of their pros and cons.  On the upside they are no-fuss, and are relatively affordable.  On the down side, the bass-drum pedal is prone to failure, typically snapping in half or at the hinge, there is very little room for adjustment (height only) and you need to whack them pretty solidly to ensure they register.

Oh yes, and they make an infernal racket when hit … so you’re very unlikely to actually hear the drum sounds from the game while you’re busy playing.  I might be exaggerating a little here, but not much.

You can, if you’re so inclined, purchase official Rock Band drum "silencers" (third-party options also exist).  These are, in my experience, easy to install, look good and are very effective in deadening the sound of the standard drums.  Sadly they are even more effective at deadening the responsiveness of the drums themselves, so they’re not something I can recommend.

The pedal issue is relatively easy to work around as well, either before or after it breaks, but I’ll write more about that when the upgrade/repair arrives and I give it a try on my current broken pedal.

Harmonix have announced new drums with Rock Band 2, which may improve things somewhat, but while the standard product is more than serviceable, and quite entertaining, the Ion "Drum Rocker" steps things up several notches.  You would expect it to offer more than the standard "instrument" of course, on the basis it is more than three times as expensive.

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A long time ago, way back in the distant annals of history (otherwise known as late-2002), I bought a rather entertaining Xbox game called "Steel Battalion".  This was a first-person Mech game with two rather interesting differentiators:

• It cost $200 – the same price as the console it ran on.
• It came with an enormous, and insanely cool, controller.

The controller in question was a glorious three-console plus foot pedal monstrosity, solidly built and quite the thing of beauty (if you like that sort of thing).  The image doesn’t nearly give the true scale of the thing.

In addition to being unique and having a certain amount of bizarre geek-status, the other interesting aspect to owning this game was its tendency to cause everyone you knew to question your sanity.

"$200 for one game!?", was the typical first response.  Okay, actually "WTF" was often the first response, but the first response not comprised solely of consonants was the "$200?!" one, but I digress.

I suppose, at a time when the Xbox console itself was only the same price as the game, it might have seemed a little odd.  But in terms of people questioning the sanity or value of the thing … well that’s a little bit different …

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Pac-Man is an indisputably classic game, and one of my absolute favorite video games of all time.  From the perspective of classic retro-games, probably my all-time favorite.  It is certainly the one I’ve played the most.

Whether it was frantically pumping quarters (or 10P pieces from what was my part of the world back then) into the old coin-operated machines, or gladly buying it in some Namco "museum" collection or other for almost every console it has ever released on, I’ve probably spent more to play it than any other classic game as well.

For the first time since Pac-Man has appeared on consoles I am finding myself highly-resistant to buying it.  Not because I don’t want it … but because I don’t understand why a game that is $4.99 for the iPod Classic should cost $9.99 on the iPhone, when the game, control excepted, is the same.

Actually, I understand it just fine and technically it isn’t Pac-Man that has gone insane, it is Namco.  The two games are right there in the iTunes store, easily compared to each other – and beyond adding accelerometer control (highly questionable at best for a precision-control game like this, and definitely not something I feel is worth $5) it is the same game just ported!

It’s the same story for Ms. Pac-Man and Pole Position Remix.  A penny over double the price just because it is on the iPhone rather than the iPod?!  What’s the extra value here … other than to Namco’s shareholders that is?  It just seems schizophrenic and rather silly to me.  Especially when you consider how profitable Pac-Man has been for Namco over the years.

When the same game is available on the Xbox 360 for ~$5, and given the certification process and similar distribution fee for Xbox Live Arcade titles, and the addition of achievements and online leader-boards, $10 for the game on the iPhone just seems unnecessarily exploitative.

I find it very hard to believe, particularly in light of the consistent price feedback on the Application Store, that Namco wouldn’t make a lot more money by lowering the price and increasing their sales volume. 

There are copious examples of much smaller developers doing just this, much to the, quite vocal, delight of their new found customers.

But what is one to do?

Say "sod that", that’s what … if Namco does get a bleedin’ clue and those games do drop to $4.99 I’ll buy them on the iPhone in a heartbeat … but I am not paying double for the same thing as exists on other, more involved, platforms just because it is on the shiny new iPhone.

Across the various forums I participate in, I’ve read a lot about people having issues with the battery life on the iPhone 3G.  While I am sure there are defective units out there, as best I can tell most of the issues being encountered are due to the way people are using the phone.

This screenshot, taken on my iPhone 3G, shows pretty typical battery life for me under "normal" use.  Normal use in my case constitutes running with 3G and Location Services (GPS) disabled, WiFi and Bluetooth enabled, push e-mail turned off (fetch every 15 minutes) and the screen at 60%.

If I am out and about and browsing I will switch to 3G mode for that, and then usually remember to turn it off … sometimes not.  I rarely use location services, and again tend to turn it on as needed.

Actual use of the device in this example breaks down like this:

• 1.5 hours making phone calls.
• Sending/receiving about 20 SMS text messages.
• 3.5 or so hours listening to music.
• About 20-30 minutes browsing (checking prices while out shopping) in 3G mode.
• Roughly an hour and a half gaming (MotionX Poker, Galcon and Enigmo).
• Reading e-mails as they popped up, on a 15 minute fetch cycle.

And that’s a pretty normal day’s use for me, and very comparable – maybe slightly better than my previous AT&T "Tilt".  Although the Tilt would be in 3G mode all the time (no way that I knew of to turn that off).  That said, the Tilt was almost never used for any kind of browsing due to Pocket Internet Explorer being unable to render the majority of sites I’d browse while away from my desk, coupled with the fact that I had to reboot the bloody thing every day to keep the Internet connection working.

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It was, with some anticipation, that I awaited the full and final details of the T-Mobile G1 handset; the first of what will hopefully be a long line of Android based devices.

The early images of the G1 that have been floating around on the web have been less than inspiring, but I was more interested in the G1 as a way to explore Android and its SDK running on actual hardware than in using it as my day-to-day phone.

The basic hardware specifications of the G1 are comparable, or superior, to most current smart-phones that are available at a similar price.  For example, it stacks up well against devices like the, slightly more expensive, AT&T "Tilt" (my previous day-to-day device).

The most interesting aspects of the hardware layout as follows:

• 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios
• 3.2" half-VGA (320×480) color touch-screen
• 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera
• Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• GPS receiver
• Accelerometer/motion sensor input
• ~5 hours talk time with standby time claims ranging from ~130 hours to ~300

Although not billed as a "business" phone, comparisons with other smart-phones are inevitable, and in this space the G1′s primary competitors are Windows Mobile based devices, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry units and Apple’s iPhone.  In such a comparison the most glaring omission is the total lack of support for any integration with either Microsoft Exchange or Outlook. All of the competing devices have rich and solid support for over-the-air (OTA) synchronization with Exchange as a standard feature.

You could enable IMAP support on Exchange and again access to corporate e-mail that way, but e-mail is only a fraction of what Exchange offers; it is the combination of e-mail, scheduling, groupware and collaboration features in Exchange that make it compelling – and without that you’re missing the point.

It is, of course, possible that support of Exchange will be added later, either as part of the Android O.S. itself (although that doesn’t seem likely, given that Google already has their own infrastructure and solutions for that functionality) or via a third-party application via the Android Market.  That would, in my opinion, be a serious "sit up and take notice" event in the evolution of the Android platform and the devices it powers.

Despite the high-promise of an open platform for building applications, and how powerful that potentially is in the business space,the lack of Exchange support is going to render the G1, and other Android based phones, as unviable for common business use.  Again, the G1 isn’t billed as a business phone, it is more consumer-targeted, and that is fair enough.

So, how does the G1 stack up as a consumer phone?

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